If anything, I am the quitter in this relationship

I'm going to go through our texts and figure out who instigated each individual texting conversation and who was the last one to reply. I personally hate being the last one to reply in texting conversation. It's like the other person just disappears or tells you to go fuck yourself, so I try specifically now to leave most texting conversations first as a matter of principle. Except for the inner circle. Everyone who now holds membership in my inner circle always signs off a texting conversation with XO or xx or xoxo or xox or the deadly x. To get into the inner circle, in fact, you can't be a texting abandoner. That's a fucking rule.

You are no longer in my texting inner circle precisely because of these statistics. For instance, last month you instigated six texting conversations and I instigated five, but you text-abandoned me nine out of the eleven conversations. This month is different. I'm aiming for four to five abandonments at the most because I know I can quit better than you. If anything, I am the quitter in this relationship. It means that our conversations are a lot shorter and shallower but I'm not getting caught with my pants down, so to speak. Maybe I should add text-length to the chart?

I have mixed feelings about This Accident of Being Lost, by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.

It's labeled "songs and stories." For the most part I liked the stories — it's the songs I don't get. For starters, what makes songs different from poems? How are you supposed to read a song? Doesn't reading a song negate its very songness? So I'm not going to talk about the songs. I just don't get the songs.

The stories, however, are quite beautiful, poignant, and funny.

Topic 11: Being a Writer Sucks
Writing actually sucks. Like you're alone in your head for days on end, just wondering if you actually can die of loneliness, just wondering how healthy it is to make all this shit up, and just wondering if you did actually make this shit up, or if you just copied down your life or worse someone else's life, or may you're just feeding your delusions and neuroses and then advertising it to whoever reads your drivel.

It all feels very honest, but this is where you remember that this is fiction. It doesn't have to be real to be true.

In the Globe and Mail,

It's not possible to tell which details are lived experience and which are imagined. ... Her writing educates the reader even as it admits to not having all the answers. ... I was stunned by Simpson's generosity in sharing these experiences and inviting us to be challenged and to be lost.

As a reader, I don't know what I'm being educated about. That the reviewer is stunned by Simpson's generosity makes it clear she assumes lived experience and authenticity.

Indigenous issues do arise, and they're not insignificant.

They want a beach. We want rice beds. You can't have both. They want to win. We need to win. They'll still be white people if they don't have the kind of beach they want. Our kids won't be Mississauga if they can't ever do a single Mississauga thing.

In The Winnipeg Review,

What fascinates me about Simpson's work is not its Anishinaabe cultural roots, but its examination of intimacy and love. You can't separate being Indigenous from how we love others. It's an extension of culture and worldview.

This surprises me. In my view, the bits about intimacy and love were absolutely the best, and also the most accessible, because they're the most universal. These stories neither educated me nor helped me access an indigenous experience — they were simply relatable. This has nothing to do with native ways being confounded my modern times; I mean, who hasn't obsessed over a love interest's texts?

Reviews
Globe and Mail
PRISM International
Rough ghosts
The Winnipeg Review

Video.

Ice storms always melt

If I had your undivided attention, even for five minutes, I would tell you to stop panicking. I would tell you that you have no idea how amazing freedom feels and that you should stop giving a fuck about all those things you are supposed to give a fuck a bout, even if it is just for five minutes. For one thing, you'd realize that ice storms always melt, eventually.

If I had ten minutes alone with you, I'd tell you that I love you. I'd tell you not to be scared, because it's the kind of love that doesn't want anything or need anything. It's the kind of love that just sits there and envelops whoever you are or whoever you want to be. It doesn't demand. It isn't a commodity. It doesn't threaten all the other people you love. It doesn't fuck up and it doesn't fuck things up. It's loyal. It's willing to feel hurt. It's willing to exist on shifting terms. It's willing to stay anyway. It doesn't want. It's just there. It's just there and good and given freely, sewing up the holes unassumingly because it's the only thing to do. There is so much space around it and the space shimmers.

— from "Seeing Through the End of the World" in This Accident of Being Lost, by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.