Reading Like a Normal Person

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Thank you Amy Brown, Benjamin, and many others for tuning into my live video with Allison Deraney! After this recording, both Allison and I had similar experiences with Come See Me in the Good Light, which Allison writes about here. It’s a beautiful essay about a film about a person who was definitely lightning. The documentary itself is streaming on AppleTV. Below is my letter to you and me and all the neighbors and their cats.

Karli and I drink coffee on the front porch. The girl who lives in the million dollar townhome across the street takes her cats for a walk. I was sure that whoever bought the brand new townhomes would be LA transplants or Air BnB investors, but Karli says this girl went to high school with her. She carries one tabby in her arms while the other follows at her feet. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone besides myself taking their cats for a leashless walk. I should bring her and her boyfriend/husband(?) a basket of muffins and catnip to welcome them to the neighborhood, but I won’t. I’ll think about how I should, though. Look, I’m even writing about it.

After seeing the neighbor on her cat walk, I realize it’s been too long since I’ve taken Clementine on hers. Cats, like people, choose a route and stick to it. Clem follows me on the sidewalk to the house on the other side of my next door neighbor’s, cuts into that yard and across the hedge through a small arch in the bushes that border the next driveway. I see her at two places on the trip through the next yard because they have a huge thick English garden-type privacy hedge with a gap at the walkway that leads to the sidewalk and an opening at the next property. Two houses down, she jumps the white picket fence then goes on an open exploration in the small apartment complex that it encloses, and after that we make our return home.

Today, though, Mango waits in the small archway past the house that’s two houses away. Mango is the small orange tabby who lives next door and is despised by every cat on our property. Mango’s housemate, however gets the royal treatment. Oliver roams so freely that he stops in to eat the girls food and pee in their litter-box without a peep from anyone. The rules that govern cat society feel cruel. If they would show a little empathy for each other, they wouldn’t have to live with so much fear and aggression.

If I would show more empathy for food-eaters, I wouldn’t have to live with so much fear and aggression. My back is twisted into knots from it. The doctor says it’s a repetitive use injury, and I suspect the repetition is me curling up into Nosferatu every time a new table sits in my section. Thankfully, this is one of the wettest Novembers in decades so I have to spend my days off in my TBR pile. The universe never lets me and my white-knuckled grip on my own bitterness sneak past.

It only takes a couple of days to read Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower. I trip over a line in the middle of this dystopian tale, where Lauren, the narrator seems to have lost everything. She says to a fellow traveler, “I mean to survive.”

I know it’s a fictional world, one where no one has pets anymore because there’s not enough meat to share with an animal. I read these lines while Morticia purrs on my lap. I pet the spot between her ears and across her cheeks, and she runs her scratchy tongue along my hand. A candle burns in every room, and every now and then the downpour calls attention to itself, just to illustrate how very cozy it is on my down-stuffed couch. In Lauren’s world, fire and destruction are rampant, but no one calls for services like police or fire suppression because they can’t afford it. In this current fairytale fantasy world where all my needs continue to be met, I ease into nihilism because my phone makes me sad.

I realize the universe isn’t quite done sending me its message when I watch Andrea Gibson and Meg Falley’s documentary, Come See Me in the Good Light. I sit transfixed in front of the television alternating between tears and laughter, as I receive this gift from two great poets of our time. The charm of the film is in their relationship.

“Do you know how good of a poet you have to be to write as many poems as I have using only five words? Sorry, but you have way more tools. It’s like I just built a house with a screwdriver.” Andrea says to her wife, Megan, addressing the disparity of vocabulary between the two writers. Throughout the documentary, Andrea receives cancer updates while voiceovers of some of their most moving poems remind the viewer of the corporeal experience, with poems like, “Tincture” and “Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps.” We see them master the art of being present. I fall in love with how a person clings to love and life and holds it all with both fervent seriousness and levity.

Throughout these two weeks, through no calculation of my own, I read two books where people witness their fellow humans literally eating other people, yet have more zest for life and hope for the future than I do. In City of Thieves, a story of two young Russian men during the second world war, one a teenager and the other a young soldier, the story spans across a week. The boys are on a mission for their lives and freedom, another reality where people have started eating pets rather than feed them food to keep them alive. Their mission seems impossible, painful, and because it is winter in Russia, unbearably cold. And yet still no one just lays down and dies.

I go for a walk on one of my days off and wonder if my negativity is a problem of ratios. Like, perhaps I spend too much social time in service of others. Of course, it is a meaningful thing to bring people food, one of the most necessary things, really but it hurts more with each passing year. How can I not be of service? I can stay home. Maybe there is a subconscious conditioning where my mind has worn a groove that says if I go out that front door and interact with the world, they are going to ask me for things. I see people as potential favor-askers rather than for the beautiful beings that they are. I fight a whisper of resentment at Andrea and Meg because they interact with a world that financially bolsters them as artists. And this resentment is all the more petty and irrational being that Andrea’s heart no longer beats on this earth.

I fight the urge to order Postmates and hunker down when we finally get a sunny November day. I hit the pavement in the early afternoon. Most of the puddles have dried up, but there’s a residual moisture that is sensed through vivid greens of every sprout where there was once hard-packed earth. The succulents that border the road have plumped. I walk past a new memorial on Vista del Mar across from a spot where I would sometimes come across an orange tabby who liked to get chin scritches from strangers like me. Different colored pebbles spell out the name, “LEO,” and someone has painted a cat curled up on a flat stone. I walk along the beach path, passing people, some who smile, some who don’t make eye contact. I miss Leo.

I buy a pocket journal for sketching at the paperie downtown and sketch an absurd sign about watching one’s step while listening to Greek EDM music and eating a Gyro bowl. On the way home, I see a man on a skateboard whose dog is leashed and riding his own skateboard. My loneliness is a wool coat that protects me from the setting sun. It’s a frozen ocean that I cut across to recharge for my next shift. The world really isn’t so bad.

Send this to someone who is becoming a nihilist, so they can read books with both cannibalism and hope. It’s like a prescription but better. Doctors don’t know shit.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliefontes.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliefontes.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliefontes.substack.com/subscribe

What a pleasure it was to talk to Ellie about this very special book. This Naked Mind was the first quit-lit book I read when I quit drinking in 2022, and Ellie credits it with keeping her sober since she read it in 2018.

In this interview we explore how freeing it is to quit drinking when an advertising exec gets up into your subconscious and tries to undo every belief about alcohol that society has sold to you. Please don’t invite us to your parties, but do invite us down your dark forested trails.

You can read about Ellie’s adventures on her Substack, A Little Fantastic Sober Life. Please go there and subscribe now.

Also, check out this article from the This Naked Mind blog where our friends Colin and Rachel get some recognition as Sober Banter is named one of the top sober podcasts. Colin and Rachel were the first podcasters to have me on to promote Like a Normal Person, and I was their first guest!!! WHAT A WORLD!

If there is a quit-lit book you are dying to talk about, please contact me by replying to this email or email me at [email protected]!!! We’ve really only scratched the surface.

Please share this episode with anyone who might want to drink like a normal person!!!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliefontes.substack.com/subscribe

Well, that’s not entirely true. I have read pieces of it out loud during the development phase, but I’ve been dragging my feet on the creation of an audiobook, and in this week’s episode, we all discover why. Audiobooks are hard, man. Anyways, I also read my insane book description that is actually up on my Amazon page right now. I can’t believe I let my AI assistant take that over without any feedback from myself. Also, I want to share the pictures from my hike and let you know that all I want to do is hike. If there was a job that was just carrying a thing (a small thing) from the bottom of a trail to the top, I would do that everyday and not complain. Thank you and enjoy.

Also, I just got a new set of paintbrushes and a stack of 100 postcards for my new paid subscriber project.

Also I want to share trail pictures I took with my little Sony camera which has a 30x optical zoom and fits in my pocket.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliefontes.substack.com/subscribe

This week on the Reading Like a Normal Person Podcast, we are talking about Lit, by the queen of poetic Memoir, Mary Karr. Christina Jumper writes the Crisis Corner newsletter on Substack and created the Pickles and Vodka Podcast. You should go subscribe to all of her things immediately. Her style is raw and real and refreshing just like Karr’s.

If you are interested in being a guest on the podcast, please reach out to me! The requirement is that you must read and love a quit-lit book and want to talk about it!

Quit-lit books already covered include We are the Luckiest, Blackout, My Fair Junkie, Drinking, a Love Story, Untamed, and Lit. I’ll be talking about This Naked Mind with Ellie Nova in an upcoming episode. Reach out and add to my TBR pile!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliefontes.substack.com/subscribe

This week, on Reading Like a Normal Person, join me and Kristen Crocker from Recoverettes as we talk about Drinking: A Love Story. Before Laura McKowen or Holly Whitaker there was Caroline Knapp. Unfortunately, I mispronounce her first name a couple of times in this episode, but that’s okay because I forgive myself. Kristen was so easy to talk to. We covered cold, dark families, the trauma of early parenting, the pain of quitting sugar, what it means to be a shamanic practitioner, and why publishing a book is so depressing.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliefontes.substack.com/subscribe

Rosemary Writes & Recovers and talks with me about Amy Dresner’s My Fair Junkie. This was one of the wildest memoirs. Amy tells all the gory details. The book also delves into love and sex addiction in a way that none of the previous books have.

Listen to this episode while you re-organize your sock drawer or plot your vegetable garden. It loves therapeutic domestic tasks.

Oh and don’t think I forgot about the Quit Litmus scale. Dresden falls to the left. Pure memoir. Pure entertainment.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliefontes.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliefontes.substack.com/subscribe