Samantha, Jack & Lucy

This morning, a friend shared a screenshot of a social media post that says

i am a simple goblin

all i want is for someone to pet my head

and feed me whatever i want for dinner

without having to figure out what that is

forever ✨

I read this, and thought D's gonna say "oh look it Erik" isn't he (he's convinced I'm a goblin; I don't get it), and before I could even type anything, he said "Oh you found Erik's alt."

I laughed and said "Actually I require many more things than this. I am a needy goblin."

I mean yes those things would be nice -- though lately I've been very particular about what I can eat for dinner, sigh - but I was stuck on "all I want." So I added, "My counselor keeps asking me what it'd take to make things feel less overwhelming/burnouty for me, and I have a big list." Which is true! It's a mental list, but only because I'm scared to write it down.

D asked "Are any of them actionable?"

I laughed differently and much more bitterly at this. The unfeasibility is why I'm scared to write any of it down.

I need a desk fan for the room I work in. V is kind enough to use their skills in online shopping for me, and ordered one the other day to arrive today.

So this afternoon they said "Oh, Erik, I think your fan is on the way," and I presume they got a text about it or whatever.

But a visiting friend heard this, no context, and said she thought they meant, like, an admirer of mine.

It'd be so funny if someone came around just because they liked me.

Meanwhile, I'm so unbelievably tempted to write "A fan of Erik" on the fan. It's in a room full of sharpies. I could so easily do this.

I think the most hashtag dadcore thing I've done lately is

• dig through all the pressured cans of spray we keep under a counter next to the washing machine
• to find something lubricating to put on the lawn mower
• because I haven't used it since last year so the axle was stuck solid
• spraying the stuff on said axle
• wondering "is it supposed to look like that?"
• and rubbing it in (really just steering it where it's supposed to go)
• while trying to read the back of the can to see if I should be touching this stuff with my skin

I'm fine, it's fine. (It did say to use it in a ventilated area and I had that sorted by being outside.)

By the time I came back in from mowing the lawn, I'd recently washed my hands like three times but my fingers still smelled like a synthetic lubricant and freshly-cut grass.

A combination of delightful smells if you ask me.

By lunchtime I was thinking: it feels like I'm getting a migraine...and the massive sudden change in weather would back that up...but... I can't have a migraine! I just had one on Friday!

Yeah that's not how it works. I do feel like it's "not my turn yet," though. Hmph.

And yet here I am to tell you that my favorite musician is being threatened by the administrator of the country he and I are both from, for what Springsteen said in the city where I am now.

I refuse to read any more about this but D, who sent me this link, has been updating me since on it. The Boss keeps saying the government of his country is a threat to life and liberty every night on stage and Trump keeps insulting him on Truth Social: apparently now his skin is like a wrinkly prune.

Today D told me that Springsteen and the E Street Band have released an EP of what Bruce said and a few relevant songs from that first gig outside the U.S.

I listened to (most of) it while I was trying to work this afternoon. I'm just so delighted that it was in Manchester, which prides itself on being a city of rebellious and momentous music. (If only the gig had been at the Free Trade Hall instead of Coop Live! but it still makes me think of Bob Dylan and the Sex Pistols...)

I listened to the introduction, some of the lines I'd read about, and then the song and it struck me that "Land of Hope and Dreams" is a song closely connected to Clarence Clemons's death. It couldn't be as good a song as it without stemming from a profound lifelong love that Springsteen talks so movingly about in his autobiography and in Springsteen on Broadway, and that love existed between a Black man and a white man, about whom a Springsteen biographer said "They were these two guys who imagined that if they acted free, then other people would understand better that it was possible to be free."

I thought about the intense and unashamed love between these two men -- a pinnacle of what platonic love between men can be like -- and how annoying that is gonna be to the people who've suddenly realized that Springsteen is "political."

And the song has taken on this whole new life, which I'm glad of even if I'd rather The Big Man got to live a longer life.

I listened to the intro for the other song, I was trying to eat my lunch and I ended up with my eyes closed, unable to do more than listen and breathe. And after talking for a few minutes, he quotes James Baldwin -- "There isn't as much humanity in the world as I'd like. But there's enough" -- and then says "Let's pray." And for some reason, the next track didn't start. And that was the end of that one. So I just sat there, over my bowl of leftovers, imagining this happening a few miles down the road and a few days ago, I felt like I was there.

But suspended in this weird silence that went on for a long time before I realized that something technological had gone wrong.

I read all about his Catholic childhood in his autobiography and recognized a lot of it myself, but neither of us have retained it. Silent prayer isn't his style. Going right in to the next song is. And that's what he did.