Duffy > Recent Status Updates

There aren’t a lot of non academic books to choose from in the social work library. I think it’s funny it’s classified as “internal medicine”

“you with your archival fever”, honestly pretty sweet, enjoying

“spendthrift of emotion”

“Love and writing are the only two things in the world that I can bear, the rest is darkness” this is too much and sublime

“I write in lieu of love, to fill that empty space above death” … i am loving this

Again, started this in the summer then abandoned but really loving it now

Started in the summer because I was telling someone I was scared of sounding cringe in my writing so they suggested it but then it was too much for me at the time so returning now

Sometimes I accidentally begin to narrate my life in the same voice of the book I’m reading, this one makes it easy to do

Reads like lemon tekking on an empty stomach, transfixed.

Need to take a break for Mother’s Day.

Like if Eileen Myles was French and had a kid.

This book provides a feeling similar to talking to someone else about their hallucinations. It’s a particular kind of comfort. But I wish the poems were organized differently, so each could be its own? It feels like they’re running into each other or are too similar or something.

“For me, oftentimes transness is about knowing things about what’s going on with your feelings”.

From interview w Andrea Long Chu in Vulture.

Reminded me of Detransition, Baby not just because of pregnancy but also how the book is as much about the city itself as it is the characters. I did think the baby plot was a bit much/ too similar though.

I love London and I do not want to live there. This book reminds me of that.

This book is life changing but I really don’t like how 12 step programs are positioned in conflict w harm reduction.

“twelve-step view of complete “powerlessness” during active addiction is falsified by the demonstrable progress toward health seen in programs like needle exchange”

Seems like manipulation of AA lingo. “Powerlessness” doesn’t mean hopelessness. It means things need to change.

“Her courtroom’s only decorations were an American flag, a standard-issue large, round office clock, and a gold-colored but obviously plastic “In God We Trust” sign. Although drug war money had flown copiously to police for arrests and to expand jails and prisons, funding for the courts to process the increasing caseload had been neglected, and it showed.”

This made me laugh.

“‘It’s a process he calls ideological interpellation or hailing—we are hailed by a text and the process is akin to hearing a shout in the street. The text hails us and we turn round in recognition. So reading a book—picking up Junky—it was that sense that someone’s calling you and I had no other ambitions than to do drugs.’”

Peter McDermott on Althusser.

Eh, feels like it’s written for cis people and non-alcoholics so far which is disappointing but I’m curious about what’s to come.

“Even family members were encouraged to reject us: that would supposedly help us to “hit bottom.” In reality, it meant that many of us died alone.”

I’m embarrassed to say I don’t really know a lot about the relationship between 12 step programs and harm reduction. There’s something about the bootstrapping of 12 step that feels wrong but I haven’t figured it out yet.