Leland Cacayan > Recent Status Updates

Both thrilling and also terribly sad.

Fascinating so far. The writing style impressively mimics nonfiction reportage so well that I had to Google whether or not the crime of the hook actually happened (lol).

Finished Awakenings, and will now be taking some time to read some fiction (thankfully).

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In Awakenings, Dr. Sacks takes a cross sectional approach towards neurology, Sacks pulling from the realms of classic literature, philosophy, and physics, to craft a comprehensive portrait of Parkinsonism and the usage of LDOPA. The book was dense and full of technical language, which made the read challenging.

Nothing is better than having your friends read these poems aloud and watch them react to the elegaic and gross verse Sharon Olds cooked up. I'm a blessed man

Two or three more sittings and I vanquish Awakenings and finally have fiction back into my life.

Had to reach for the poetry like a med pack in a video game so I can power through the rest of Dr. Sacks' Awakenings.

Turns out, it was a bad choice because I'm even more pissed that I apparently grabbed the hippy dippy Mary Oliver collection because shit's filled with lines like, "Though I have been scorned for it,/ let me never be afraid to use the word beautiful <3"

This cornball poetry has got me fucked up.

Awakenings is a big fucking bummer of a book. So far. Each patient follows a similar fate of catatonia, a great improvement due to the introduction of L-DOPA, followed by a steady, if not terrible decline. Some have walked away okay, but a diagnosis of Parkinsonism was a mortal one.

The verbage here is no joke man. Reading feels like trying to ford a river of quick sand. Thankfully, I've finally landed in the clinical studies section of Awakenings, which is a lot more approachable than Dr. Sacks' musings on history or whatever.

With a newly found determination, I'm starting this collection again because it's been too long since I opened it.

Awakenings is first, and Ive almost forgotten how dense the text is. It took me like half an hour to get through the foreword and preface. And I'm still on page 4? Wtf?

This is shaping up to be one of my favorite books, like ever. I want to read slower to savor the collection more, but I cant help myself

"What hunger led the first hominid to feed/ scarce meat to a wolf and thereby nurture/ trust attuned to out every gesture/ more fully than we trust our species?"

The Soote Season

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Finally. Some good fucking food.

I think that the best thing that could happen to Lapvona is if a nuclear bomb was dropped on the miserable fiefdom and killed everyone except Ina, Agata, Lispeth, and Marek.

The goth librarian gave me the stamp of approval when I checked this book out. "It's my second favorite, after My Year," they said.

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Really cool and really gross so far.

The book has excellent vibes but if I think too hard about the world of the book, I get annoyed. Why would the Memory Police erase benign things like birds, flowers, and perfume? I'm willing to forgo my curiousity of how, but I just want to know why? What's the fucking point of erasing perfume? So you can have a bunch of islanders who smell bad???

"The first early snows came and melted and we were into Indian Summer. The sky was an intense enamel blue, but the afternoon light had a dying, year's end quality, a rich apricot color as though it fell through a cordial glass onto an oak table, the kind of day hunters remember falsely as October (38)."

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Damn! Thats how you write!

Reading this book while getting my hair permed is the coolest I'll ever look reading in public.

It seems almost miraculous that, however unsteady, the Western interpretation of autism has reached the level of empathy and scientific understanding that it has achieved today.