Of Turned Pages

As my march towards a more sane system of connectivity-output continues in the form of these haphazard bloviations, the occasional Instagram dog picture / book recommendation, and bi-weekly dispatches , a parallel shift in my connectivity-input habits: three out of my four subscriptions are now to print magazines and their online components – THE PARIS REVIEW, WIRED, and THE ECONOMIST (THE WASHINGTON POST being the sole paid digital-only source), the yearly cost of which is offset (mostly) by a stubborn refusal to upgrade my clunky and throttled iPhone6 to the latest and greatest lease offering via Verizon in much the same way that I refuse offered olives – all part of a concerted effort to break free of the ouroboros of outrage and anxiety towards a more focused understanding of the world and culture through long-form journalism and, gasp, paying for good content.

(and yes, I recognize and embrace the attendant irony in sharing these revelations about paid print media via a more-or-less free digital platform; note that I’ve never said that this was good content)

While I know that a good chunk of the reasoning behind this switch is an effort to quiet down the blaring noise I let into my life for far too long, there’s another component at play: for a decade and a half, I’ve been moving all over the place, never in one location for long enough to consider an address permanent. In this present iteration of myself, it only took seven years of being back in the purple state wilds, six and a half of which have been spent in a committed relationship — six of that six and a half in the same house and nearly four of that six and a half as husband and wife — to convince myself that I wasn’t going to need an extra box for all the books and magazines when the winds of the next upheaval struck.

I guess I’m home.

Plus, a new issue of THE PARIS REVIEW smells wonderful.

(TW)