Jasmine Guillory

It’s cute, and it also takes a wry look at the insanity which people call, business, I guess they call it, right.

It’s not a conformist comedy about a dressmaker and an old soldier meeting up in South Carolina to swap church stories. Again, not to exonerate without so much as a hearing, right, contemporary California individualism—the whole point is that it goes in with eyes open—but it just isn’t, like that, right. And yet it’s still cute, and fun…. And yeah: that other thing was a literal book that I didn’t finish: couldn’t down the whole thing, so to speak. But I guess we get what we ask for, or, value, maybe? ~because I didn’t sincerely value romantic comedies at the time: I was just an intellectual, who didn’t want to be THAT intellectual, right—the one who doesn’t like Black people, women, or romantic stories, you know…. Even though I had serious reservations about two out of the three, at the very least: ensconced, in my mind, at least, in the Lightning-Struck Tower of Justice, right. Hahaha, the Tower and Justice are different cards, but…. Usually the great changes/catastrophes do have something to do with justice ideals, right. (Although tarot used to be more of a tic for me, than a serious practice, and philosophical tool, right.)

But yeah: fun, cute; doesn’t lie. People do tend to assume that the rom-com novelist is a white girl: and yeah, many of them are quite talented. But I think I’ll enjoy this: I don’t think it will shake me in a verbal way, but it is a different experience, a different feel…. And at some point, I’ll even read another JG, I bet.

…. It’s well written. For a popular romantic comedy, it’s very well written. Not that being a romantic-comedy makes it worse or less than…. It’s just, not much needs to be said about it. You know what the lies are. If you don’t know what the lies are, you know how to find out: watch a random movie with your eyes open, read an “important” book about contemporary society, right…. Yeah: you know what the lies are. And Jasmine isn’t the one telling them. It’s not a book of lies.

…. It’s striking how “falling in love” is both unusual and very common—unlikely to the point that on any particular day you have an almost (but not absolutely) 0% chance of “falling in love”…. And yet, virtually all people experience some form of romance during the course of their lives.

…. As much as I think it’s appropriate to show that love is possible, that pointlessly shaming anyone, even the rich, is non-productive, that fame-hounding people you pretend to care about in order to milk for fame, as they try to get in line to pee, right…. And yet: as much as I’m not at all truly surprised to see the whole ‘in California everyone stresses and harasses each other, most people don’t go to therapy or even take the idea of its existing all that well, and the traffic is like a war’, it’s like…. They lie about what they eat for breakfast?

I thought that was like Father Pater the Dominican swearing that his Latin was good, right: like, you’d take me in with that; that seemed like a career/system-tunnel-vision-highlighted half-‘virtue’, right…. God, people lie about everything, right….

It’s very odd how a good, tough rom-com novel can simultaneously show you like textbook For Dummies pro-social heroes and people and events that give you hope, and also subtly note every point along a way an extraordinary journey might become something less superlative, and also…. What a crap place, the world of the human mind is, right….

…. It is funny how a book like this, if you were to try to describe it, right: even when it strikes a note in you, right, when it strikes a string, you know—like how it reinforced me wanting to re-evaluate the assumptions I used to make about the warrior-male-business-intellectual vs the lover-boy-partner-dancer-type, right…. There was a time when my philosopher-general-monk persona DID kinda treat my music-film-boyfriend persona like that, right….

And yet—I mean, I realize that that’s always what I say before or after explaining, right: “I can’t explain it”, lol. But it’s true…. We’re trained to view books like this, stories like this, as not being worth cogitating about, you know…. No Hegelian process is at work: why? Because ~Hegel~, was, ~important~…. He said so himself…. And I just started “The Holy Family” by Karl and Freddy—it’s not like I’ll read every book, but I had an odd desire to want to start at the beginning…. And it’s like: the words don’t really give the sense of it—but isn’t the sense, Guys just ~vomit~ these ~words~, right…. And all because a Hegelian process can only be a Very Fucking Important Thing, right…. Which is what everyone else thinks too, so they find their own popular-elites, right: complete with their own set of popular assets, lies, perks, and hassles, right…. Some of it perhaps valuable…. That the one movie is called ‘Vigilantes’ is gold, that and the dishonesty of a photo shoot, most photo shoots, are the two main pillars of a multi-level webbed trap: if you don’t mind mixing metaphor—pretend you’re on LSD, right: I’ve never been, but we have a society that both punishes things, at times, almost simply because they’re not normal, if they seem ‘important’ and potentially mainstream enough: to wit, chemicals that create weirdness~ and a social structure that does seem like something out of Alice in Wonderland, if not, indeed, the imagination of Messieurs Lennon and McCartney, right…. But yeah: but then, floating somewhere is the idea that film HAS potential, right—and that some of them are indeed worth making…. And yet there’s such bullshit about it all, right: such unnecessary lies and grandstanding, from before the shooting begins, even, until after people start chattering away online about it, like the harmful little gremlins that they are who have internalized most, if not all, of the hate that what I reluctantly call “education” and “socialization” has thrust into their arms, right….

…. It is curious how their personal stuff comes up in the course of joy-seeking, right…. I suppose that most lower-middle-brow Black romances are a SHADE closer to the pop-romance style (ie the books characteristically released as mass market paperbacks) than Emily Henry, or whatever…. At least that’s the sense I got…. But it clearly isn’t SO different, of course: you know?

…. “There’s no being ‘done’ with any of this stuff.” Therapy, family, relationships…. (Re: “I thought I was so far along, until….”).

…. (smiles) I wonder what it would be like to date a big-money glamor girl, right…. (paraphrasing ABBA) ‘Anybody could be that guy; the night is young; [lol]; the “music” makes you high….’

And any special talent of your own, that I would have at least, would just make it more of a scream for the—I hate to call them trolls, because that’s the medieval term for ‘pagan/un-person’, right: and every troll believes that’s he’s the voice of reason fighting against the dark demonic internet; he really believes that: he believes what people tell him…. But yeah: it does also speak to the common societal view of women and gender generally: but if they were to actually learn about the special skills/talents I want to have/will have/am learning: house craft/kitchen craft/tarot, right…. It would just be a scream for the “post-Christian” internet wrestlers, no….

(smiles) (laughs) But to date a movie glamor girl, who could change her mind, break up with you, buy the place you rent from your landlord, and give you two weeks to move to northern Alaska, right…. Alaska! It’ll be like the 2009 movie “The Proposal”! Only without the goddamn bad-faith traitor sell-out Anne Fletcher, right….

(hands) A movie glamor girl…. God, what if she were even a bitch! A calculating little materialistic bitch, right! Sorta LIKE Anne Fletcher, IRONICALLY! Only not…. 😹

Anyway.

…. “The plot tonight will be as much as a surprise to me as it is to you.”

Granted she had a small role in the movie, but it is surprising—it can be obvious, once you think about it: but you’re not taught to think about it; you’re taught to be naive, a troll, or a pince-nez, “you are dismissed now” person, right: you’re NOT taught to ~~think~~, right…. But yeah: it ~is~ somewhat obvious that the acting talent is realistically just puppets in the hands of the director: officially it’s the director, anyway, although there are ways to constrain their choices, I’m sure…. The actors are like…. Just, puppets, you know: at least if you mistreat them; I can’t explain it…. Of course, the whole point of film, as a ‘legitimate’ enterprise—not that I like contrasting legitimate and illegitimate…. But we won’t go into that, *pince-nez*…. But yeah: the whole point is that physical intelligence matters; and yet, it can be manipulated and betrayed, right…. Like, in “Hot Pursuit”, the technical aspect, or the physical intelligence aspect, of Reese Witherspoon’s role in the movie, right: her contribution as acting talent is absurdly good—somebody told her, Show me, “Awkwardly aggressive feminist and uptight white girl”: right, Mister Miyagi said, Show me, paint the fence—and she painted that goddamn fence, right….

But like I’m sure that all of Anne Fletcher’s work is, it’s basically just a mindless procession of mental schema which block out any actual observation of the actual goddamn world, right, and Officer Cooper (Witherspoon), as a character, is just another…. Fucking…. Tool, you know. They treat her like a, thing, basically…. That shot with the white powder we’re verbally told is baking powder but are undoubtedly meant to chortle is probably cocaine, is visually interesting—visually/aesthetically rewarding, technically proficient acting talent: all of this can be in a ‘bad movie’, and learning about societal schema/propaganda & lies, ltd., right: that can be done probably easier through watching movies intelligently, than reading stat-heavy sociology, seven times out of ten, right, but…. But, without a director, it isn’t art, you know…. Even though the ~director~ isn’t the art: the ~acting talent~ is the art, right….

…. lol: in her head the girl is angling for a place in “Vigilantes II: Laughs, Lies, Explosions—Sex!” LOL 😂

…. “Worst-dressed lists”

Best-dressed lists I can get; worst-dressed lists is like hormonal 14-year-old gossip-rage crap—you know? It really is…. And they do it, to feel SMART. 🙄

…. “Get your hopes up all you want—life is more fun that way.”

Granted that the ‘leave the party while you’re still having fun’ is a note of prudence/discernment/moderation; but still, if you read say Epictetus—not a stupid man, of course—but the whole song and dance about never experiencing desire and never being in want, always maintaining absolute freedom, withdrawal, and cool, choosing only what is available for sure, right…. It can just become very, unrealistic, at a certain point, right. Even with Buddhism—though there has been a hard-line Buddhism in history: much of it, rather ugly; but there are many notes of ambivalence to and counter-point to, the hard-line position in Buddhism…. Because how could it ever embrace more than one small stream of society, in any other way, right?

…. ~they knew the secret places inside each other, etc.

~It sure sounds like it beats a soft-core institutional setting, where, every once in a while, having breakfast and showering isn’t as important as placating the chatty bureaucrats who are about to inspect the house for cleanliness, any minute now…. And I actually have to go to the doctor, later: I don’t think that un-showered is bureaucrat-core, ie doctor-y, right…. Did you know that many doctors know things about the body? They specialize, but they know SO much, about the subsystems and circuitry that they take as their own special study, right…. (chuckles)

(smiles) I love white people. God bless whitey, I say; may the Moon (XVIII) never set on his empire….

…. It’s funny: you start to take an interest in practical affairs—and that results in you being fully 100% as invisible as you were before, right: like….

—Oh, that’s fascinating. Wet wipes never break down? Maybe they’re a plastic product. Plastics are ultimately a petroleum product, I’m pretty sure: it’s oil…. And they end up in the ocean; that’s a great point….
—Jones, have you had the ghost problem for a long time? Who do we call to get rid of a ghost? A plumber maybe; no no…. That’s good, though: plumbers are expensive….
—We don’t know that it’s a ghost…. We just know that we hear a voice! We could be losing it, too! We’ll become like one of them! 😱

But it’s funny: only the head bureaucrat really exists for them, even, they don’t even divide attention up equally, among themselves, right….

But yeah: they’re not actresses, or attractive/romantic types. Therefore, they’re good people. 👌

God, and I have to see a medical type later. “Can I give you any more drugs? You’re healthy, hmm? Then who compensates me for this again…. OMG, you want to read about NUTRITION? (sighs, rolls eyes) Listen: EYE know about nutrition: I’m important…. Please don’t fret your layman little head about your damn nutrition books….”

…. And yeah: I can’t figure out if that bureaucrat-to-bureaucrat meant, “we want them to have less storage space”, or, “we’ll buy them more furniture”, right…. It’s funny: before I WAS just thinking of buying that like, “Make your bed”, book, I saw once—it retrospect it does sound like, at least in part, military house-craft, you know: it’s funny, because in some senses, military men are NOT as ‘masculine’ in a certain way, in that parasitical way, right, as married men: because there are virtually no women, and no real distinct feminine role, so males have to absorb all the serf-shit themselves, that married men would shunt onto females, right: but I swear to God, “the battle is not to the strong”, right—Christians have been tunnel-visioning that part of life out of their minds and permissible observation for centuries, right, even if it’s in their Bible…. But god, imagine having a Christian talk, right, entitled “Time & Chance”, you know: it would be “heresy” before the first words were out of your lips…. But yeah: it’s like, life has lessons, and it’s an arena you fight in; but it’s shocking, sometimes, how little effect or play you get from people, in exchange for…. Doing the only things that are in your power, right…. It’s funny, they didn’t say I had done anything wrong: but this is why I try not to be here when they inspect, although they came too early and I didn’t know it would be that early…. Although they were in the house almost two hours before finally doing the thirty second walkthrough, right…. But I mean, I don’t know how military-puritanical they’re actually going to get in their house-craft demands, right: but somehow when they do inspections, they make it sound like…. Like I should have a bed-spread, a Bible, a rifle, and a Marine Corps book of regulations, and that’s it, right…. And just enough uniforms to last you until your allotted laundry day. It’s like…. Is stripping myself down to a bed spread, a Bible, and a rifle, and getting rid of my books and clothes and things—I mean, I don’t know what they expect, right; it’s a small room for two people, and then the one says, Hurry, everything in the closet!, and then the others poke their nose in the closet for five seconds anyway, right…. And it’s like…. I don’t expect group meditations, and I have come to see the value of house-craft, but it’s like, is this anything but an unnecessary strain upon my stress levels like three hours before I get my blood pressure taken, right? Swear to fuck. You know?…. Like, everything is punishments, or at least threats, and there’s nothing and no way to actually improve under guidance or to meet people’s demands, because they don’t know, what the game is or what they want. They just want to punish, and threaten, so that they don’t seem like women, who will die in the werewolf apocalypse, right: which is what the rest of society wants, you know—the men and children, you know?…. But it’s like, What do they want? I don’t want to feed them to werewolves, right? Can they tell me what they want? I cleaned up as routine the day before I was told about the surprise inspection, and it’s like…. Thank you? Thank you for forgiving you for treating me like a sack of hay?…. It’s funny, people assume that astrology doesn’t matter: it just makes them the slaves of the stars, right—the once-born ALWAYS act out like a pack of wolves whenever anything really bad is going on astrologically….

But at least they’re not pretty, or romantic, or actresses, or lenient, merciful loving people, who remind anyone of women, right. People have been shot, or raped, I guess, for less, no doubt…. God, and if we had to shoot EVERYONE to enforce obedience, the system wouldn’t bloody work, would it, now?

…. And it’s like…. Man, fuck this shit…. Oh: I remember…. I mean, sometimes people’s house-craft is just the dirty rag they throw over the disease that is their normality, right…. It’s like: you should take that sucker away and wash it, and then learn to peek inside your mind, and fucking, breathe, right….

And yeah: plenty of Angelenos or whoever, Californians, would be every bit as much avoidant-neurotic/in denial, right, as anybody else…. But I can buy that actress, who at least can bloody well identify when she’s having an emotional reaction, you know…. Whereas most women would just see her glossy photo in a magazine, and chortle, She’s just a woman! I have a collection of dirty dish rags, that elevates me far above mere womanhood, you know…. I can threaten people, after all; I have worth, you know! (chortle)….

Right? From brief scanning of some of these celebrity magazines—which I don’t do, anymore, but—apparently some women troll these actresses: or, one at a time, of course…. and get pickup on that play, and their complaint is basically that being a naive fan girl for cheap movies doesn’t, by itself, make life meaningful—so here come my cat claws, right?….

It’s like, swear to fuck…. Are you for real?

Sometimes that’s the only question worth asking, right. Is this meant to be read straight, or as ironic grandstanding storytelling thing, right? It would almost be a micro-aggression either way: at least the way some people act, you know. Their social role is BS and they know it, but they’re not conscious or able enough to pull off social acting, so they just…. Threaten, and then laugh, and then go into computer mode….

And I’m not even talking about a doctor, right. I’m talking about literal F-ing House-craft Management Services folks, right…. People are just so afraid of the elite: not copying their vices would be the ultimate disloyalty, right….

Modern life is mostly just, constant, unconscious, unprocessed fear, right….

And pictures on websites of actresses smiling through their fear: you know?

…. But yeah: the doctor thing was actually pretty nice. At least compared to what I was expecting, but even objectively, if there is such a thing, I would say it was a modestly positive experience, because now that I can look at health both as something that matters and from a strengths-based thing: like I’m going to take action to feel more like how I’d like to feel more of the time, not that I’ve had doctors scold me recently, but as a growth thing, right….

Occasionally things actually do work out, the way that you intended and, I don’t know that this is the right word, even if I’m not a Christian and don’t get all…. Biblical on people, but who knows in the end, and yet: sometimes things do work out in the positive way that you ‘worked for’ and ‘deserve’, right.

…. But yeah: this is an excellent contemporary popular romance novel: it has mental health and therapy, (literal, formal talk therapy is the easiest to convey in novel format, but it’s by no means a waste; it’s good; and no matter how formal or informal your practice, it’s good to involve other people, right), business and family, (the things communicated between journalist and interviewer but not communicated to the audience; non-sexual ties between men and women; close-non-economic ties between members of society through family, but without the, “that one isn’t allowed in”, sort of, family-ism, right…. And for the record, “sexism” wasn’t a word until 1973, and many people ~still~ don’t fully recognize it, deep down…. But we understand everything, we always have), and yes, romance (including disappointment and how to be a guy who gets his heart broken), right.

…. “But what if the old Anna is gone? There’s a whole new Anna in her place.”

I mean this as a chronological comment, and not anything else—I don’t have a shit list for countries, even if there are countries I wouldn’t visit, right; I also try not to pick ‘best’ countries in this fan-boy vs the pejoratives sense…. But yeah, to come to it: time naturally passes, and the new Anna’s name is NOT, Karenina, you know?

…. The anger mixed with the love, you know. The things that Frank Capra would squirrel away with the saints and corpses, right: even if they were white. (Which they aren’t.)

Just being unguarded, with someone else. Of saying what you really feel, because that’s all you can do. Of being unable to lie anymore…. No matter how much of a ‘sinner’ that makes you, to be unable to lie, right.

…. Wow, she wrote a romance novel during the COVID year. I was a sort of lay monastic during that time in my life; I wonder what it was like for the young people—the pre-Saturn-return people, and the romantics, right….

Yeah….

…. COVID Dreaming, no….… (more)

I'm not sure how I feel about this story, it's very short and on Prime reading for free, so if you have that, it's worth a few minutes of time. Apparently there are 5 short stories in a series, I may check out the others to see if the story develops in a satisfying way.
The narrator talks about our main character with a lot of derision, and like the subtitle suggests, southern insults, I guess?--a lot of name-dropping, and seems self-absorbed, and sorry for this poor, misguided person, who is supposedly her dear friend.
The way it ends, some things slot into place, but I'm still not sure if that makes it "good" so we shall see, if I continue.… (more)