So many books....

I have about four books going right now, and was happy that the library allowed me to renew all of them because otherwise I'll never finish. Red Comet: The Short Life and Amazing Art of Sylvia Plath--about 500 pages in...just over halfway since the main content of the book is just over 900 pages. I neither like nor dislike Plath, though I'm interested in reading her again. I've found that I often enjoy biographies of artists and writers when I'm not particularly connected to their work, if they're interesting enough or if the writing is compelling. This is both.

Also reading a book about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey which I'm struggling to put down, and which is part of the reason why I'm so behind on all the others.

Reading the new Louise Erdrich and that one is a little tougher going, but I'm glad at least it's about Natives in the 20th century. Not bad, I just don't have as strong a drive to read it.

I have a complicated relationship with my Native heritage. I look white and have white privilege. My Nativeness is a citizenship status and not an ethnicity. It's the biggest cliche there is, but I don't fit in either world. I used to somewhat disavow my Nativeness because it seemed like a more rebellious thing to do that. Indian stuff was like church, school, and family duties--something you were supposed to do and care about. Then I went through a period where I embraced it more, but it just seemed silly to me. So many people from my tribe in particular try to overcompensate for not "looking Indian" by driving around with a hundred dream catchers or attending every pow wow there is. The most ridiculous thing I ever saw was a bunch of my fellow "white Natives" trying to do a stomp dance in a conference center classroom. It reminded me of the hobbyist pow wows you have in Europe, where everyone is "playing Indian." I also got tired of all the political infighting on social media to where I unfollowed almost all of the different Native media figures and stopped participating. I vote in tribal elections and follow the news, but am not really interested in getting any more involved in that. I'm proud of where I came from, but I feel like parading around all the photos of ancestors and everything is like I'm trying to show some kind of status symbol. "See, I'm not really a lame white person....look at my great grandfather!" At the same time, I'm interested in learning the language, just to try to help preserve it even if it's doubtful I would ever use it organicially. But I've never really felt welcome among my fellow Natives--lots of gatekeeping and judging. So I continue to remain outside of it for the most part.

A disturbing what if....

What if we come out of the pandemic, things get back to normal, and it turns out that I hate living here? That I liked the way things were in 2020?

Doing some traveling over these next few months. One thing I keep noticing is that I am happy to get out of here for a while. Some of that may just be that I find my apartment and my neighborhood tiresome, and no longer get much from the other places I frequent. It's a conundrum.

I notice it's hard to read now. One of my friends has said reading is like the canary in the coalmine for them, that when they can't get into reading they know something is really wrong. I wonder if that's the same for me, or if it's just that I'm on my phone too damn much.