30 April 2020> Feliz cumpleaños Kevin. Textiloma está aquí:

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Amazon ain't stocking books cuz of COVID but u can get it thru Small Press Distribution (+ help them from going under) or get it directly from us (at a discount).

1 May> Made it to May. May Day. Happy B-day Mom.

2 May> Read Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill... like a lot of what weave red resently, a book we found in our or another liebury boox but probly 1 we never wd halve bot on our one recognizance. We don't know much about Offill except it seams we've scene her name around so must be popular + on the cover NYTBR says it was 1 of the top 10 books of the year (2014). For popular fiction tho we was souprized to find ourself reading the whole thing + thinking it wasn't offal. Not that we have any idea what it was about—something to do w/ falling in love, having a baby + then breaking up—but perhaps that's the hole point, not what it's about, but what you make of it. Not that Offill dazzles with her language, to the contrary the words are quiet languid + humdrum. Yet we kept reading, even tho we know there ain't nothing around the next coroner. She feeds u just enough tidbits to string u along, like this:

Or that: The invention of the ship is also the invention of the shipwreck, a line she stole (unattributed) from the late Paul Virilio. It don't matter that she plagiarizes, she collages such anecdotes for her one devices into the Dept. of Speculation. Like, why don't Buddhists vaccuum corners? Cuz they don't have attachments. It's pieced together in a fragmented aphoristic way reminiscent of David Markson. As the (far from reliable) narrator even says regarding her own memary, "tiny particles that swarm together and apart."

A few nights ago we were at a writer's workshop on a boat off the Amalfi Coast + we were reading a new Gari Lutz collection that she dedicated to "my student 'Mood' Maud Newton" + in the dream we had no idea who Mood or Maud Newton was nor did we when we woke up til we thawt about it for a sec + remembered she was 1 of the popular lit bloggers from a decade or 2 ago that your non-literary friends knew about, a sorta bored housewife type that seamed to aspire to write something of her one but never did, just gossipped about what was going on in the lit world, a sorta humorless Erma Bombeck + maybe we dreamt this cuz we're making "casalingo" anti-art art (note paint on thumbnail) or was reading Jenny Offill (who we had low expecations for but liked) who seams cut from such casalinga cloth + recently we was reading a book by Ottessa Moshfegh (who perhaps Lutz has or might dedicate a book to) that we had high hopes for but was disappointed. Whereas Moshfegh comes off as the too cool for shcool bad-grrrl, Offill ain't even aware of how unhip she is + doesn't care, sorta like a sequel to Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995).

Elsewhere in the above mentioned dream we were informed dat the Italian military occupied the most beautiful islands for themselves. We rode by 1 + looked for a loophole to get on it, by going thru a hole under a wave, backwards thru the curl + the waves incidentally were massive, like 100 feet tall + we were bodysurfing on 1 of them trying to get into the curl + down the hole but were picked up on top of the wave peak + about to crash down straight down onto the beach when we woke up.