In the Time of Corona Diary

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The first day of spring passed with almost no mention and the rains have come into the valley. I carry my polka dot book bag around the pre-war house I live in, and the all the cantina windows in the Tower District have turned opaque, exed of tequila shots and warm cigarette smoke.

In my bag there are pens and lipstick and candy and gum and books.

 Books I read this week:

 Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

There is a love poem with a unicorn, new and glowing with earth.

The Book of Ruin by Rigoberto González

I was taken with all the myths and legends that were created in the poems. There was something very matriarchal about the book. It made me think of the Popul  Vuh when it talks of beings made of mud and how eventually the god essence grows into maiz.

Film watching

The night before last, I watched a film called Lady Macbeth, starring Florence Pugh of Midsommar and Little Women fame. The point-of-view character is a young woman named Katherine, who has been locked into a loveless marriage with a rich and older man. She must bide her time on their family estate in rural England. She begins a love affair with a man of much lower social rank and plots to extricate herself from the life that she hates. I found the film compelling and unnerving to watch. The color scheme was odd, a lot of dark blues, pale blues, and earthy browns, save for a scene where the Katherine character sits in a field of green and converses with a tiny boy.

I do watch these films with a level of disconnect because I can’t relate to the whiteness of the feminism. I’d like to read more books and watch more films about mental health through the lens of brown women made by brown women. I’d like to learn more of what makes our melancholy.