Sometimes her apartment is dark, and he goes about his night—his ordinary, hermetic night—wondering where she might be.

That’s when she’s watching him.

She sits at her window, in the darkness, and he cannot see her.

She studies him, observes him, notes his stillness, his tranquility, the admirable way he sits cross-legged on his bed and, persistently, for hours, just reads. He is always alone in there. His apartment—a desolate little box of unadorned white walls and a cinder-block bookshelf and a futon condemned to the floor—is not a home that anticipates guests. Loneliness, it seems, holds him like a buttonhole.

~ Nathan Hill, Wellness, A Novel

a sure sign of a great book? I’m still thinking about it a month after I finished it

For anyone that was just like me fooled by the Turn show into thinking Ben had an innocent mind: "a colleague (of the fair sex) settled under me, (or rather over me), for she will dwell in the 2nd loft." in one of his letters to Nathan Hale from somewhere between 1773 and 1775. I have no idea what 'dwell in the 2nd loft' means, but we all know what he meant with 'a colleague of the fair sex settled over him'.

"Behind curtains, this, he thinks, is what lovers do—they are alchemists and architects; pioneers and fabulists; they make one thing another; they invent the world around them. So he says, “Yes, I believe you,” and she smiles. She stretches. She touches his face, and makes it splendid."

Wellness (Nathan Hill)

Certainty was a way to avoid living. You could choose to be certain, or you could choose to be alive.

- Nathan Hill, Wellness

Currently Reading: Wellness: A Novel by Nathan Hill

Started: 12-13-23

Finished: 12-16-23

Format: Kindle

Thoughts: Was it good? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Not really. Maybe it would have resonated with me if I was married, or let’s be truthful, wanted to be in a relationship with someone for more than a few weeks. Also, I think I missed the part where the love story was reimagined, because this read more like the love story is long over and Jack and Elizabeth are just now coming to this realization.

"Operas were written about great drama; what Elizabeth faced were a million dumb domestic dramas, every day. Even that word domestic was, she thought, a little sinister, how it literally meant 'of the home' but also implied 'boring.' She remembered this one woman, a classmate in a screenwriting course Elizabeth had taken in college, a nontraditional student in her forties who was coming back to earn a degree—while the rest of the stuents were turning in scripts heavy on murder and apocalypse, this woman was writing about couples and breakups and children. 'Little stores' was how the teacher described (and dismissed) them, 'domestic dramas,' comments that prompted the woman to turn in some kind of bad space thriller next time around.

And the thing is? Elizabeth had been one of the people sneering at and privately making fun of this woman's work. Elizabeth might have even shown the script to her friends at the co-op, and they might have all acted it out one night in this terrible, arrogant way. It made Elizabeth so ashamed now, thinking about it. Also it made her feel even more resolved not to share her own little domestic stories, not to submit them to the criticism of others. These were victories she would keep to herself."

—Nathan Hill, Wellness

Elizabeth suspected it had something to do with biology, natural selection, evolutionary pressures millions of years ago, as it had been recently shown by primatologists that great apes also experienced the exact same happiness curve, which suggested that this particular midlife sadness must have provided some kind of prehistoric advantage, must have helped our ancient primate ancestors survive. Perhaps, Elizabeth hypothesized, it was because the most vulnerable members of any troop were the young and the old, and so it was important for them to feel happy and content and satisfied—the more satisfied they felt, the fewer risks they would take, and thus more of them would survive. Whereas those in middle age needed to feel the opposite: a great inner unrest, a turmoil so unpleasant that it made going off into the dangerous world seem preferable in comparison. There needed to be someone, after all, who got shit done.

~ Nathan Hill, Wellness, A Novel.

currently reading (and loving!!!!)

#66: Bigfoot Down Under (2019, dir. by Nathan Hill)

At its heart, Wellness by Nathan Hill is a love story. In its breadth of theme, it is a 21st Century War and Peace.

Presenting a broad panorama of Russian society, Tolstoy explored themes of love and family happiness while taking broad swipes at life’s absurdity, our perceptions of reality and the mystery of the human experience. Questioning the outdated expectations of permanency in love and marriage, Hills expands the theme to include our perceptions of wellness in body, mind and spirit in the context of…

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EVIL Preys on the Goodness of the Weak. "Lady Terror" reviewed! (Sector 5 Films / DVD)

“Lady Terror” is on the Prowl.  Now on DVD!   Jake Large, a shrewd personal injury lawyer, finds himself in a loveless engagement that’s full of contempt, especially with his finance who makes up excuses to not be around or intimate with him.  When Jake foils a thief’s grab and dash of Candice’s purse, the lawyer and the exotic dancer quickly fall into a relationship that rekindles Jake’s…

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