I’ve started reading the newspaper

I’ve started reading the newspaper because no one goes to the theater anymore. 

“Why don’t people go to the theater anymore?” 

“Well it costs too much, of course.”

“And who has the attention span for that anyways? I almost had a panic attack at the ballet when I realized I wouldn't be able to look at my phone if I got bored.” 

“Yes, but I think the real problem is that theater is by definition earnest. If you’ve lived your whole life smearing a thick layer of irony on every piece of media you consume, how can you stomach watching someone try really hard at something?” 

“Yeah, the ‘it’s not that serious’ of it all.”

“And the thing is it really isn’t that serious. In theater, the most interesting choice is always the one that has the highest stakes. But when was the last time you had to make a truly difficult decision?”

“Nothing matters much in a world that is this hard to die in, I suppose. We don’t have to forgive our friends when they annoy us because water and medical care is readily available whether or not you have a social life. We don’t have to commit to a relationship that lasts because UberEats will still deliver to you even if you’re unwed.”

I’ve started reading the newspaper because fascism is funny.

I’ve been trying to articulate why I’ve started reading the newspaper. After all, they’re expensive ($4 on weekdays and $6 on weekends if you can believe it). They’re hard to find (I recently went to 4 bodegas and 1 bookstore searching for one and this was on a Sunday mind you). And every day you’re left with essentially a novel sitting on your kitchen counter that’s gone past its expiration date and now you have to find some use for it. As an aside, cat’s love to play with old newspapers as long as you leave them strewn all over your apartment with some vague idea that you’re going to reference them again in the future. 

I think I’ve begun reading the newspaper because I am afraid I have become desensitized to bad news. I have this creeping feeling that we are all hee-hee-ha-ha-ing ourselves into a very dark, very scary world. A fact that is all the scarier because it seems to be avoidable. And yet why would you lift a finger to try really hard for a better world if it costs you nothing to just scroll past?

What do you remember about January 6, 2021? I remember laughing. How ridiculous they all seemed scaling that wall and filming themselves committing felonies! Somebody died. I knew that and yet it all seemed like some big joke. 

I was once talking to an ex-boyfriend about morality. He didn’t understand how a person could have a ethical code without a God. I argued that all morality is based on the assumption that life is valuable and all life must have value even just for the fact that it takes more effort to create than it does to destroy it. This line of thought always brings me to a memory of looking at a spider web on a bush in the springtime. I had smoked weed for the first time in years and gone for a walk and found myself standing and staring at this tiny spider sitting serenely in the middle of her dew-glittered web. I don’t know why it had never occurred to me before that the beauty of her web was as good a reason as any not to kill her. 

I read the newspaper and had a conversation with a stranger while sober.

I was sitting in a coffee shop looking out at a snowy Prospect Park. I had just bought a newspaper for the first time. There is no blasé way to read a newspaper, it turns out. They’re noisy and unwieldy and take up an unbelievable amount of space. I felt self-conscious. I wondered if everyone at the cafe was rolling their eyes at the performative girl reading a newspaper. 

It was really very interesting, however, and I forgot myself while reading it. Sometimes it was even funny. Eric Adams sent a reporter a text message denouncing Zohran Mamdani and misspelled “Israel.” You can’t fake that kind of comedic timing. 

There was an old man sitting at the table next to me. I had noticed him because I vowed to get serious about improving my posture when I first saw him hobble into the coffee shop. He struck up a conversation with me. By that I mean he mostly talked at me about his life, his many friends, what he used to do for a living and I listened with genuine interest and a genuine low level anxiety that I needed to pay attention because I was clearly experiencing “the real world” for once and needed to be present in it. 

He has a wife who speaks Russian but he never got the hang of it. He speaks French and has been reading French books to keep his mind sharp. He didn’t want to get started on what a crazy day he had yesterday but he has cancer and NYU changed his insurance and didn’t tell him so he had to wait hours for his chemo treatment. 

I wondered if he was younger I would find his constant flow of talk annoying. Would I find it chauvinistic, even? What is it about being very young and very old that seems to make gender irrelevant?

Eventually he went home and said goodbye and didn’t ask my name or tell me his and I looked for the crossword while trying to remember the last time I talked to a stranger without a beer in my hand.

I think I’ve begun reading the newspaper because I spend too much time talking only to people who say exactly what I expect. I wanted to see if journalists are really as skewed and untrustworthy as people all over the political spectrum say. I haven’t come to any meaningful conclusions there. But I have noticed that the only alternative offered is consuming opinion-based political social media content that is most closely in line with whatever it is you already believe. And is that not just an echo chamber?