{"id":270422,"date":"2024-12-24T11:37:39","date_gmt":"2024-12-24T16:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=270422"},"modified":"2024-12-23T11:38:01","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T16:38:01","slug":"dont-fall-to-your-knees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/12\/24\/dont-fall-to-your-knees\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t fall to your knees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve written about Heather Havrilesky&#8217;s great newsletter <em>Ask Molly<\/em> before, and here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/Don\u2019t fall to your knees. Rest and mourning sound good but don\u2019t believe the hype. Even your body wants to trick you into stopping. When you stop, you crumble, fall to pieces, decompose into the ground. Don\u2019t let that death drive win.  Get up and run instead. Put on some headphones and crank up the fucked up club music and hurtle into the day, leaves falling around you like a shower of blessings from the demon god himself, briefly anointing you with his lust for life, just for fun, just to see how it hits, the motherfucker.  Let him have his way with you. This is no time for purity. Let yourself be seduced by this shiny, merciless fall morning. If the birds sound like they\u2019re laughing at your despair, that\u2019s because they are. Fall in love with them as they mock you. Surrender to their contempt, surrender to all of the messy bitches in the heavens, who live for the drama and don\u2019t disguise it, gods and birds alike. Feet aching, face sweating, hips wobbling like an unsteady table, back bent and nearly broken, not a vision, not light on your feet, never sexy again, smelly and insignificant, huffing along the sidewalk with a dance floor vibrating in your ears: Never stop.  Stumble forward, into this wicked autumn hour, almost defeated, every awkward footfall a resolution, every inch of progress a clumsy victory. You are an ugly catastrophe, an old house collapsing, a fury of limbs and longing, rage and regrets, windowpanes and doorknobs, nails and splinters, whipped up into a tornado and carried into the future, ass over ankles, fridge over floorboards, daydreams over despair.  Feel yourself break into pieces but keep moving. Feel your heart collapse but keep going. Feel your breath quicken, deepen, lengthen, shorten, and keep trudging through the leaves, keep staggering hotly over the crust of the earth, keep feeling the insults of the catbird and the cardinal, the trunk and the limbs, the scornful blue sky and the sullen sun and the nasty moon hiding like a thief beneath the horizon, all chuckling in chorus over your bad form. And behind the haughty sky looms the dark vacuum of space, which doesn\u2019t care a bit and never will, not about you or anyone else, not about teacups or queens or wars or eggs perfectly cooked.\">another example of her writing<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Don\u2019t fall to your knees. Rest and mourning sound good but don\u2019t believe the hype. Even your body wants to trick you into stopping. When you stop, you crumble, fall to pieces, decompose into the ground. Don\u2019t let that death drive win. Get up and run instead. Put on some headphones and crank up the fucked up club music and hurtle into the day, leaves falling around you like a shower of blessings from the demon god himself, briefly anointing you with his lust for life, just for fun, just to see how it hits, the motherfucker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stumble forward, into this wicked autumn hour, almost defeated, every awkward footfall a resolution, every inch of progress a clumsy victory. You are an ugly catastrophe, an old house collapsing, a fury of limbs and longing, rage and regrets, windowpanes and doorknobs, nails and splinters, whipped up into a tornado and carried into the future, ass over ankles, fridge over floorboards, daydreams over despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Feel yourself break into pieces but keep moving. Feel your heart collapse but keep going. Feel your breath quicken, deepen, lengthen, shorten, and keep trudging through the leaves, keep staggering hotly over the crust of the earth, keep feeling the insults of the catbird and the cardinal, the trunk and the limbs, the scornful blue sky and the sullen sun and the nasty moon hiding like a thief beneath the horizon, all chuckling in chorus over your bad form. And behind the haughty sky looms the dark vacuum of space.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve written about Heather Havrilesky&#8217;s great newsletter Ask Molly before, and here&#8217;s another example of her writing: Don\u2019t fall to your knees. Rest and mourning sound good but don\u2019t believe the hype. Even your body wants to trick you into stopping. When you stop, you crumble, fall to pieces, decompose into the ground. Don\u2019t let &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/12\/24\/dont-fall-to-your-knees\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Don&#8217;t fall to your knees&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":true,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270423,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270422\/revisions\/270423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}