A DIARY IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER & PURE COLOR BY SHEILA HETI
Sheila Heti is someone I feel I should have had an awareness of much earlier. But in January when I came across the opening lines of her New York Times newsletter A Diary In Alphabetical Order on Estelle Tang’s Instagram story, I felt like the universe was handing me something at the exact moment I needed it.
For A Diary In Alphabetical Order, Heti took a decade’s worth of journals, imported them into Excel, and alphabetized the sentences. She edited them down over the years and the New York Times released the text in 10 parts. “My intention in alphabetizing it was to learn my repetitions,” Heti said of her diaries during an interview with Ross Simonini for the ArtReview podcast Subject, Object, Verb. “I just wanted to know if I’d grown or if I’d stayed the same.” The result is a collage of all the thoughts and feelings that make up a life that rests somewhere between poetry, memoir, and yes, autofiction.
I came across the piece two days after I was dumped by a boy. Part of me thought he would change his mind and we could at least see where it might go. Then I read the opening: Actually, he doesn’t love you. Actually, he doesn’t want you. Actually, he is looking around the world for another girl, and because of who he is, he will find her and be with her. She was right and I was forced back to reality. That’s exactly how he felt, what he was doing, and what was going to happen.
I kept feverishly reading and the piece became less about boys specifically and more about everything we experience. “Am I wasting my time? Am I? Am low on money. Am making noodles. Am reading ‘Emma’ now. Am tired and will go to sleep soon. Am tired today and feel like I may be getting a cold.”
It was a cathartic and validating read and reminded me that life is full of cycles. There’s beauty in routine and repetition and it’s at once comforting and terrifying to know that the things that preoccupy my mind now are probably the same things that will preoccupy my mind in 10 years.
It also made me see some of the dramatic beauty in heartbreak. I felt like being sad about a boy could be fun because Heti’s writing turned it into a unifying experience that wasn’t about him, but just part of living in the same way that getting your haircut or worrying about work is.
When I was part-way through the series and waiting for the Times to release the rest of the letters, I bought Heti’s new novel, Pure Color. Another thing I devoured. The novel posits that we’re living in God’s first draft of the universe and are here to be critics so that the next version can be improved. The main character becomes a leaf for a few chapters and the image won’t leave me alone.
You’ll like this if you like The Worst Person In The World | leaves & nature | journaling in the morning
