Gorgeous, Not Ruined

I never used to shop for clothes (unless I had to), but at the thrift store I sometimes glance at the racks of clothes going out, and I've discovered I like stupid-and-cheerful T-shirts.
Like the toaster one. Oh, also the honey badger one. There's a hamster one somewhere on here too––oh, here––so, maybe I did know this already.

I pulled this "snapcat" one from the recycling bin the other day, and took it home to wash. It was covered in cat hair, and we have no way to wash clothes at work. 
(Nor do other thrift stores, but that doesn't stop people donating dirty clothes. Cat hair is bad, but not the worst. That would be body fluids.)
I feel like myself in this silly top. (I've layered it because it's a chilly morning. Weird, but good weather.)

I also almost never read book reviews, especially before a book comes out. But skimming the Guardian last night, I stumbled on this interview with poet Ocean Vuong, whose first novel On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous just came out. It caught me because I am always interested in things about the Vietnam War. Vuong is Vietnamese American: his grandmother was a Vietnamese rice farmer, and his grandfather was a US soldier.

Possibly his novel will be a bit poetic for me, but I want to read it, partly on the basis of this line he wrote:

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined.”

I'm not ruined, but I know what he means.
That probably explains the gorgeous, silly T-shirts, eh? I don't even like cats.

Maybe even more than that line, I like his take on dramatic suffering = not required to make art.

"The idea of Vuong’s childhood as a generator of great material for fiction is one that makes him laugh like a drain.
These days, if any of his upper-middle-class students grouse that they don’t have a good backstory, he mildly points out that Virginia Woolf got one of the best novels ever written out of someone basically crossing a lawn."