Elizabeth Cantwell
@eccantwell
high school teacher, horror-lover, poet, Bright Wall/Dark Room editor, parent, person
back from a week with teenagers in the wilderness. there’s nothing like an alpine lake for a timeline cleanse
back to work this afternoon for real for real so yes I’m wearing multiple franchise comfort items and I’m not sorry
Will never get over the fact that @ifyoucantwell.bsky.social and I decided early in the pregnancy to name our third (impossible, post-vasectomy) kid Fox, and then that kid was born on David Duchovny’s birthday. Happy birthday to both of my babies.
really enjoyed this little vintage Japanese crime journey & I THINK it’s short enough that I can squeeze it onto my syllabus with all the other things I want to teach …
T-12 days until I go back to work, time to lock in on this new course
are aliens trying to communicate with me. is Nebraska not the real world
This post reminded me that I wrote a poem in part inspired by D.P.O.
Watching Ida Lupino’s THE HITCH-HIKER last night, I was struck by how we’ve always used racism as a way to indicate evil—“I don’t speak Mexican,” the murderous hitchhiker growls multiple times as they travel through Mexico. When did people lose sight of the evil embedded in that hatred and fear?
I have not watched the epic 0-0 soccer game because I was at the Academy Museum seeing the JAWS exhibit before it closes next week, 10/10 no notes
Only two of these were this week (I have been stupidly busy) … but this was a good run of movies
there are way too few TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA mentions in these replies and quote tweets
just trying to fall asleep while also breaking down in my head the way Leatherface’s skin mask and chaotic energy from Texas Chain Saw Massacre morphed presciently into the non-mask “mask”/absurd facade of the perfected male body and compulsively sanitized “aesthetic” order in American Psycho
went to an art exhibit & now I’m accidentally obsessed with Northwestern modernists and mysticists
(“my people” being other people who felt like there was no one else like them in the world until they watched something David Lynch made)
On a day that started with an unconscionable SCOTUS ruling, it has felt beautiful and moving and right to be here in Snoqualmie among the graffiti and landmarks of my people
finally saw ANATOMY OF A MURDER for the first time (I know, I know!) and boy, everyone in that movie is acting their ASSES off!! And remember when movie scripts trusted the viewer to handle ambiguity?
three-year-old came to lie down with me, made this shape, turned to me, and said “doesn’t this look like the Alien egg?” I am so proud
I often kick things off with a see/think/wonder about a painting related to what we’re working on. On a poetry day you KNOW I’m doing Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus leading into the William Carlos Williams poem!
Sometimes it takes a rewatch of a movie for me to fully grasp how much of a stone-cold masterpiece it is even if I already knew it was good
On Father’s Day, an @ifyoucantwell.bsky.social appreciation post for a dad who has mastered the family-of-5 grocery run, who will always put a kid on his shoulders even if that kid is too big to be on shoulders, who will wake up early to make lunches, who will clean everyone’s room. We love you!!
air at our house was literally toxic this morning so we had to escape to the beach. just the kind of thing a dystopia makes you think is fun before you’re like “oh yeah tomorrow I’ll be breathing that sweet chemical smoke again”
turns out @jordanharper.bsky.social’s latest book is a stellar beach read if you’re at an LA beach and feel like examining the six-packed, bikini-waxed people surrounding you, idly speculating about how many of them are super fucked up
we are doing a summer reading challenge (number of pages read per week) and this past week I beat my 12 year old by ONE PAGE and I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me
I really only needed a week off from teaching to refresh my intellectual energy enough to be excited about planning a new course
A month ago my 3 year old somehow made it so that our printer will only display Chinese and I have not been able to figure out how to change it back to English but I HAVE successfully been able to figure out how to work it in Chinese so we’re gonna call it a win