I don’t know about you, but I am sick of the pumpkin and I don’t wan’t to give it anymore air time. Not to debate whether I have hit a “[porcupine] wall” or to lament how hard it is feeling with a caveat about my privileges. We are all living through a global panettone and the way it gets done is the way it gets done, no matter how messily (as long as it’s safe, yada yada). To this end, I have no interest in ever reading any long reads or novels about the panini. I will not watch a single movie or show about the parmesan once we are all vaccinated and sprayed by the overly sweaty guest on the wedding dance floor. (There’s always one.) What I’m saying is: I plan to fully repress the pelican in perpetuity. Post-pepperoni, I will be on an extended DIY Bacchanalia. See you there?
Somehow, the penne pasta has even ruined walking, one of my favorite activities. Weeks ago, I had wanted to write a long essay about walking, specifically how I’ve gotten into timing my daily walk around what I call Hopper Hour (after the moody paintings of Edward Hopper). Hopper Hour is that stretch just after dusk when the sky verges on purple-blue and all the lights inside homes are golden. I’d wanted to explore it as a lived metaphor for the loneliness of single life during the prosciutto. But enough! Enough navel gazing! Is anyone with me? I want to be brought out of myself. Anyone with me? Did I say that already?
As far as total isolation goes, the first two months of the year were actually pretty easy. I’d set a deadline to finish the first draft of my novel for the end of February, and so even when I hadn’t touched another human being in *literally* months, at least there was the constancy of adding words to draft. When I figured out the ending, something shifted—even though the writing was difficult, I was on the down slope. Then, the day before my deadline, I realized I’d written the end. The draft was at a natural stopping point. I’d done it! A draft of a novel! But soon the celebration started to feel more like an emptiness. Normally after a big lift like this, I’d go on a trip or prioritize socializing, but neither were possible. Instead, I felt adrift and depleted. This could be in part because of the “arrival fallacy”—psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar’s explanation for the illusion that completing a goal will make one achieve happiness. But honestly, I’m not sure I ever believed finishing this first draft would mean anything other than years of revisions and hard work ahead. The only explanation I have is that the liminal time between achieving goals would normally be filled with connection and exploration—a sort of rest through pleasure. Maybe you’ve felt this, too. Without the physical celebrations or even mourning losses or failures, what does that leave?
Until the piccadilly is over, connection now is mostly word-based, but I’ve found that recuperating, grieving, or celebrating often resists verbal synthesis. I want to just be, but I’m depleted and tired and so I end up binge-watching whatever cozy content I can find.
If my life were a movie, then this time in the pecan pie feels like I’m in what would normally be hidden with a time jump to keep the plot going. Or maybe it’s would be a montage of activities—my couch and me gradually becoming one, Peleton, selfies of me Abe-Lincolning (that’s when you pull your mask below your chin on a walk). Or it could be the opposite of a before-and-after movie. Before: fresh haircut! Newly done eyebrows! Big hoop earrings! After: Sasquatch.
I will keep dreaming of the bacchanalia, my friends, and of seeing you post-eyebrow wax—and if I’m feeling extra flush—some botox, too.*
Here are my recommendations this week:
I’m more grateful than ever for people publishing new articles and books, and for the steamy mug of chamomile that is All Creatures Great and Small.
I May Destroy You (HBO Max)
Usually I’m loathe to recommend things everybody knows about, but I finally watched the revelation that is I May Destroy You. I found the first two episodes genuinely triggering (I do not use that word lightly) and had to wait three months before returning to the show, but pushing through was well worth it. As with much great art, it is confronting to watch a show centered on sexual assault and its ramifications, but ultimately, Michaela Coel’s show is rigorously empathetic and ultimately, for me, a healing experience.
The Empty Religions of Instagram by Leigh Stein (NYTimes, March 6, 2021)
I liked Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, but I completely agree with Leigh Stein that influencers are not capable of following through on the promises their brands make, nor the ensuing emotional response their followers have come to expect.
There is a chasm between the vast scope of our needs and what influencers can provide. We’re looking for guidance in the wrong places. Instead of helping us to engage with our most important questions, our screens might be distracting us from them. Maybe we actually need to go to something like church?
Contrary to what you might have seen on Instagram, our purpose is not to optimize our one wild and precious life. It’s time to search for meaning beyond the electric church that keeps us addicted to our phones and alienated from our closest kin.
Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses
This might be the most useful craft book I’ve ever read. It’s an absolutely essential read for anyone who writes professionally or who wants to. Salesses challenges the dominant workshop model, which centers straight cis white writers and reinforces the marginalization of writers who don’t fit into that group. He ends the book with a treasure trove of writing prompts, revision exercises, and notes on style. I cannot recommend this enough.
LMH in Your Inbox Mixtape, Vol. 1
A playlist of the things I’ve been listening to the past few months. Feel free to listen on shuffle—I have not painstakingly ordered them à la 2003.
Oat Groats Breakfast Bowl
I got into oat groats while living in Germany. They’re the whole form of an oat, which means they have the bran, germ, and endosperm all intact. The closest thing texture wise is probably barley. I bought mine from Kandarian Farms, which ships nationally if you can’t find them your local store.
Boil the groats like pasta. I do a big batch and then eat them cold with almond milk, toasted pecans, and blueberries.
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*P.S. Before pushing publish on this newsletter, I asked a very dear friend what she thought about botox, and I was surprised to find she is totally against it morally. Clearly, I asked because I thought it might elicit a strong reaction, and it clarified my own. I feel pretty strongly that botox can be a form of self-care and that it shouldn’t have such a moral stain on it. Obviously any plastic surgery or enhancements (or whatever the terms are) do not exist in a vacuum, and the desire to look “flawless” and youthful is part of heteropatriarchal capitalism. But I don’t exist outside of that and sometimes I just don’t want a set of permanent parentheses between my eyebrows. Anyway, that’s not what I’m going to get into today, though I think exploring it in a longer form would be worthwhile eventually, but I wanted to add this note for context.