Flashing Palely in the Margins
Passing thoughts
In the absence of anything substantial to say, a few passing thoughts:
- When the rain falls, it means I don’t have to water the herbs in the herb garden in our backyard.
- Planning for a trip abroad is exciting and daunting at the same time: so much to plan and set in a schedule, while also trying to fit in time for exploration and spontaneity.
- There is only one week of school left; Zoya has finished her first year of junior kindergarten and will start her first summer of summer camps. Time flies by quickly.
- Speaking of time flying: L and I are celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary later this year and it has been ten years of such joy, I can’t wait for even more.
- Having an air conditioner is a wonderful gift and privilege, especially when the temperatures are in the high 30°s—something I was reminded of acutely when our air conditioner died earlier this week.
- Having a pool is a luxury: despite the cost of its operation and maintenance, being able to jump in off the diving board into the cooling water on a very hot day is among life’s greatest pleasures.
- Job hunting is hard and tiring and often dispiriting.
- Now that it’s grilling season, I’ve returned to a favorite bbq recipe, and discovered a new favorite as well.
- Asparagus season is coming to a close—we ate a lot of it—but I imagine we’ll be using this asparagus recipe well beyond the season.
- Father’s Day was delightful: brunch and a riverside walk in St Mary’s, and chili dogs and strawberry shortcakes (among my favorite things to eat in the world) with friends to end the day.
- We subscribed to a peony delivery service this year and every week we have been receiving bouquets of gorgeous flowers that brighten up the home and smell so fragrant. It’s a small but impactful delight.
- We’ve had a few perfect Saturday mornings: a stop at the bakery for a cortado and a morning bun, a wander through the market buying fresh produce and listening to live music, and some time playing with Zoya on the playground and in the splash pad before heading back home for lunch.
- The summer is here, and with it endless possibility for joy and wonder. I hope yours is filled with immense delight as well.
A poem
Everything is Waiting for You
David Whyte
After Derek Mahon
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
Some links
Everyone has been linking to this over the past month, but it’s worth sharing again: Dan Sinker on the “who cares” era:
In the Who Cares Era, the most radical thing you can do is care.
In a moment where machines churn out mediocrity, make something yourself. Make it imperfect. Make it rough. Just make it.
At a time where the government’s uncaring boot is pressing down on all of our necks, the best way to fight back is to care. Care loudly. Tell others. Get going.
Related to caring, this excellent post by Molly White:
I care because the moment we accept that truth and morality are meaningless is the moment we guarantee they’ll never matter again. I care because somebody fucking has to.
Jason Santa Maria expounds on how large language models have broken so many unspoken contracts of the web, and as someone who creates for the web (even if it is only a few blog posts here and there), I feel the sadness too:
As someone who has spent their entire career and most of their life participating and creating online, this sucks. It feels like someone just harvested lumber from a forest I helped grow, and now wants to sell me the furniture they made with it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of work lately (which makes sense when you’re job hunting) and the interplay between working to earn a living and working to define an identity. This post, Everyone I Know is Worried About Work, by Rosie Spinks, caught my attention:
When you accept that the future’s security may not come only in the form of a steady ascent up a pay scale, something shifts. You may not quit your job, but you reorient your time and professional priorities around independent people and relationships, not prestigious companies or brands. You may adjust your lifestyle, outgoings, consumption patterns, and sources of meaning so that they aren’t so reliable on a certain compensation package. You see the value of expanding your abilities and skills beyond merely looking employable online.
Mike Monteiro’s important reminder that the people we hire to “protect and serve” are the people we need protection from most:
If you increase a department’s funding by 6% and they buy books, it’s fair to assume they want to educate you. If you increase a department’s funding by 6% and they buy coats, it’s fair to assume they want to clothe you. If you increase a department’s funding by 6% and they buy groceries, it’s fair to assume they want to feed you. If you increase a department’s funding by 6% and they buy a tank, it’s fair to assume they want to murder you.
Literature clock: tell the time using passages from literature. As delightful as it sounds.
Speaking of delightful: this video series, I’m Happy You’re Here, is a wonderful way of approaching and understanding mental health. The first episode is about anxiety, with more to come. Well worth a watch.
Especially useful for anyone who writes a lot: a guide to punctuation and how to use it effectively.
We try to buy all our flowers from local purveyors that grow their own—Harris Flower Farm and The Flower Lady and Gent are among our favorites—but will often pick up a bouquet from a florist in the winter months that don’t have the same commitment to local sourcing. I’m going to be more conscious of where my flowers are coming from:
We’re used to buying fresh flowers, regardless of the time of year—from grocery stores, retail florists, and big-box stores, or online. And whether we’re grabbing a sweet bundle of pink tulips as a last-minute housewarming gift or spending thousands on bespoke florals for a wedding, most flowers are purchased with little thought to how they were grown, where they came from.
A bit niche, but an interesting article looking at how film shoots and tv filming has left Hollywood and left an industry trying to figure out what’s next.
Some really incisive thoughts on writing: how and why we do it, and what it all means. I don’t agree with it all, but this is worth thinking about:
All writing about despair is ultimately insincere. Putting fingers to keys or pen to paper is secretly an act of hope, however faint—hope that someone will read your words, hope that someone will understand. Someone who truly feels despair wouldn’t bother to tell anyone about it because they wouldn’t expect it to do anything. All text produced in despair, then, is ultimately subtext. It shouts “All is lost!” but it whispers “Please find me.”
Related: a call for writers to abandon literary prizes.
We have a substantial collection of cookbooks, and L has a great collection of recipe cards written in her handwriting and collected over the years. I loved this piece about culinary materials and what they say about who we are and what we cherish:
Culinary materials sit at the boundary of public and private spheres in a way many other subjects don’t: Cookbooks document the activities of our private worlds in a public way; recipe cards adapt those public trends and return them to intimate, private contexts. And marginalia in books gives us a bit of both.
Maybe, now more than ever, we need to tell stories: a beautiful graphic narrative by Mia Rose Kohn.
Every street name in Vancouver, analyzed for what or who the street is named after. Says a lot about what and who we choose to honor and remember. (I’d love to help someone work on this for #ldnont.)
A beautiful rumination on what we learn about people by just carefully observing them: 21 observations from people watching.
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