Switch the Flip
When I first started saving things for my next newsletter it was early October and still very warm. I biked to Lemon Hill with a blanket and a snack for the friend I was meeting. The ride was faster than I had anticipated so I spread out my blanket and waited for my friend to arrive. It’s strange to go back to that headspace—pre-election pre-my birthday pre-daylight savings pre-huge uptick in cases—but I lay back and tried to relax and looked at the sky. A monarch butterfly flew over me with the sun behind it and it was like a small mobile stained glass window. I wrote it down and sent it to myself in an email “I saw a monarch butterfly while looking at the sky and it was like a stained glass window.”
Now it’s dark when Jack is done working and it’s no longer warm enough to meet at a park! And the butterflies are gone and I still have about 30 lil green tomatoes from my tomato plant. They ripen so slowly they can only be snacked on (I’ve read all the tricks!).
I spent election week painting the recently emptied rooms in my home and listening to Anne of Green Gables on the Libby app. I was in a plant store when I heard people shouting and banging pots for Biden and then I drank guava mimosas on the floor of the recently painted room until I needed a nap.
I have been trying to remind myself that everyone is far from their best selves right now. I’m definitely not my best—this weekend I woke up in the middle of the night and my first thought was “you should’ve gotten better grades in college” which is unnecessary as hell, brain! A lot of my relationships have been strained in the past few months and it’s really painful to even express how that feels when isolation is also so fucking endless.
Quarantine has made me turn art that feels familiar, some of it’s good (Jack Gilbert!) some of it is ~okay~ (Yours, Mine and Ours is carried exclusively by Henry Fonda’s charisma). Some of the art still feels relevant with Biden’s win and my eye-rolling at high level Dems I’ve been listening to Going to A Town a lot.
Totally by Tony Hoagland I loved so much in high school I thought I might get a tattoo of an excerpt:
I know I do not understand the principles
of leaf removal; I pile them up
in glowing heaps of cadmium and orange,
but I identify so much more
with the entropic gusts of wind
that knock them all apart again.
Is it natural to be scattered?
Now, I definitely not get a word tattoo and I know that’s way too many lines. Plus I imagined it on my forearms?? Because I hated every other part of my body?? I’m so happy I’m not 16 anymore.
There’s no wrap up to this newsletter because I still feel lost and I want a hair cut and a $130 acupuncture session and frames for all my prints. I want to be inside a friends house drinking a cocktail while they make dinner. I want to hug to my parents I want to go to a grocery store and not think to myself “I’ll know in two weeks if this was a bad idea.” It sucks! But I guess there’s something to be said for the collective trauma and grief—at least you’re not alone.
POV: You went to college with me and almost every Saturday showed up drunk, high and/or depressed at the Root Cellar to listen to Told Slant and cry, hoping they’d play your favorite song. It was cold in the Catskills.
I really want to order these cozy pants in every color now that it’s time for cozy pants.
Do we even have “fun” anymore?
POV: You are a gen Xer and you haven’t been able to go to school in months. To talk to your friends you plan and edit TikToks. You have so much energy at the end of the day that you tense and untense your legs under the covers for thirty minutes staring at the ceiling before you can fall asleep.
I watched both documentaries on NXVIM and don’t particularly recommend them unless you are, like me, unemployed and have access to streaming sites but I did enjoy this article about it’s bastardized version of feminism.
Our brains aren’t good at risk assessment during a pandemic.
On being a bridge.
I loved the advice Kiese Laymon gave at the end of this interview: “There are enough ants and small people in the world trying to take out your legs, so don't ever take out your own legs.”
America is one squashed butterfly away from Fascism.
POV: Your first boyfriend broke up with you because you dyed your hair green and became “alternative.” You start cutting up your old clothes because you don’t want them to look pristine anymore listening to this song.
Everything you forgot about in 2020.
Articles:
Germany’s reckoning with the Holocaust and the call for reparations in America. Fashion started in Black communities. The White woman who just loves fall. Talia Levin catfished white supremacists! Homesickness. The story of WNBA players uniting against a Georgia Senator. Mandy Patinkin seems very sweet. Kiese Laymon’s letter to Lebron James. The true story behind some Philadelphia copaganda. Wesley Morris grew a mustache in quarantine. Yoga with Adriene. Leave fat kids alone. Mass incarceration, Kamala Harris and the families left behind. Pandemic room colors. I used to teach a writing workshop for teenagers who had just been released from detention—a few who had recently left Rikers. An essay about colorism and Alek Wek. AOC’s attractiveness drives us crazy. Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Why can you dine indoors but not go to a friend’s house? An Indigenous journalist on the struggles of trying to cover Native communities. Male bonding during COVID.
Food:
Silicone pastry brushes are A JOKE.
I made this cardamom cake with brown butter frosting for a friend’s birthday and added a layer of lemon curd. The cake itself is delicious but if I made it again I would probably replace the brown butter frosting with a swiss meringue buttercream.
Nobody told me fish tacos are so easy??
Election week I had a “videochat and cook” date with my oldest friend and we made this Mexican “lasagna” which we’ve made twice together before, the first time when we were teens. It requires a lot of steps so I don’t recommend it as a weeknight meal like we made it but it’s sooo tasty.
I loved this carrot soup.
Stay particular,
Margaret
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