Monday Memos // 102

Listening:

“Dead Flowers” by Townes Van Zandt.

"Random Rules" by Silver Jews.

“No One's Easy to Love” by Sharon Van Etten.

Reading:

This was wild and crazy: A 4-Year-Old Trapped in a Teenager’s Body

This was true: 20 Things John Mayer Looks Like in This Photo

This was silly: Quiz: Who Wrote It: Edgar Allan Poe or an Emo Band?

This was funny and informative: Trader Joe’s Gets into Jackfruit in 2019: The Journey Begins

Craving:

Highlights: cumin-roasted carrots, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, a fresh Goldberg’s pumpernickel bagel with buttery spread and jam, tuna salad with Branston pickle, extra crunchy dill pickles, and homemade sesame chicken with broccoli.

A perfect New York bagel via Baltimore. (image via Goldberg’s)

Wearing:

It’s been cooooold, so lots of wool socks, turtlenecks, scarves, and beanies. I also wore my new red jumpsuit twice this week. I had a relaxing family weekend where I primarily wore sweatpants and sweatshirts. I looked in the mirror one day and thought I could be mistaken for dude in a 90s grunge band—lots of long disheveled hair and bagginess.

Watching:

TV: I watched the entirety of Sex Education on Netflix in roughly two sittings. I’m having withdrawals. It reminded me of The End of the F*cking World. Endearing characters, English accents, hilarity, really good music.

Gillian Anderson makes for a good wacky mom.

Movies: I rewatched The Big Lebowski over the weekend. It had been years since I had seen it—brilliant as always. I forgot how good the soundtrack is too. When I Googled the movie, this shopping link for the Dude’s sweater (from Dillard’s) came up: Pendleton sweater.

Treasuring:

Unwinding and nostalgia: A weekend in the suburbs means becoming so calm I have no worries or needs. Family laughs and baking cookies and dancing to bad music (We all have “Closing Time” stuck in our heads now, unfortunately). I made a visit to my storage unit for a stack of old journals from 2005-2008. Often painfully angsty and full of pointless minutiae, it’s been eye-opening and very humorous to revisit. So much and so little has changed.

I read a lot about this period of life—my sweet sixteen with Blake and a tandem bike.

Monday Memos // 67

Listening:

Similar to last week, I was eating another beautiful breakfast alone and the music playing was getting me deep in my heart. My brain then unlocked a playlist from another life and these jams just kept coming to me.

"New Partner" by Palace Music.

"Wish You Were Here" by Sparklehorse and Radiohead.

Reading:

My Grandmother’s Very Specific Meat-Related Rule for Finding Love 

The 25 best icebreaker questions for team-building at work - #20: How do you like your eggs? Recently I went out for breakfast and when the server asked me how I wanted my eggs, I responded with "over medium." She then said, "is that over easy?" Me: "Uh, no." And then she walked off. It boggled my mind for days. 

Angelica Hicks's NYC Apartment Is as Cheeky and Chic as Her Art - These murals are so good.

Always into cake. (illustration by Grace Lee via bonappetit)

Craving:

I have a strong urge to walk into every "healthy market" I come upon. There is something comforting about a store with rows of bulk bins (dried fruits, raw nuts, nutritional yeast, carob covered things) and oaten treats and maybe even a corner with a wheatgrass juicing machine. Yesterday, in such a store, I stumbled upon these healthy sweet treats called Cookie Brittle. It's just the right amount of salty and sweet and textured (almonds, chocolate, cocoa, oat flour, etc). The Brooklyn-based company, "Baked By Bibis," makes all sort of breads, crisps, and loaves. I've got my eyes peeled for more BBB delights.

"A healthy treat." If you say so... (image via sephardic.org)

Wearing:

I cannot wait to recover more of my clothes as I begin to live again beyond my suitcase. I have a simple formula lately: black puffer coat (looks similar to a thin sleeping bag), sweater (solid colored turtleneck), pants (jeans or patterned black slacks), wool socks, boots (black Frye hikers), sometimes a hat or a scarf or a handkerchief. At least I'm warm. 

I went on a hunt for cheap sweatpants this weekend. I had the specific goal of finding a pair to wear for my wintery walk to the gym. As I was browsing the discount activewear section and all the not-totally-ugly sweatpants were too far in the double digits price range, I had my aha moment. The old standby: look in the kids section! I found decent pair, youth large, for $8. Perfect. When I paid, the cashier said, "I hope he enjoys them." Ha! My son, aka myself, will.

I didn't see enough wildness during Fashion Week. (image by Aisha Franz via nytimes)

Watching:

I can finally reenter the world as I fully, obsessively (now mournfully) finished my Australian show. Just a day later I miss my characters. 

I'm interested in seeing HBO's latest series, "Here and Now." Holly Hunter and Tim Robbins with creator Alan Ball. Seems promising, but I've glimpsed mixed reviews. I'm also curious about Netflix's new show, "Everything Sucks." "A coming-of-age story, set in the 1990s, that revolves around the A/V and drama clubs at a Boring, Ore., high school; the two crews of outsiders join forces to make a movie and endure the purgatory that is high school." Sounds like a mashup of a variety of popular tropes. 

Treasuring:

No Conclusions / Many Happy Endings. Cup of Jo is the land of wonderful stories and amazing comments. This comment was highlighted the other day and I found it to be more than I could articulate... Says Kate on an accidental wedding dress: “I was married in a rose-colored dress, am now divorced but count my ex-husband among my closest family members, and am in a monogamous (unmarried) long-term relationship and full-time parent to my partner’s two step-kids. On the day I got married in that beautiful rose dress, I never, ever would have predicted that a decade later I would find myself here, living a completely different life. And so I offer you this: There will be many milestones but no conclusions. The feeling of being settled is a transient one — regardless of whether we remain married to one person ’til death do us part or spend our lives single, stability comes and goes, and any belief to the contrary is an illusion. There is at once no answer and always an answer: It exists right here, in this essay, inside yourself, in the people you love and places you go and the work you do. You are the answer, the one constant in the cornucopia of happily-ever-afters that will most likely exist within the span of your lifetime. So, let’s let go of the idea that there is one happy ending and celebrate the many happy endings, the shapes of each other’s lives and the many shapes of our own. And let’s do it in whatever damn dress (or jeans or pajamas) makes us feel most like ourselves.”

(image by Gabrielle Assaf)

Monday Memos // 43

Listening:

"This Strange Effect" by The Kinks

"Shark Smile" by Big Thief

"No Matter Where We Go" by Whitney

Reading:

Always Modern Love: How to Stop Breaking Up

Nayyirah Waheed's poems: "Perhaps the most famous poet on Instagram"

Craving:

I'll call it "food to fuel."

I've been so busy this last week. I'll be working, moving, grooving, sweating and suddenly I NEED TO EAT SOMETHING and it will be any number of things. Iced coffee, cold grapes, pizza, fresh fish, toast with jam, a Rice Krispies treat...

I wonder how many gallons of ice cream I've consumed in my life?

I'm not usually partial to pepperoni, but this is picturesque.

Wearing:

Jean shorts, gym shorts, short skirts, dresses that could be T-shirts. 

This. (image via pinterest)

Watching:

"The Incredible Jessica James." A most recent Netflix original movie starring one of the dope queens, Jessica Williams. It was one of the movies I needed in a trying moment and it made me feel significantly better. 

"The Incredible Jessica James is a little odd duck of a film, an old-fashioned romantic comedy that’s decidedly modern in its frame of reference, a character-driven piece that never lets us too deep into its protagonist, a movie as pleasant as it is fleeting."—Vulture

Wanting:

I want to be on my favorite island. The pang of nostalgia hits me hard in the height of the summer.

I want to smell the salt in the air and the slight stink of skunk. I want to taste my grandma's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and a scoop of ice cream from Ben and Bill's. I want to feel the soft grass between my toes and the warm spot at the tip of the jetty. I want to hear the honk of the ferry and the old song lingering from the carousel. I want to see those greying shingles and the setting sun turn everything that spectacular shade of green.

This spot, this view is burned into my brain.

I could plop right down in it.

Nearly a decade ago—can you spot the ghost photographer?