Happy Wednesday (It’s Tuesday)
Good Morrow Children of My Heart, Flowers of My Soul,
I write to you from a twin bed in my dad’s laundry room which may coincidently be the most peaceful place on Earth. I have been spending more time here recently because I’ve started learning the family business (my dad is a “plumber” and “not in the mafia”). The morning commute from my Oakland apartment is a polluted night-terror, so I sleep in his laundry room a few days a week to cut down on traffic time. It’s like a Harry Potter situation except with fewer stairs, and also my dad loves me.
I know it’s been a few weeks since I’ve written, but I come bearing news. I am officially the co-host of a podcast called I Have No Milk with my friend Lana, and most of my attention has been directed toward that. And also to my father’s left hip, which was replaced with something made of titanium last week. As the child with the most flexible (ie - vaguely unemployed) schedule, I happily looked after him for a few days. The day after his surgery, I took a shower for what couldn’t have been more than eleven minutes, and I found him shuffling up the hill to his tomato garden by the time I got out. Over the course of three days, each time I turned my back, he had escaped his enclosure or was attempting to do outlandish things like move living room furniture or drive a car.
My epiphanies whilst looking after my father were as follows:
Recuperating from surgery is physically much quicker when you are a fit person who has made a life habit of always moving about. (Go dad)
Experiencing illness or injury is mentally much easier when you are a sedentary person who loves to read and watch TV. (Go me)
There is actually no limit to the number of crossword puzzles that have been invented, and someone should give Will Shortz a Nobel Peace Prize for the number of minds he has been able to reel back from the edge of terminal ennui.
I really need to start writing these things more frequently, because each time I sit down to actually churn one out, I have far too much to say and recommend. This week, in addition to hip replacements, I want to talk about weddings and tabbouleh.
Lately, maybe like some of you, my Instagram feed has been full of graduations and weddings, and if my skin was a teensy bit flimsier, I’d feel like a total loser. Jokes on you! My skin is made of tissue paper, and I’ve spent hours spiraling about how I’ve not done a single actual thing of merit in my life. The trippy part is, I’m not even jealous of what I see most of the time? Or I literally already have it? For example — a friend I haven’t spoken to since college, but see regularly in Instagram stories, graduated from graduate school a few weeks ago. And as I looked at his fancy robes and his diploma and the bouquet of flowers his mother brought him, I felt the most intense cloud of inadequacy move directly over my head. It was many seconds before I realized that I too have a graduate degree? That I went to grad school four years ago, and my degree is framed in my apartment? (Granted, on my floor leaning on the wall outside my bathroom but nonetheless present and accounted for). I then became very curious about how I could feel that worthless when I actually accomplished this same difficult task. I wondered if it was the audience I craved? The attention? If a girl graduates but doesn’t take a picture, did she even graduate? I have come to a few answers to these questions. (I’m sure my therapist has more, but I don’t see her until 4:00 pm).
Ahem. One of the first reasons I think it’s so easy for me to feel less-than, despite having external markers of success I can point to, is that these external markers of success don’t actually improve my self-concept and thus, don’t really matter all that much when it comes to my self-esteem. I feel no more secure having been admitted to fancy schools or having obtained fancy degrees or having worked in fancy buildings than I did showing people to their table at La Pastaria Market in 2010 — in fact, I’ve finished most fancy things I’ve embarked on feeling desperately bored, frustrated, and more out of place than when I began because my values usually feel at constant odds with the systems around me.
Don’t get me wrong, I am proud of my hard work, and I am also cognizant of the unearned privileges that have allowed me to collect these weird indicators of having-my-life-together. But having it together in a society that values fundamentally different things than I do, is never going to make me feel connected to myself and those around me. This is one of my greatest learnings this year: in a society that continues to uphold white middle-class heterosexual nuclear families that prioritize work and profit over community care as the norm, there is always going to be a massive part of me that feels at odds with my environment. And because going around in constant conflict with my world will drive me insane, I must continue to supplement and build a life for myself that centers wonder, adventure, connection, and love. I spend time outside with trees because trees don’t stress about semi-formal wedding attire. I spend time on my couch reading because sometimes I don’t know how I feel until I see it written. I spend time calling my friends in the car because after raging about the state of things, we always end up laughing. I spend time cooking in the kitchen because it’s the only way I can catch a whiff of and dance with those I have lost. I spend time in bed writing letters because it’s the only way I know how to hold love in my hands forever and give it away at the same time.
So no, I don’t think there is a way to put disappointment in a box, tell myself I’m better than what society thinks I should be, and remain unaffected by its pressures. I am always going to feel the friction. But I think that’s okay. There is enough space, if we make it, for both. At a wedding celebrating people you love, there is room for joy. There is also space for loss and fear that maybe you’ll never find what you’re witnessing in someone else. There is grief for those that are not there to see what you do. There is beauty in the ritual of vows and of people making a pilgrimage to show their support for two people in love. There is melancholy at all the times it didn’t work out the way you thought it would. There is hope that all that love will remain for all of our days. And I’ve felt love remain enough to know it can.
Also, tabbouleh is really freaking good. Go eat some. (“Recipe” in the cooking section).
Much love!
🎧outside & empty playlist by me (2023, indie/acoustic sad girlboy/ alt)
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This playlist is like, melancholic camping, drives in bad weather, air that’s cold and hurts, but you know its good for your lungs. Songs to cry to, I guess. Ha!
🎧Scamanda by (Podcast)
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This podcast was fine! I will be honest, I couldn’t get past episode 4 because it felt like most of each episode was a recap where I only learned an teensy iota of new information, but I’m a sucker for a good con tale. Like the Elizabeth Holmes saga, this scam also took place right down the road from me. So if you’re a Bay Area kid, that might be cool for you. There isn’t a massive amount of information on the internet about this woman, Amanda C. Riley (I could not find def, who conned a whole church community out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I guess that’s what makes the podcast intriguing for a bit. Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about comedian and actor John C. Reilly, and it was massively distracting in the best possible way. Shake and bake, Ricky. Shake and bake.
🎧The Maris Review by Maris Kreizman (Podcast)
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The Maris Review is an endlessly interesting literary podcast that has a very simple framework. Maris is an author and critic who interviews debut and not-so-debut authors about what they’ve published recently. Because Maris has access to so many galleys a week, she has her finger on the pulse of publishing and is often an outspoken critic about what traditional publishing gets wrong. What I love about this podcast is that first and foremost, Maris is a reader. I don’t find her questions or commentary to be pretentious or salacious as some interviewers tend toward. She is genuinely fascinated by her guests, and you can tell the guests really enjoy being there. Because she is a writer, her questions are more nuanced, compassionate, and interesting than most mainstream book reviews or author talks I’ve seen. She always asks her guests for book recommendations as well! Through her podcast (and now newsletter!) I have what seems to be an endless stream of incredible books from debut and favorite authors — most of whom hold identities that tend to be at the margins of mainstream publishing. Lana and I will be talking about Samantha Irby’s May interview with Maris in our PRIDE episode of I Have No Milk podcast next week. Check out some of my favorite interviews of the over 200 to choose from:
The Maris Review was recommended to me seven centuries ago by my friend and lifetime partner-in-words, Meg. Meg is working on her MFA now, but has been a professional writer since we were babies, basically. She’s written for loads of websites and features and is currently at TIME magazine, no doubt changing the landscape of how their readers engage with content online. We met writing for our high school newspaper over a decade ago, and I’m so proud of the writer she has become. More than anything though, Meg is a reader, and a voracious one at that. She has a fabulous booktok account with her friend and fellow booklover Princess called Drop Everything and Read (their series of what people are reading on the train, at the pool, at the DMV etc. is a must watch). I trust her recommendations, which is why I knew I’d love this podcast the second I subscribed. Thanks Meg!
🎧Bloom Mountain by Hazlett (2023, indie/alt)
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My friend Stephanie sent me a song on this album, and it was one of those situations where you listen to the song and it’s really good but then the album keeps playing and it just drags you deeper and deeper and all of a sudden you’re like wait I can’t possibly get all of these lyrics tattooed on me, that would be crazy, surely. So you just listen to it over and over and over until, after a while you wonder if you actually wrote it or you dreamt it. But you didn’t. You’re just lucky enough to be listening to all the memories played backwards and forwards through a kaleidoscope of time and fiction.
This album feels like rain, like cool lake water when you’re lonely, like the heat of the asphalt on your back as the summer lies dying before you. I don’t know how to explain it really, only that it feels like falling in love with your best friend who you’re already in love with in the hours when no one else is awake. So if that’s your style, by all means. Yearn alongside me. (My favorite is Even If It’s Lonely).
🎬Jury Duty (Amazon, 2023)
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Jury Duty is such a runaway hit; I’m obsessed with it. I’m only a few episodes in, but oh my god. The premise is that a documentary is being filmed that takes a behind-the-scenes look at jury deliberations on a civil trial. However, the trial is fake and every single person in the entire show is a paid actor save for one man, Ron, who truly believes he is a part of a real trial documentary. Shenanigans ENSUE. I haven’t finished this series yet, and I’m not totally sure how I feel about the ruse. I’m so sensitive to people being duped, beguiled, hoodwinked and bamboozled, that I worry for Ron’s ability to trust anyone ever again after this. (Am I projecting?) Though from what I hear, the series ends fairly endearingly. If you like The Office, I think you’ll love this.
I haven’t finished any full length books yet, so I don’t want to recommend any this week. However, if you are curious, I am currently reading Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett, and will be starting Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin tomorrow.
📚”Frog and Toad”: An Amphibious Celebration of Same-Sex Love
by Colin Stokes (article, The New Yorker 2016) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Frog and Toad is a meditation on friendship and love, one in which the amphibious and homosexual grumpy-sunshine duo prevail in the beautiful brooks and ponds of our imaginations, flying kites, sharing snacks, and getting along. They practice loving each other in all the minutes that we borrow on ordinary days. This article discusses how this childhood classic may have been a way for Arnold Lobel to describe the kind of love he felt most himself in as a man who came out not long before the end of his life.
I grew up on Frog and Toad, and in retrospect I wish I could ask my great-grandmother Wilma what she was thinking when she bought it for me in 1997. Did she just like the cover and need something for my birthday party and figure, yeah, amphibians are cool. Did she flip through it and love its simplicity, its tender take on friendship and the lessons we learn form one another? Did she sense its nod to same-sex love and think of her sister (who lived with her roommate and watched a lot of baseball and wore a lot of flannels and jeans, and remained unmarried throughout the duration of her life?) Or did she, like me, read it and feel at home in herself and ask very few questions about why.
I did not know that the author of Frog and Toad, Arnold Lobel, was gay when I read Frog and Toad as a child, nor did I know that he died of AIDS during the epidemic that claimed the lives of so many of our community, but Frog and Toad possibly means more to me now as a queer person than it did to me as a child. It has been the joy of my life to discover that so many artists and writers I loved growing up lived and loved outside of the boundaries society had set for them, and I wish my teachers would have talked about it more — how brave and how different, how connected and how liberated so many were and strived to be. My Emily Dickinson obsession in fifth grade may have made more sense to me, had I known. ;)
🧁 Tabbouleh
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Most of my favorite recipes are from my dad — that potato salad one from a while back was his too. I have a story about it, that I will tell one day, but for now we gotta focus on the herbs (which my dad has been doing for breakfast lunch and dinner for the past three weeks). Seriously. I’m sure this man hasn’t consumed anything but this parsley salad for the past 21 days. So, the following tabbouleh recipe is from pops which means there is no recipe, and it’s just a list of ingredients followed by a shrug. That’s it and that’s all! Good luck.
Ingredients:
1 cup bulgur wheat
Cumin (he doesn’t measure it)
4 bunches of parsley
Tomatoes — however many you want diced up
Lemons - squeezed for their succulent juice
1 dried Jalapeño (I know it’s weird but my dad adds it in, and I really love it — Will my Lebanese friends come for me? Maybe. I’m sorry Uncle Khalil! But also, like, you might like it? <3)
Cucumbers all diced up
Olive oil (my dad doesn’t add this but I think that might be a mistake — I’m sorry dad! I’ve somehow upset you and Uncle Khalil with this recipe I’m sure of it).
Salt
Enjoy with flat bread, grilled meats and vegetables etc.
Ending Note:
Shout out to my therapist who always has the cutest outfits (and also wisdom). Shout out to my dad who’s like freakishly supportive of this newsletter. Shout out to Devon, the world’s best wedding date and the person who says “shout out” more than anyone I’ve ever met. And shout out to Lana, who makes dead ends feel like places to begin.
And to all of you — thank you for opening and reading this! I hope to write the next one quicker, as I already have most of it mapped out :) Stay tuned for some fun, summer DIYS, field trips, movies and book recs. And as always, I love to know what you enjoyed. Stay breezy, friends.
XO,
M