I just read What Looks Like Bravery by Laurel Braitman (memoir) and it absolutely wrecked me but also taught me so much about grief. If you’re in the mood for that, definitely add this to your list!
I am listening to Richard Ayoade's "Ayoade on Top" on Audible. It is delightful and truly hilarious -- a deep-dive for no reason in particular into the 2003 low-budget Gwyneth Paltrow movie "View from the Top" (viewing not necessary). One line I loved today: "If a man cannot serve two masters, to which Coen brother should I direct my comments?"
I also have State Farm (been with them for ALOT of years), but have never had to make a claim, YET. I'm scared now, after reading this!!! I thought they were supposed to protect you from Mayhem (and according to the commercials, that could be anything and everything)?!
“The Aztecs, who were enthusiastic farmers, used more than a dozen words for green; the Mursi cattleherders of Ethiopia have 11 colour terms for cows, and none for anything else.”
I am almost finished with Enchantment by Katherine May and can’t recommend it highly enough! After a difficult postpartum year of very little sleep, I am finally starting to sleep through the night again and feel like a human again. In the deepest depths of my postpartum depression, I listened to Wintering (also by Katherine May) and her words were actual medicine for my psyche.
This idea from Enchantment has been haunting me in the best way all week:
“The skills of deep play took far longer to learn than anything I’d studied before. They meant asserting the awkward right to time, space, and solitude; making a shameful claim on my own creativity. They meant learning to trust my long-forgotten gut instinct and to feel a yearning for my own work. They meant putting aside time to do things that seem pointless to the outside world. They meant confronting my stultifying terror of failure and learning to enjoy eviscerating mediocre, mistake-ridden work.”
Also, earlier this week Joy Sullivan offered some ideas on how to write in her newsletter that have stayed with me all week as well. She said, “It is not the poet’s job to offer advice. Rather it is the poet’s job to aptly name the ache.”
Here’s to more observing, naming, listening, and tolerating my own bad attempts at art and mothering this week!
I just started White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link ("Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with startling consequences in the modern world") and it is that perfect mix of uncanny and luminous so far, (like everything she writes, omg.)
I just read What Looks Like Bravery by Laurel Braitman (memoir) and it absolutely wrecked me but also taught me so much about grief. If you’re in the mood for that, definitely add this to your list!
I've had better luck with Farmer's than you have had with State Farm. YMMV.
I am listening to Richard Ayoade's "Ayoade on Top" on Audible. It is delightful and truly hilarious -- a deep-dive for no reason in particular into the 2003 low-budget Gwyneth Paltrow movie "View from the Top" (viewing not necessary). One line I loved today: "If a man cannot serve two masters, to which Coen brother should I direct my comments?"
I also have State Farm (been with them for ALOT of years), but have never had to make a claim, YET. I'm scared now, after reading this!!! I thought they were supposed to protect you from Mayhem (and according to the commercials, that could be anything and everything)?!
“The Aztecs, who were enthusiastic farmers, used more than a dozen words for green; the Mursi cattleherders of Ethiopia have 11 colour terms for cows, and none for anything else.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/08/the-big-idea-why-colour-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder
Looking at the Japanese book illustrations at 50 Watts, discovered via Daniel Benneworth-Gray’s newsletter.
https://50watts.com/
People seeing the people they love who died before them, a day within dying themselves.
https://www.science.org/content/article/burst-brain-activity-during-dying-could-explain-life-passing-your-eyes
I am almost finished with Enchantment by Katherine May and can’t recommend it highly enough! After a difficult postpartum year of very little sleep, I am finally starting to sleep through the night again and feel like a human again. In the deepest depths of my postpartum depression, I listened to Wintering (also by Katherine May) and her words were actual medicine for my psyche.
This idea from Enchantment has been haunting me in the best way all week:
“The skills of deep play took far longer to learn than anything I’d studied before. They meant asserting the awkward right to time, space, and solitude; making a shameful claim on my own creativity. They meant learning to trust my long-forgotten gut instinct and to feel a yearning for my own work. They meant putting aside time to do things that seem pointless to the outside world. They meant confronting my stultifying terror of failure and learning to enjoy eviscerating mediocre, mistake-ridden work.”
Also, earlier this week Joy Sullivan offered some ideas on how to write in her newsletter that have stayed with me all week as well. She said, “It is not the poet’s job to offer advice. Rather it is the poet’s job to aptly name the ache.”
Here’s to more observing, naming, listening, and tolerating my own bad attempts at art and mothering this week!
I just started White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link ("Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with startling consequences in the modern world") and it is that perfect mix of uncanny and luminous so far, (like everything she writes, omg.)