a free free-for-all

nothing like a spill on your bike to give you pause + food and friends ++ a prompt for everyone

Sep 26, 2024

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hey-ho,

I thought I was going to write to you about a new link from Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files in which he asked his abundant followers “Where or how do you find joy?” What an avalanche of responses he received! So many in fact that he collated them all into a new page, joy. I’ve looked at the page multiple times and it feels a bit like I now have joy bank account from which I can withdraw funds whenever I’m feeling depleted.

When you’re in need of a boost, take a peek and see what thoughts arise for you. Perhaps notice if it helps you to recognize your own joy, which we all know can at times be evasive and slippery.

I found my joy after I was able to stand up and easily hobble away after I took a spill on my bike here in Collioure. It was my fault. The episode involved a bus door, a faulty kickstand, a street sign, and a curb. I came down hard on my patella (isn’t patella a beautiful word!) and my palms. I landed in a heap just in front of the tires, looking up at the mammoth bus face. Honestly, it looked like a hostile dinosaur staring me down. After a stern talking to from the French bus driver, I righted myself and found I was fine. I sat alone at the bus stop for a moment to calm my deeply rattled self. That could have gone a completely different way. “Hello and thank you,” I said to my intact bones, teeth, face. Tenderly, gingerly, I pedaled home, the wind offering a gentle hand at my back, in front of me the denim sea, decorated with so many white caps, like feathers from a pillow fight. A gull caromed and cawed overhead. “You’re fine. You’re fine. You’re fine.”

Where do you find your joy?

read:

I picked this gorgeous book off my friend

Karen Karbo

’s shelf, WOMEN WHO READ ARE DANGEROUS, by Stefan Bollmann. Of course the title snagged me, and I also think an art book can be a beautiful petite retreat from all the thinking and striving we do. I leisurely turned the pages of the book, becoming absorbed in the images, imaging the life of each woman, caught in her own imagination as she read. There is something beautiful about witnessing another person out-of-time and place, a book taking their breath away, each person creating autonomous ideas, expanding their experience of human nature. These reading woman create privacy on a park bench, or a sofa, or at their own table. By reading they have gently walled themselves off from the world around them, made a space of “friendly isolation.” I think we all need that from time to time.

Check my read.write.eat. Bookshop Store, where you will find many of the books I've recommended in the newsletter. Buying books from my shop is a way you can be a friend to the newsletter.

The r.w.e. book group is a perk for paid subscribers and let me tell you we are a lively bunch!

In October we’ll be discussing HELP WANTED, by Adelle Waldman. The flap copy touts the novel this way: “Waldman brings her unparalleled wit and astute social observation to the world of modern, low-wage work. A humane and darkly comic workplace caper that shines a light on the odds low-wage workers are up against in today's economy, Help Wanted is a funny, moving tale of ordinary people trying to make a living.”

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write:

At the Come to Your Senses writing retreat, the excellent Karen Karbo gave a talk about something which should be foremost in our writer minds! Use sensory details! It’s the secret sauce to engaging your readers. I know I’ve waxed on and on about selective concrete details in this very newsletter. But honestly, if you don’t want your writing to feel flat, if you want your reader to become fully absorbed in your work—invoke the senses. Karbo reminded us that it isn’t just the primary 5 senses we should engage, but also consider secondary senses such as:

heat (hot flashes anyone?)
proprioception, your body in space. Where are you in relation to others? In relation to the edge of the cliff? If you’re a gymnast with a case of the ‘twisties’ or an avalanche victim, where are you in relation to the ground?
pain! (remember, a character in pain may not make great decisions! Think of the all consuming pain of a toothache.)
Wind!
hunger/thirst/need for air

All of these sensory details, brought to life in your work, will make things both individual and real. You will find that your characters, your voice, will spring to vivid life when you attend to the world through the senses.

My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.
Psychologist Willam James wrote in 1890.

prompt:

Hooray! Today the prompt is for everyone. In most posts, the prompts live in the paid subscriber section. If you’d like to receive them on the regular:

💛 Yes! I'll upgrade to paid!

As an experiment, I’ve taken the first paragraph from the travel section of the NYTs. If you notice, it is scrubbed clean of sensory details. Please read:

Sweden’s third-largest city, a 40-minute train ride from Copenhagen across the Oresund Bridge, is used to being defined in relation to its neighbor. With its emphasis on sustainability and design, and abundant bicycles, it shares many attributes with the Danish capital. But its personality is distinctively its own. As a once-important port, Malmo retains a working-class feel. Its sizable immigrant population (a third of residents were born outside Sweden, many in the Middle East) has made it the falafel capital of Europe, and contributes to a burgeoning food scene that also draws inspiration from the Skane region’s fishing traditions and wealth of farms. And the nearly 25-year-old Oresund Bridge has helped to revitalize the city, making it more accessible to the artists and chefs priced out of Copenhagen.

Obviously this is great for a travel piece, and I’m all in for visiting Malmo, but were I to revise this paragraph for fiction or memoir, if I wanted to make it rise up off the page, here is what I might add:

the train to Malmo glides along marshes purpled by the low sun. Bats swoop and dive for insects in the last of the light. (Okay, I made it all up, but you get the idea)
Pedestrians dodge abundant bicycles, all bearing confident, hands-free riders trailing cigarette smoke, laughing into their phones, sipping coffee, and waving to friends, from sliver-tired state of the art bikes.
Malmo retains a working class feel, with early morning commuters toting silver lunch pails and worn backpacks, leaning in to a stiff wind on a stretch of the quay. There are no chain stores, but small shops sell thick sweaters and rain boots. At lunch smells of roasting coffee, toasty bread, and smoked fish guide a visitor to the best place to eat.

Your turn!

From fishing piers and wharves lined up along Commercial Street to ocean views and historic Queen Anne-style homes atop Munjoy Hill, Portland offers a lot for visitors to take in. And then there is the food. Maine's largest city has long been nationally known as a top food destination, and just this year two Portland bakers won James Beard Awards. To host travelers, culinary or otherwise, five boutique hotels have opened since 2020. The hotel construction, new high-end condo development and rising coastal real estate prices have exacerbated a housing crisis here. But the elements that make this New England city such an attractive place to visit — a dynamic creative economy, juxtaposition of the old and the new, and the distinctive character of a working waterfront — endure.

Okay, pretend you had a character visiting Portland, Maine. How would you try to enliven this paragraph with vivid, concrete details? Make stuff up. Engage the senses. And then, I encourage you to find your own flat paragraph and zhuzz up your work!

eat:

Check this Op Ed by Padma Lakshmi on why Kamala Harris’s cooking skills will serve her well as president:

What qualities make for a good cook? Which make for a good president? In a lot of cases, they overlap. Cooking well requires organization, attention to detail, patience — and the impulse to bring people together. In a divided country, these qualities can help Ms. Harris be a good, even a great, president.

Bringing people together is the very reason that I love to write and to cook. It’s why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, it’s why I like to serve a long and leisurely Sunday Brunch with lots of family and friends around the table.

I was thinking about the season change and what would feel good to eat around the table with pals. Invite your crew, tell someone to bring a caesar salad, maybe some artichokes? For dessert I love a plate of brownies.

Almost Stuffed Shells (because really, who has time to stuff shells?)

1lb baby spinach, rinsed
Salt to taste
12oz giant pasta shells
1T extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, cut in half
10oz ricotta cheese
1 egg, beaten
2T minced chives
2oz Parmesan, grated about ½ cup
Freshly ground pepper
2c marinara sauce, preferably homemade, but store bought is fine… zhuzh it up with some red pepper flakes

Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Fill a bowl with ice water. Blanch the spinach for 20 seconds, just until wilted, and transfer to the ice water, drain, then squeeze out excess water. Bring the water in the pot back to a boil and add the pasta shells. Cook al dente, about 10 minutes, then drain and toss with the olive oil and about 1/2c or the marinara sauce. Set aside.
Using a food processor fitted with the steel blade, drop in the garlic. When fully chopped, stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the spinach and pulse to chop finely. Add the ricotta and the egg and process until well blended. Add ⅓ c of the Parmesan, the chives, and salt and pepper to taste. Pulse until well blended.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Oil a large baking dish. Spoon 1/4c sauce into the bottom of the backing dish. The shells should fit into the dish in one layer. Scatter heaping spoonfuls of the filling around the pan. If some land inside the shells, terrific, if not, who has time to care! Top with remains marinara sauce and loosely cover the dish with foil.
Bake 20 minutes. Remove the foil and sprinkle on remaining parmesan cheese. Bake 15 or so minutes more, until it begins to crisp a little bit and the sauce is bubbling.

Oh and look! Here’s Stanley living his life in Portland without us.

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a bientôt!

xN

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