quick Q: are you 🤬 kidding me?
put yourself in the path of beauty, of happiness, and of a divine lemony asparagus salad
hey-hey,
Everyday of this new “administration” we ask, are you 🤬 kidding me? It’s a 100 car pile up of dastardly actions. I’m glad you’re here… come for beauty, but first a quick pause at the top for calls to action. Three resources that may make you feel better:
Continue to check the 5 Calls app to contact your representatives on various issues, they include sample scripts to use when you leave messages.
Directly call your reps through the Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121.
For a bit of uplift, read
’s The Dworkin Report. There you will find bits of news of people pushing back:The NAACP sued the Trump Administration for attempting to close down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. NAACP President Derrick Johnson said: “We refuse to stand idly by as our most vulnerable communities are left unprotected due to irresponsible leaders...the NAACP will use every tool possible to put Americans first.”
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum says the country will take Google to court, if their maps continue to show Trump’s label of “Gulf of America,” over the entire Gulf of Mexico.
Trump voters are finally figuring out what they actually voted for. Emily Anderson said it was the “biggest mistake of my life,” adding "I feel so stupid, guilty, regretful…I am absolutely embarrassed that I voted for Trump.”
Okay, deep breath. And another. Maybe pause here to check
who self-identifies as disabled and chronically ill and posts regularly about her colorful, charming thrift outfits. (She crushed Valentine’s day!)…
Due to current conditions I decided I only want to read books that bring me pleasure. In a world which seems tightly focused on cruelty, I seek kindness. That is not to say I want pablum. Alongside hearty servings of truth, I want light. The poet
, who visited our online book group to discuss her delightful collection, DIALOGUES WITH RISING TIDES, says her poems dwell in the land of “and also…” Yes, hard thing happens, people die, people are lonely, your neighbors use pesticides, and also we laugh, we love, we tell strangers we admire their argyle socks. So, pain is true, and also joy.Please check her poem, “Love Waltz with Fireworks” which begins:
Seventeen minutes ago, I was in love
with the cashier and a cinnamon pull-apart,
seven minutes before that, it was a gray-haired man in argyle socks, a woman
dancing outside the bakery holding
a cigarette and a broken umbrella. The rain,I’ve fallen in love with it many times,
the fog, the frost—how it covers the clovers
—and by clovers I mean lovers.
What I learned from Kelli? When you’re feeling depleted… talk to a poet. They are particularly wonderful at alchemizing a hard thing into a small moment of beauty. They understand that the mundane and the transcendent share a wall.
…
Then I made a big mistake! I picked up a novel with Love in the title, thinking it would fit my pleasure plan. It did not. No one in the book experiences pleasure. Section one finds a husband sitting vigil at his dying wife’s bedside. Paragraphs begin with “I remember…” and then he delivers a long mea culpa of apologies for all the ways he failed her. It’s weighty, depressing, and formally a burden as you keep reading, “I remember… I remember…” (perhaps an homage to the fantastic book, I REMEMBER, by Joe Brainard, which I highly suggest you check out for moments of delight and trouble… like life.)
Section two is from the POV of a lovelorn student in the husband’s literature class. She is young, vulnerable, throbbing with unrequited desire, and miserable. At the end of her section she marries a man so flat on the page it’s heartbreaking.
Section three is narrated by the adult son of the dying woman. The son has avoidant attachment style and connects with no one, not his mother, his father, nor his frequent sexual conquests.
Finally the last section is told from the POV of the dying wife, an art monster, actually harming people she loves with her single minded drive to work above all else. (For an interesting argument about exactly this, check out MONSTERS, by Claire Dederer.) The only happy person in the entire novel was the grandma! A woman with no fucks to give who delighted in her grandson. Great! Yet also problematic because she had no other identity. (Yes, she was a tertiary character… but still!)
I cranked the audiobook up to 2x speed, hoping for a change. Yes, the sentences were lovely. Descriptions of a park were stunning. And yet, right now, I just can’t. Especially since it was mostly the women who were punished.
In fairness this may not have been the best time to read this particular novel. And, I’m not sharing the title. It’s hard to write a book. The author poured their heart into the work. But/and I’m tired of books about unfulfilled and ill women who must choose between their passions and their families. About “lady part” cancer, about put upon men who try so hard. About men with fragile egos who need constant bolstering (renaming actual bodies of water!)
Men who move around like a horse in a hospital causing damage and simply not caring. I want to participate with all the good men, in a world of mutual delights, mutual respect, and mutual discovery of a pathway through the muck.
No fear, hang tight! I’ve got an antidote-book in the read section below.
Thank you paid subscribers!
If you’re a free subscriber maybe you’re looking for a way to say merci for this spot-of-sunshine in your inbox, it’s easy, become a paid subscriber. I’d love that for both of us!
read:
If I just can’t for the book above, here is a book for which I absolutely can: I’M MOSTLY HERE TO ENJOY MYSELF, by Glynnis MacNicol.
From the flap copy:
In the spirit of Nora Ephron and Deborah Levy (think Colette . . . if she’d had access to dating apps), I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is an intimate, insightful, powerful, and endlessly pleasurable memoir of an intensely lived experience whose meaning and insight expand far beyond the personal narrative. MacNicol is determined to document the beauty, excess, and triumph of a life that does not require permission.
What I’m enjoying in the memoir? The unabashed joy Glynnis feels inhabiting her body, honoring her desires, and her appetites.
Also, there are some straight up socio-political conversations about the male gaze, about choosing to have no responsibilities except to the self, about the value of family and the value of freedom. I’ve underlined so many passages in advance of the r.w.e. book group. Check this:
I remember something I’ve always known. Not learned. Known. Far from cataloging the state of your breasts, or your hips, or your tummy, men are mostly just thrilled you’ve taken off your clothes at all. Women’s bodies are beautiful. Truly. All of them. The amount of energy that has gone into convincing us otherwise is extraordinary and telling.
Cannot wait to talk about all of it next month.
Want more community? We have zoom r.w.e. book group!
The book group is a perk for paid subscribers and let me tell you we are a lively bunch!
Go ahead, upgrade to paid and claim your spot. I hope to get to know you better!
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.
write:
I’m presenting in Chicago in March! So thrilled to be a part of the Chicago Writer’s Association Conference. Please, come. There are many great speakers, opportunities to make new connections, agent pitches, Master Classes, an Open Mic event, and time to focus on what matters to you, your writing. I’d love to see you!
…
I want to riff a little more on the quote above, from Glynnis MacNicol. The part where she talks about the amount of energy gone into convincing women that our bodies aren’t beautiful. What if we writers do that to ourselves with our writing? What if we sit at our desks, or in a cafe, and we convince ourselves that our ideas and our words aren't good enough. We shut ourselves down even before we’ve made any progress, before we’ve made any discoveries, before we’ve extracted some pleasure from our work.
I offer you this list of V-words that I learned the other day from a podcast about happiness. Apparently, the psychiatrist said, if we incorporate these 5 V-words into our lives we will become incrementally happier. So I thought, why not use them for our writing?