what does happiness taste like?

spring! two poems, a salad, + a prompt to keep you writing

Mar 13, 2024

Dear Ones,

Not a moment too soon. I’m desperate for the energy of a new bud.

To feel spring— the surprise of love, lilacs, lemon cake, big emotions, fierce protection, and fat rain— check this opening stanza and then click the link for the entire poem:

Lilac, by Matthew Dickman

One look at the lilac, one smell
and my childhood is —

dogs scratching at the sliding
glass door, bits…
(continue here)

…

Dickman’s poem harkens for me the final stanza of e.e. cummings’s poem which is also about unfurling and the surprise of love, though in cummings poem it is romantic. (click the link for the entire poem)

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

…(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

…

Both poems speak of the thrill and birth of spring in a world that continues to spin toward the next winter.

Here’s my spring playlist, on repeat chez nous!

read:

I’ve titled this picture “The Books She Schlepped.”

Yes, I am loading this stack into my suitcase! Usually I travel with only a carry-on, but for my upcoming sojourn to Brooklyn, Stanley’s my carry-on. Hence checked bag, hence schlepping books!

Drop me a line. What’s on your TBR?

write:

I took a writing workshop over the weekend and I have thoughts. After everyone had the opportunity to share their writing, the facilitator said with vigor that there was a lot of pain in the work. I thought, well, yes, pain has long arms. Pain is universal.

Consider please:

Pete Holmes chatting with Mike Birbiglia, tells a story so sad and funny, about apologizing to his daughter when she was literally (accidentally) choking him. (It’s about 44 minutes into the podcast #115.) Holmes says to his daughter, “I’m sorry, Honey. You really wanted to choke Daddy. But you can’t. And now you’re having big feelings.” His daughter is little, riding on his shoulders and smashing his Adam’s apple. Holmes then tells the audience that he watched himself apologize and thought about his father who never-ever apologized to him, for anything. In fact, Holmes tells us that it was him apologizing to his father for even having hurt feelings. It’s a funny bit. It’s a hard bit. As I listened, my first thought was, have I apologized to my kids enough? Next thought, have my kids felt that they had to apologize to me? Follow up thought, has my mother ever apologized to me? Did I feel I had to apologize to her? And an adjunct to the questions, can I trust my memory or am I biased to be angry and/or disappointed with my mother and to beat myself up (my default mode) for my own mothering foibles. I know! It’s a crazy loop! Thank you, Pete Holmes.

Holmes goes on to say that a person in an alpha position, who stands under the lights (on stage) and tells a hard story on themselves is acknowledging how hard it is out there in the world for all of us. They are inviting the audience to project their shame onto the speaker, to be “coup de lah” and laugh at themselves. This is what we writer’s must do as well.

Holmes says:

Bad comedy is they are listening to you. Good comedy is we are listening to each other.

In this great piece in the NYTs about Kate Winslet, whom I adore, there was an interesting and related bit about her unshakeable empathy for her characters, especially the title character in Mare of Easttown. (It’s a wonderful, compelling show. Winslet and Jean Smart are fantastic. Warning, it’s dark.) The writer of the times piece says that in a particular scene we see Mare in conversation and conflict:

w/her grandson’s pediatrician, in the present (aloud)
w/her past self, when her son (the boy’s father) was struggling with addiction and mental health issues and she didn’t know how to help
w/her present self as she tries to get the pediatrician to understand the pain of the past and how her deceased son’s struggles (interior) are bleeding into the present.

Watching Winslet we don’t just see a protective mother:

…we see our own mothering, the depth of our complicated feelings about mistakes we’ve made, the gap between what we feel and what can easily be said.

It’s another example of the generous nature of art, allowing us to project our stories (or as Pete Holmes says, our shame) onto the characters, to see ourselves not as freaks, but as fallible humans.

Too much pain in the workshop? Hmmm.. In the specificity of another’s story, I am set free from my own story, in the same way Holmes and Winslet set me free, I know that I am not alone. I believe that the work, be it stand-up comedy, literature, visual art, film, that runs straight into hard things is the work that deeply touches me. (Consider this essay, “Us and Them,” by David Sedaris, it’s hilarious and painful and true. Boy, are we jerks, and sheesh, will we avoid looking at ourselves at all costs!)

Did you see Robert Downey Jr accept his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor? The first thing he said was, “I’d like to thank my terrible childhood.” Okay, glib, but also real. He uses his pain to tell stories, it just so happens he tells the stories of other people.

The facilitator of my workshop suggested that we write about “pain without the ouch.” It’s not that my peers and I wrote “too much pain” it was about the soggy handkerchiefs we clung to in our first drafts, seeking readers’s sympathy. We had to get the stories out before we could gain the distance to make the stories work. Of course we must exploit and excavate pain on the page, or the stage, yet we just must do it dryly, precisely and specifically, without naming the emotion, so that the reader is invited in.

a prompt:

adapted from Claire Dederer

Think of 3 truths about yourself you'd rather not share. Secrets that make you inwardly cringe. Pick one that interests you. Perhaps a time you failed.
Write about it for 7 minutes, as you would have in your middle-school diary. That's to say, wallow and whine. Don’t worry about making the reader watch you cry.
Make a list of times in your life when you wrestled with your secret. Pick one that interests you.
Write the scene! Be certain to include a specific time and place, characters, and sensory details. Don’t name any emotions. For example if you were lonely, think of what loneliness tastes like, stale generic graham crackers. What does it smell like, drugstore cologne so strong and sweet you can taste it in the back of your mouth. (Anyone remember Tatiana?) What does it look like, an empty, dirty birdcage with a free sign, left on the sidewalk. What does it sound like? What does it feel like? Tell me. What is it like to be you?

Last Call: A Writing Day Spa at my home in Portland, on 4 May, a Saturday. Spend the day, learning, writing, and being pampered. Only 3 spaces left! Let me know if you’re in need of a daylong retreat!

eat:

Honestly, if you asked me what does happiness look like, smell like, taste like… I’d say this perfect salad.

Sheet-Pan Halloumi With Avocado and Citrus

2 slices of good country style bread, preferably hearty grain sourdough torn into 1½" pieces
1 package of Halloumi cheese, patted dry, torn into 1½" pieces
½ c extra-virgin olive oil, divided
salt & pepper
¼ c fresh lime juice
2 T honey
2 med oranges, preferably blood
1 grapefruit
3 green onions, sliced
1 med jalapeño, thinly sliced, divided
½ c coarsely chopped dill
1 lg ripe avocado, halved, pit removed and sliced into chunks
1 head of radicchio lettuce, washed, dried, and torn into pieces

Preheat oven to 400°. Set a rimmed sheet pan on rack in center of the oven. Toss bread and Halloumi cheese with ¼ c olive oil, and pinch of kosher salt in large bowl until well coated. Spread out in a single layer on the hot baking sheet. (Set the bowl aside.) Roast, tossing halfway through, until cheese is golden brown on a few sides and bread is crisp, 18–20 minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk lime juice, honey, salt & pepper, and remaining ¼ c olive oil in the reserved bowl to combine.
Using a small knife and working one at a time, cut away peel and white pith from the oranges and the grapefruit. Halve citrus and cut into ½"-thick wedges and/or slices (a mix of shapes is fun).
Spread radicchio in a shallow salad bowl or on a large platter. Lay citrus on top. Sprinkle green onions and half of the jalapeño slices. Next add hot Halloumi and the croutons.
Add the chunks of avocado to the salad dressing and gently mix, the lime juice will prevent discoloring. Using 2 large spoons or your hands, gently mix the dressing and avocado into the salad. Combine thoroughly.
Scatter chopped dill and remaining jalapeño over everything.

Stanley, practicing for his first flight.

If you’re in Brooklyn, let’s grab coffee!

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Tell your people you love them, and take good care of your skin.

xN