supposed to be writing (#18)
...and it takes a lot of time
in the train, the sensation of looking up from your book and zooming backwards is the same as the sensation of a truck and two cars reversing in sync as you’re walking down a street; the street slopes imperceptibly downwards. time is moving whether or not you are, and sometimes it feels like the moment of relative velocity when the metro car on opposite side of the rails is keeping pace with yours. the difference between walking and running {keeping pace} is if or that you have to do it. you force yourself to run, you force yourself to start the monumental task or pile of tasks because you have to, because the tasks and the run and the world could move on without you if you didn’t show up for yourself right now.
showing up for yourself is leaving early so you can buy flowers on the way home. it’s making your bed and making making your bed easier so you actually do it. it’s buying a giant fan and a tan cotton blazer and a new bloody pair of headphones so that you have a mic that actually works. it’s sending off your writing even if it is long form and rambling, because you are only one person and how should you know where to cut? it’s showing up for other people because that’s how you get out of your own head and acquire some perspective.
i would love to write with the sense of stillness that comes from fixing your sight to a stationary point and then letting the world move around you. i would love to write as if i could remain fixed relative to the words tumbling around and through me. i would love to write as if to maintain the illusion of being stable, but stability is the delusion. this work is unstable and the world is unstable and therefore you have to keep moving if you want to feel still.
feed me
i don’t know if you know this about me, but i make excellent salads. this is because i love acidity and salt; texture, flavor, and temperature contrasts; all of which are crucial for making enjoyable salad. [eta: see esp. Samin Nosrat]. here’s one that i threw together and liked enough to make again. i also don’t want to have to think about the ratios in the future so maybe this is more for me than for you.
can’t eat onions taboulé
Pick a glass bowl that can double as a serving dish if you find yourself lazy at the end of this process. Measure roughly 100g couscous and sprinkle a tiny bit of your rationed Knorr’s chicken bouillon powder to season it instead of plain salt. Pour in 150g just boiled water from your kettle, swirl a bit, then cover the bowl with a plate to aut0-fluff. i actually do not know what verb to attribute to this lazy couscous technique, but know that it’s quick and painless. meanwhile, thinly slice a stalk of celery – for the fragrance and some crunch – plus the quarter of a cucumber you have hanging out in your fridge: love little tiny cucumber cubes. cut up the green tops of 2-3 green onions, more than you really think because this onion-y flavor is essential in making this taste like taboulé. at this point (5-10 mins later), you can probably check on your couscous; ideally it has absorbed the liquid and is waiting for your fork to loosen up each little pearl. liberate your tiny chopping board by sweeping in your chopped veg, then gingerly slice an off the vine roma tomato (this smell!), using your discretion for the shape. sliver a generous handful of fresh mint leaves, also more than you initially intend because you forgot how great summer mint is. Lightly drizzle your best olive oil, no more than ½ tbs which is max 2 glugs, then squeeze one entire lemon over the salad and start tossing. Taste, and if you didn’t take me seriously about the mint, green onion, or lemon, add more and maybe a pinch of salt. It should taste good when you finish assembling, but let the salad rest while you pull together the rest of your dinner on the plate you used to steam the couscous (leftover poulet rôti, spoon of mayo, fresh baguette, Orangina), and then the salad will be phenomenal and you will eat the other half of the bowl tomorrow for lunch.
read me
I’m trying to not be so affected {pushed off my axis, déboussolée/bousculée; i would rather combine those into one word} by literally everything I read, but this is also how reading works isn’t it.
nina bouraoui, satisfaction is gripping: i want to call it atmospheric but it does theoretical heavy lifting and I don’t want you to think otherwise. set in late 1970s algeria, the novel is staged as a series of journals scribbled by a french woman, married to an algerian man, raising a son that she adores. the journals capture feelings (jealousy, growing distance, unreturned interest) that the narrator would rather drown in bottles of contraband wine; a relationship to writing that s . bouraoui translates her narrator’s brusque and polymorph desire—conflicted resistance against the androgyny of her son’s new friend, lust for this friend’s self- or disinterested mother—into a wild growing garden and rocky beach: sun-soaked natural elements that contradict the unfeeling relics of the recent colonial past, that counteract increasing efforts to dislodge the narrator from her chosen home.
onto les méduses n’ont pas d’oreilles, adèle rosenfeld, which is a little unreal and invites you into the inner world of a narrator hard of hearing.
hear me out
i only just heard about the comedic marvel that is the ‘my dad wrote a porno’ podcast which is very funny. it is 6 seasons of a weekly reading of an erotic novel that is tragically funny and offers a vision of utopia that puts the pansexual in the pots & pans industry.
also trixie and katya on complaining. (y’all never click on anything, but i can’t summarize this one for you)