Monday Miscellany: So you get to lead a colorful life

Notes from October 28 - November 3

Nov 04, 2024

Good afternoon! It’s been a week full of Halloween celebrations, adventures with friends, big endings (and new beginnings), day trips, and nephew chaos. And now it’s somehow Monday again?! Whoever is running this thing, can you please slow it down, just a little?

Currently reading

Man, I love Jenny Slate. Whether she’s acting (SNL, Parks & Rec, Obvious Child, Landline), voicing animated characters (Marcel the Shell, Bob’s Burgers), doing standup comedy, or writing, I’m all about it. More, please. I read her first book, Little Weirds, a few years ago and distinctly remember where I was—in a cabin with a few of my best friends, awake before everyone else, no sound besides my sniffling as I wrote down a favorite quote in my reading journal—which is always the mark of an outstanding reading experience for me.

When her new one, Lifeform, was announced, I immediately submitted a request for an early review copy and was denied (HEARTBREAK). But, after months of waiting, it’s finally out and it’s just as strange and lovely as I hoped. This one, like Little Weirds, is a memoir in essays, but the focus has shifted a bit; now, instead of looking for and ultimately finding romantic love, we’re following along as she maintains a long-term relationship, brings a pregnancy to term, and becomes a mother. There are also plenty of day-to-day observations as well, some silly and some poignant, a few of which I had trouble transcribing with voice-to-text because oops, Jenny’s out here making me cry again (rude).

Like this, from the imagined perspective of a raccoon that Jenny and her husband have temporarily captured in a trap to relocate in a nearby park:

I am made to be just my small size, but in the biggest of spaces. Me and then the night sky, that is the right pairing of my smallness with a largeness, and I am made to be totally unrestrained! What is happening to me in this cage?! (86-87)

Or this, about the grief of losing a loved one:

We make a deal with fate: I’ll keep this flame that signifies the one you took. I will let it scorch me in my heart if you let it die down naturally, and eventually there will just be a scar on my heart, and I will always know what I have lost. But by then, I will feel only the emptiness, not the terrible scald. I will let the fire of the loss run its course. This is the debt I will pay so that I can have a more bearable sadness. (208)

Something about Slate’s writing, no matter the subject, just feels so familiar and true to me. I adored Lifeform and will continue to read anything she releases.

A new McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, issue #75, arrived in the mail this week, and in completely uncharacteristic (but aspirational) fashion, I read it right away! The theme is “first fiction”: it’s a selection of ten stories by writers who have never been published before, chosen from thousands of responses to a McSweeney’s call for submissions last summer. And it’s formatted as a dossier-style folder of individual story booklets, each illustrated by a different artist.

The stories cover a wide variety of topics and writing styles, but there isn’t a single one that I didn’t like. So rare for a collection like this! I made two exciting discoveries while reading: one, that the author of “Procurement and Transport,” Brittany Price, lives in my hometown, and two, that “Puck Fest” by Will Lowder (another NC writer) is set at my local renaissance festival. While that second one isn’t the happiest story, I will say that walking around said festival the day after reading said story was truly a trip—I kept clocking details that Lowder had described and thinking yep, accurate, accurate. What a treat it was to see a place I know and love so much portrayed like this in fiction.

I’ll leave you with the few quotes I wrote down from the collection, which together might paint a picture of where my brain is right now? I don’t know, it wasn’t a conscious thing, but despite the different subject matter of the stories these come from, there seems to be a vibe here.

I have nothing, I said. No prospects, no perseverance.
Don’t be sad about it, she said. So you get to lead a colorful life.

—“Small Mistakes in the Scheme of Things” by Stephanie Skaff, 7

I don’t have the guts to leave by myself. What if I leave, only to find that without anything tying me to a place, I am so empty that I disappear?

—“Diablo Winds” by Maya Sisneros, 11

Perhaps grief had made her fearless, even a little mad.

—“The Teacher of Forbidden Things” by Chii Oganihu, 15

My heart is a dove with wings strong enough to push open my rib cage and draw everything in front of me closer, closer, folded up in warm white down.

—“Procurement and Transport” by Brittany Price, 29

Currently listening

Did I really listen to anything of note this week? No? Nothing is coming to mind. BUT. Let me tell you this: we’re going to a Mountain Goats show at the end of the month, which means it’s about time for me to dive into their music with renewed vigor in preparation for seeing them live—in my town, I might add! They’re coming to Winston! This never happens!

So prepare yourselves for some incoherent yelling about my favorite band over the next few weeks. I might especially focus on some of the older albums since I don’t know those quite as well and am always thinking I should change that. At this particular moment, Beautiful Rat Sunset is in my headphones. Stay tuned.

And another thing

Mattar paneer is one of my most often ordered Indian dishes when we go out, but I would love to try making it at home sometime.
This exploded my classically-trained musician brain: a new Chopin composition was discovered!
Shut up and GO LOOK AT THIS TINY TOAD.
Kin Ship Goods, one of my favorite small apparel companies, is turning 10! To celebrate, they’ve brought back some old designs from the vault—including their “ask me about my cat” t-shirt, which I love and wear all the time.

Sky above the renaissance fair, a visual aid for November 3rd’s poem below

Haiku round-up

Did I mention that this week has been full? Logistically, heart-expandingly, bittersweetly, joyfully full. The imagery in this batch of poems reflects it, I think: remembering to bake my favorite pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies because being in the kitchen makes me feel good, eating build-your-own BLTs for dinner at our friends’ house, attending a farewell work party for my person the night before his last coffee shop shift and witnessing our coworkers’ love for him, watching obligation lift from his shoulders as freedom and possibility take its place, relishing the comfort and familiarity with which my growing 5-year-old nephew flops down on my lap for a snuggle, hugging a best friend after weeks apart, wandering in the woods with my favorite people while the sun starts to set, watching with anticipation and excitement as the shape of my life continues to change.