On Denial

Is it still considered denial or ignorance if you have accepted the reality of the situation but choose to opt out of it for your own self-preservation? I have always prided myself on being a practical person, and staying on top of E V E R Y update doesn’t seem very productive. So I give myself 30 minutes on Twitter, NPR, and the NY Times in the morning to get the latest and then try to move on with my day.

It’s not a perfect system — my brain will continue to weave in and out of anxiety throughout the day — but it works for me. I hope that wherever you are, you’re hanging in there and if any of my silly thoughts or copied and pasted links can help you escape a little, then I’ve done my job.

I received pasta attachments for my Kitchenaid stand mixer as a birthday present, so I plan on using this dough recipe to make agnolotti filled with with butternut squash and ricotta. Wish me luck!

I’ll start with that and then maybe one day I’ll work up the nerve to make my own ramen noodles from scratch.

Honest to god, I thought it was common knowledge that graham crackers were invented by a guy to deter people from having sex. I am sorry to all my friends in the group chat for scandalizing them.

Stay far away from Twitter if you can, but if you must be on it, I recommend spending all of your time with @BootstrapCook, whose #JackMonroesLockdownLarder is filled with ingenious ingredient substitutes and recipes.

“Thanks, but not for me right now.” You don’t have to join every Zoom meeting or take every phone call. (Though obviously if it’s for work, you should!)

Danusha Laméris, poetess divine, your timeless poem is never not relevant:

Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by.
Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

Speaking of kindness to each other, don’t forget about being kind to yourself. It may feel like your worries pale in comparison to what others are having to deal with, but they are still valid. Give yourself time to sit with those feelings. Let them wash over you and then carry on when you are ready.

Also you’re welcome:

“Can’t spell quarantine without u r a q t.” - M’s entry to the Dad Jokes Hall of Fame for your consideration.

On 5 Things

People Say Gullah Geechee Culture is Disappearing. BJ Dennis Says They’re Wrong both moved me and made my mouth water. I wanted to write a thoughtful response about how food is more than just sustenance (I’m glaring at you, Soylent drinkers) and how each bite is filled with history. But language fails me here. Words just pale in comparison to the explosion of flavors — lovingly coaxed out of freshly caught seafood and locally farmed produce — developed by a culture that withstood centuries of pain to pass their history down generations.*

The San Francisco Chronicle published a multimedia essay on 24 hours inside the city’s homelessness crisis as part of the SF Homeless Project and included a detailed Q&A section (covering questions like SF numbers are particularly high, where does all the funding go, etc). It’s easy to complain that the city isn’t doing enough to solve the problem (I’ve definitely been guilty of this when I was living there), but there are bigger issues at play and the city is working on it.

This poem by Wendell Berry called “Questionaire” (C/O Kottke):

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite evils
and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for the culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

And this one that Stacy-Marie Ishmael included in her latest newsletter (definitely recommend subscribing!):

“Demeter’s Prayer to Hades” by Rita Dove

This alone is what I wish for you: knowledge.
To understand each desire has an edge,
to know we are responsible for the lives
we change. No faith comes without cost,
no one believes without dying.
Now for the first time
I see clearly the trail you planted,
what ground opened to waste,
though you dreamed a wealth
of flowers.

There are no curses — only mirrors
held up to the souls of gods and mortals.
And so I give up this fate, too.
Believe in yourself,
go ahead — see where it gets you.

This truly delightful interview Rob Sheffield did on Harry Styles. Eternal sunshine indeed.

*If you’re in Atlanta and craving Gullah Geechee, I recommend Virgil’s Gullah Kitchen in College Park. Get the Shawk Bites, Shrimp & Crab Gravy Rice, and Chucktown Chewie Sundae.

P.S. Pour yourself a glass of wine and read CJ Hauser’s “The Crane Wife”. It’ll break your heart and put it all back together again.

On Opposites

The Opposites Game for Patricia Maisch

By Brendan Constantine

This day my students and I play the Opposites Game
with a line from Emily Dickinson. My life had stood
a loaded gun, it goes and I write it on the board,
pausing so they can call out the antonyms —

My Your
Life Death
Had stood? Will sit
A Many
Loaded Empty
Gun?

Gun.

For a moment, very much like the one between
lightning and its sound, the children just stare at me,
and then it comes, a flurry, a hail storm of answers —

Flower, says one. No, Book, says another. That’s stupid,
cries a third, the opposite of a gun is a pillow. Or maybe
a hug, but not a book, no way is it a book. With this,
the others gather their thoughts

and suddenly it’s a shouting match. No one can agree,
for every student there’s a final answer. It’s a song,
a prayer, I mean a promise, like a wedding ring, and
later a baby. Or what’s that person who delivers babies?

A midwife? Yes a midwife. No that’s wrong. You’re so
wrong you’ll never be right again. It’s a whisper, a star,
it’s saying I love you into your hand and then touching
someone’s ear. Are you crazy? Are you the president

of Stupid-land? You should be, When’s the election?
It’s a teddy bear, a sword, a perfect, perfect peach.
Go back to the first one, it’s a flower, a white rose.
When the bell rings, I reach for an eraser but a girl

snatches it from my hand. Nothing’s decided, she says,
We’re not done here. I leave all the answers
on the board. The next day some of them have
stopped talking to each other, they’ve taken sides.

There’s a Flower club. And a Kitten club. And two boys
calling themselves The Snowballs. The rest have stuck
with the original game, which was to try to write
something like poetry.

It’s a diamond, it’s a dance,
the opposite of a gun is a museum in France.
It’s the moon, it’s a mirror,
it’s the sound of a bell and the hearer.

The arguing starts again, more shouting, and finally
a new club. For the first time I dare to push them.
Maybe all of you are right, I say.

Well, maybe. Maybe it’s everything we said. Maybe it’s
everything we didn’t say. It’s words and the spaces for words.
They’re looking at each other now. It’s everything in this room
and outside this room and down the street and in the sky.

It’s everyone on campus and at the mall, and all the people
waiting at the hospital. And the post office. And, yeah,
it’s a flower, too. All the flowers. The whole garden.
The opposite of a gun is wherever you point it.

Don’t write that on the board, they say. Just say poem.
Your death will sit through many empty poems.