When the snow is falling like it is while writing today in NY, I like to say it’s falling “sweetly.” It’s like it wants to tuck the city in a weighted blanket.
I stay inside if I can. It’s a little lonely but also kind of expansive. I balloon up to the size of my room and feel the boundaries of it in a fuzzy kind of way. My windows are filled with white fluff and the air around them has a breath of chill.
The inside/outside boundary on these days is marked by effort. I could go outside but that would mean gearing up, knowing where I’m going, knowing how to get there. Much better to stay inside and journal, read, stare out the window, wander around within the boundaries of my self.
It’s a strange thing, this self that we create. We behave like what is me and what is not is easily marked. We imagine a chill when we are close to that which is not us. Something that we don’t see any immediate benefit from. Something we are unfamiliar with. Something off brand. Something that demands a piece of us, as if we keep a stockpile of extra self pieces somewhere for this very occasion. Venturing into this “not us” space is marked by effort. We don’t don a coat and hat to go outside ourselves but we have to know where we’re going.
But these articles wander around that space by the boundary. They sit with the chill of what we owe to others and ask: is this something we also owe to ourselves? Do we owe it to ourselves to engage in public life? Do we owe it to ourselves to maintain our body’s original form? Do we owe it to our namesake to endure trauma for truth?
Maybe the boundary between ourselves and others is more permeable than we like to think. Maybe what we owe ourselves is what we also owe to each other.
Good Reads
Uber and the Ongoing Erasure of Public Life - Nikil Saval
I have been taking Ubers nonstop since November. (I fucking Konmari-ed my winter coat like a dingus.) But every time I take the subway or bus I feel like a superhero, like I deposited funds into my savings, like I’m saving the MTA.
There’s a part of me that knows taking cars is bad, but it is easily quieted by the feeling of sitting in the back of a warm car driving over the Williamsburg bridge. Nikil Saval puts this satisfaction a different way: “At the heart of Uber’s appeal is the feeling of ordering a car: that liquid transition from pressing a button to arriving at a destination. It’s a fantasy of convenience, though one that comes largely at the expense of drivers—and even, it turns out, of other consumers.”
What is luxury if not expending those providing it and those around you?
The luxury of convenience is the most guilty of this. You know the feeling. How do we even begin to undo the damage brought by our daily dependence on this luxury? Who knows, but Uber is definitely not going to bring us the solution.
“A more serious proposal might start with the possibility that Uber is opposed to public transit by design—every ride taken on a subway or bus is competition for its growing supply of cars. The app’s interface—that empty map—declares its priorities: the individual, the vehicle, and a place to be. It erases public space and public lives. The public good is not far behind.”
Will I stop taking cars? Probably not. But I will mentally detract points from my score for the good place every time I do.
Read this if you have ever ordered delivery on a snowy day and made a dude on a bike with plastic bags for gloves to bring you pad thai.
I Turned My Own Jawbone Into Earrings - Merritt K
This piece from Merritt K from last July will stick with you. The grabby headline is true, there is a piece of jawbone that becomes earrings, but doesn’t begin to capture why this piece is great.
There are existential questions at the heart of this. What does it mean to exist as a soul in a body? What happens when the essence of who you are is at odds with the body you’re in? Can changing the body make it such that it matches the soul?
“No matter how much I try to shake the foundational mind-body at the root of so much European philosophy, I see myself as exterior shell and soul. I wanted to keep this fragment of my jaw for a reason that went beyond simple fascination. I wanted to make a part of myself into something wonderful.”
Where does this desire to perfect, sculpt, adorn our bodies to express the intangible come from? Do we do this for ourselves? Do we do it for others? Does it matter if it's a project that is destined to fail?
“As I move through the world, I still evade and turn away from my reflection. But now I have a talisman—a piece of me that is perfect, lasting, and divine.”
The last question: where do i buy?
Read this if you ever catch yourself in the mirror and don’t recognize yourself.
A New Myth: Untethering My Name from White Folks’ Imaginations - Victoria Massie
Names connect us. Before our era of choosing an internet handle to go by, they were simply assigned as a way to keep track of a population. But keeping track is always a front for control. Victoria Massie digs into the the lasting effects of the destructive control of slavery by attempting to understand and locate in space and time to origins of her last name. She confronts erasure, conflict, and disillusionment.
“One of the major tenets of genealogical research is that the answers you find depend on the questions you’re willing to ask. When race rears its head, some answers remain buried simply because of the identity of the person asking.”
The stories we tell ourselves can hinge on a lot of things (status, orientation, age) but many, myself included, tell themselves a story about legacy. What happens when your last name is a placeholder or a part of a master’s chain? How do you write the story of your legacy?
“But for white people, the burden of proof rests differently. They enjoy the benefit of the doubt that what they’ve said, what they believe of themselves, is true—despite the evidence. And when the evidence speaks back, it’s easier to shut down the conversation to avoid accountability.”
Read this if you could tell me what your first name “means.” (According to a postcard I stared at from ages 4-17, mine apparently means “little truthful one.”)
Hate Read
The Life of an American Boy at 17
Yeah, this one.
Honestly, the story itself is a well-wrought report that pokes at the questions I keep silently asking of every white person (including myself) since 2016. The decision to put this boy on the cover of Esquire is worthy of the hate. But the article itself isn’t.
Let me clarify.
This article made me viscerally uncomfortable. The boy recalls a “difficult time” in his life when he suffered fall out from literally beating up a girl. Later in the piece he laments that he knows what not to do but not what he can do. This is the language of white supremacy, of misogyny. It’s chilling.
But we can’t keep imagining that all 17 year-olds are like the Parkland students leading the revolution. Just like every other generation, this one is filled with those who will vote for the next bigot who runs for office.
Waiting for the older generation to die will do nothing to protect women, people of color, immigrants, the differently abled, indigenous peoples.
The root is still sprouting saplings. It will keep sprouting saplings.
Vote. Make your friends vote. Create spaces, art, things that change the hue of culture to an inclusive one.
Rec of the Week
My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh writes characters that are broken. And not in the way that Natasha Lyonne’s character in Russian Doll is. They are a broken that seems unfixable, or maybe it just seems that way because Moshfegh focuses on the space between their shattered parts.
In this novel, the main character wants to sleep through a whole year to regenerate. She wants to wake up a new person with a new life. The narrative follows her attempts to do so and the results of her self-experiment.
Read this if you don’t mind feeling upset about a protagonists choices. (Also, read this if you want to feel self righteous about how you’ve been self-medicating with weed and wine instead of hard sedatives.)
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