Week 4
It’s only been a week since the last but it’s felt like forever, in a good way, if that makes any sense. Maybe it’s because I’ve been working a lot this week or maybe it’s because I saw a lot of loved ones this week or maybe it’s because I’m very underslept and so time processes in a weird hazy way or maybe it’s just because I don’t give myself enough space to process what happens each day before the next arrives. Which is fine. I guess I’m doing it here, on this newsletter? I actually hate how overwhelmed I feel all of the time, and I am not sure how to be less this way, even though it’s my resolution to learn how. But I’m trying my best! Which is the best I can do.
These three poems by Kyle Seamus Brosnihan on Electric Literature, after Josephine Baker, Jasper Johns, and Claude Monet. I loved these lines: “To be an artist you have to give up / everything, including the desire to be a good artist. I assumed / it would lead to complete failure, / but I decided that didn't matter / —that would be my life.” and “Everyone discusses art and pretends / to understand, as if it were necessary / to understand, when it is simply necessary / to love.”
I didn’t cook much at all this week because I fed off my loved ones’ cooking, ha! A & B fed me hearty kale-walnut risotto; S fed me yummy mapo and sauteed veggies and shrimp; M fed me her favorite Thai recipes from her childhood for her birthday dinner surrounded by her loved ones, many of whom have also become my loved ones, like a friendship osmosis; my stomach is so warm and full! And delighted and grateful! I feel like when loved ones cook for you, it doesn’t really matter how it actually tastes, because it was cooked with love, which is the best meal of all. (Though to be clear, all these meals were delicious.)
I said last week that pastries are love tokens; for more proof, my parents brought me fresh 稻香村 pastries, and even though you can buy the prepackaged versions in the Chinatown grocery stores here in NYC, nothing beats a box of fresh from Beijing.
Sweet, sweet tangerines from the Canal Street fruit vendors.
I felt weepy at the In Search of the Miraculous show at Marlborough Gallery, which featured artists like Agnes Martin and Piet Mondrian and Etel Adnan and Olafur Eliasson, an eclectic mix but for the show’s theme: transcendence, across a diverse feature of medium, geography, and generation—it was about depth of feeling, from the artist and from the viewer, rather than anything else. The curation was successful; I have no idea how a seemingly haphazard mix of color and form on a canvas can be so fucking moving, but I’m grateful to the artists that it is.
I did my first ever reading on Thursday at Yu & Me Books through Lactose Intolerant. So happy my first ever reading could be through a friend’s series highlighting writers of color in Chinatown. Though to be clear, I was really fucking nervous! My voice shook, I used way too many hand motions, I read too fast, I didn’t use any eye contact. But I did it, and I’m proud of myself. Maybe it’ll get easier as I do more of these events? Besides, in a way, I don’t care how I performed, because in the crowd were so many of my friends, more than I knew were planning to show up, which made me feel really weepy and warm inside. S brought an orange and J brought a hand-drawn Year of the Rabbit card and others brought loud cheers. And I just! Feel! Really! Grateful! Not! Sure! Why! I deserve! This! Love! I read from Chlorine’s erotic tampon scene (my favorite scene) and also a short note I wrote to myself while I work on my new novel manuscript. (When I draft longer works, I often write myself little notes reminding myself why I should care and what I’m trying to say.) The new novel is about depression and precarity and work, but it’s also about how love (all kinds of love) can fight that despair. Much of the draft is inspired by the love my friends give me and the love I try to give them. So the note I read aloud was a love letter to friendship fighting against despair. My friends said they teared up; I’m just grateful I could read a love letter that night. It’s here, if you’re interested in reading it. I’m not going to publish it anywhere else. I want to keep its first and main existence read aloud in a warm crowd of loved ones in a bookstore in Chinatown.
Have a lovely week.
Oh, by the way. There were some nice personal publishing wins this week, which, to be clear, is totally different from writing wins. Writing wins (like hitting a word count, making a sentence perfect, supporting a writer-friend) are in my control, while publishing wins (like a story acceptance or a deal contract) are not. I remind myself of this whether I’m in a publishing win-drought or not. Anyway, I can’t share anything yet, but in the meantime, I will share that HarperCollins has finally agreed to enter mediation with the HarperCollins Union! Yay! The strike will continue until a fair contract agreement. To keep it up, there’s a solidarity rally on Tuesday. I’ll be there. Come through if you can and say hi.