🔗The More You Give, The More You Have 🔗
Everything is closing down. What’s opening up? There are a lot of moments in life where it feels like the walls are closing in. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning and think in the blackness about all the things that could go wrong. This was before things really did go globally, catastrophically wrong. Now it feels like the walls are closing in more literally than ever. Basic parts of society are closing up shop and we’re all stuck at home with no horizon in sight, feeling adrift and haunted by the invisible.
So let’s take inventory. What’s within these walls? Currently: Two humans. One cat. Ten plants. Maybe 100 pens. 300 or so books. 500 or so zines. One radio tuned to the jazz station. The calming voice of one jazz radio host, still on the air.
I’ve got sunlight. I’ve got heat. I’ve got friends out there, somewhere. I’ve got 25 avocados because, let’s be honest, all rules are off and I’m eating a daily bowl of guacamole. I’ve got so much within these walls, and it’s all full of potential. Writer Octavia Butler is the one who reminded us that the only constant in the world is change. The only thing you can bank on in human life is having to adapt. Does it feel good? No. But adaptation is familiar, we know it in our bones. So how will we adapt to this? How can we find new habits and new ways of being? How can we find ways for “socially distant” to not mean socially isolated?
I started the day writing 10 postcards. I ended the day making jars of pickled red onions. I’m still here. So are you.
Photo at top: Seattle from the plane, taken Monday, a million years ago.
Stuff I Made
Hey I made a book!
Somehow, the world still turns. I ended my Year of Zines project this week with zine number 365. I’m collecting 100 of my favorite zines into this book, which will debut in April. I made the entire book Creative Commons, so it’s free to photocopy and share. Please feel free to preorder a copy!
Lazy Lunch zine
For everyone who’s suddenly working from home and wondering what to make for lunch, I got you! I made this recipe zine of 12 cheap (under $5) and easy (under 30 mins) vegan “recipes.” Recipes is in air quotes because I am not a chef, merely a dirtbag artist who loves to cook and hates to spend money! If you need some cooking ideas, I made the zine available for download for $1, so you can print it at home.
Stuff I Love
Artist Suzy González is one of the many artists I met in San Antonio, Texas last week at a zine night-market organized by the totally rad San Antonio Zine Fest. González dyes corn husks and then assembles them into maiz protest signs. I had never seen this technique before and I was struck by the symbolic and visual genius of it. You can buy prints of the signs for $15.
This brilliant tote bag that I bought at the same event from San Antonio-based quarterly Warship Zine.
The Smudge - This LA-made risograph mini-magazine is just gorgeous. I signed up for a one-year subscription because it’s such a treat!
Radiolab’s “The Other Latif” - Reporter Latif Nasser investigates what happened to a man who shares his name—and is imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Nasser grapples with a lot of the same questions I was neck-deep in over the last year about how to tell this story is complicated, unknowable, and has no clear end.
Also:
Digital library services, baby! The county library here in Portland is shut down for… who knows how long. Now is the dawning of the Era of the Audiobook. Many libraries in the United States use the app Libby—check it out. It’s like Audible, except free.
Paid sick leave. It’s absurd and terrible that we don’t all have them. Even caregivers in elder-care facilities can’t afford to call in sick.
This video of Italian neighbors, in the midst of Coronavirus lockdown, playing songs together from their apartment porches.
What I’m reading
It’s hard to believe that last week I was traveling across the country and now I’m not even traveling out of my neighborhood. But last week I was at a writing conference in San Antonio and read three excellent books. The quote in the subject line of this email comes from comedian Jenny Slate’s book Little Weirds, which is marketed as a funny memoir but is actually a hilarious and poignant poetry collection. I guess the publisher thought no one would buy poetry? Anyway, I loved it.
I didn’t know anything about Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women except that it made a lot of “Best of 2019” lists. Based on the cover, I thought it was maybe a bland novel about three women who meet in business school or something? But I picked it up and was BLOWN. AWAY. It’s a jaw-droppingly intimate nonfiction narrative about relationships in three women’s lives. It left me sad and furious and grateful for all the love I have in my life.
I have wanted to read Carmen Maria Machado’s new book, In the Dream House, since it debuted last year, but the library’s hold-list was six months deep. Praise be that this book is popular because it is stellar - an original, insightful, and beautiful way to tell a traumatic story centering on queer relationships.
Something to Do
Write your friends and family letters! As long as the US Postal Service is still running, we can write each other letters. Keep connected, keep in touch. While everyone was out stocking up on toilet paper, I was out stocking up on postage stamps.
I'll send out another update next month. In the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter. You can also support my work on Patreon and receive wonderful things in the mail. The archive of past newsletters is right here.