Things to Consume: 02.23
A few items you may find enjoyable
Winter is a cruel teacher. It’s the haughty professor who meets your questions with condescension but answers with eloquence and detail. It’s the grizzled coach that uses verbal abuse and mental manipulation to reveal within you a deeper level of resilience and vigor. It’s the older relative who beats your shit in to teach you how to avoid getting your shit beaten in. It’s someone who believes the best way to build you up is to first break you down.
To be clear: this pedagogy is not one I condone. I’ve endured many teachers, coaches, and bosses who deploy this methodology and I hope the ice on their porch steps never melts. But as callous and questionable as these people are, they are also, like winter, inevitable, and I’ve learned to absorb their lessons regardless of the delivery.
Though I hate its delivery, every year I emerge from winter knowing something new about myself, or how to handle myself in a new way. Last year, I learned to use winter as a time of rest and recuperation rather than fighting its cold grip. The year before that, I learned the importance of turning outward and seeking good company instead of stewing in my own misery. And the three college winters preceding that taught me that if I drink enough, I won’t even feel the chill.
This winter was the first that I dropped the false hope that maybe, just maybe, I would avoid sliding into my scheduled state of despair. That decision began with the understanding that, for a few months, mostly everything would suck. My psyche would suffer. My body would look and feel like mudcrack. Monotony would lead to boredom, boredom to anxiety, anxiety to a lingering sense of failure. Despite my best attempts to curtail the sadness, some days the sadness would win. And it would be okay, because that’s the only thing it could be.
The lesson, then, came as a surprise. By preparing for the worst (something I excel at), I found that the small pleasures and delights sprinkled throughout my week shined a little brighter than they had in the past. The good news, the bookstore digs, the spontaneous afternoon “wanna-grab-a-beer?-s”, the quality thrift store finds, the flame of the fireplace, the long runs on days the sun did decide to show itself — because I didn’t hinge my entire disposition on things too light to support it, sucking every source of joy dry and slipping into defeat when they no longer delivered the same rush, these things retained their luster for longer, long enough to get me through the winter.
Whether it’s weird or problematic or unsustainable, I don’t know. Brains are dumb and dysfunctional and everyone has their own way of coping. Who knows how I’ll do it next year. I’m just glad I can now say, both figuratively and literally, that brighter days are ahead.
Things to Consume
“They Always Come Crawlin’ Back” by Claire Clarusillo for Gawker.
RIP Gawker.
Informative video about the complex and mystifying relationship between glass and gravity.
A Photographer’s Parents Wave Farewell by Eren Orbey for New Yorker.
Everyone — and I mean everyone — in my family does the driveway farewell. It’s the easiest way to say “I love you, and I will miss you.” I know this because my great-grandma Louise would wave a 🤟 at us every time we left her house. It’s how we said goodbye as we watched her casket lower into the ground.
Anyway! If you feel like sobbing, click the link above.
“Kids Toys, Adult Issues” Sculptures by Andy Sahlstrom.
Selected Covers (2016-2020) // Baseball Gregg
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kammerer
“We are showered every day in gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back.”
Great Sand Dune National Park and Preserve
It’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s windy. Not a place to escape the sun. Sand will find every crevice of your bag and body. Three miles up a dune is harder than 15 miles anywhere else.
And it’s magical. 10/10. Highly recommend.
My new child: the Fujifilm XS-10.
Very impressed so far. Great grip, easy interface, decent in low light, incredible color, milky midtones. Still learning its strengths and weaknesses, but it’s a nice little vessel.
Violent Delights by Sarah Marshall for Believer.
Top-tier piece on what true crime culture does to our individual and collective minds.
My little brother and I waving to the Rockies.
That’s all for now. If you’ve recently consumed something you think others may find enjoyable, personally deliver it to me or leave it in the comments below ⬇️
Thanks for consuming 🤟