Charcuterie Volume 23

Tis I, here with just a little bit to offer you.

I’m writing this from the bath. Soaking in my lavender CBD bath bomb from Anthill Farm, bought at The Callicoon Pantry along with $18 ramp salt and five fresh and hot pierogis. Callicoon is a tiny town upstate, right on the Delaware in the area where the Delaware forms the border between New York and Pennsylvania. On the Pennsylvania side, just down the road from the Callicoon Bridge, there’s a sculpture garden that’s a poem in my head that hasn’t been written yet because I’m tired. Which is a terrible excuse. Last month I wrote one poem every day. Next month, I'll also write one poem every day. This month, I’ve traveled every weekend, and I’m off to Texas tomorrow, so I don’t have anything. This is all I’ve got:

A sweet piece on Dolly Parton and her late husband—and on the sweetness of marriage in general.

Molly Young’s account of her miserable week in the "‘happiest country on earth.” Happiness seems to have a lot to do with saunas. Maybe something to do with national identity.

Hanif Abdurraqib: On Seatbelts and Sunsets. Read it.

After attending my dear friend Holly Cunningham’s fantastic show based on “The Swimmer” by John Cheever, I read that. It’s a masterful (read: unsettling) story. The best short ones are usually unsettling.

I also read Lady Chatterley’s Lover which I still haven’t properly processed. Kathryn and I recorded the podcast tonight. I thought I wouldn’t like the book and I loved it, and she thought she’d love it and she wasn’t so sure.

Then I reread The English Understand Wool, and I just don’t know where to go from there because where do you go after Helen DeWitt?

I’ve stopped and started a few books, and I just don’t understand why everything I own has to either be so serious or take itself so seriously. I’m going to try Grange House in the bath (I have 20 minutes to spare).

I ate fresh strawberries from the farmer’s market in Nashville and I really can’t stress enough how spiritual the strawberry is to me. And I also can't stress enough how uninterested I am in a supermarket strawberry. Literally don’t come near me with that.

I had a realization that old houses always make me feel forlorn. Bereft almost. I had this realization in Savannah, which checks out. When I was little, my parents took Kathryn and I to see Scripps, where my mom went to school. Without voicing it, I had harbored an expectation that we would be able to enter my mother’s college dorm room and view it in a preserved state. Like Monticello or Marble House. When we got there, and I was informed that, no, of course we couldn’t go inside, someone else lived there now, I was actually distraught. And also embarrassed at my own foolishness, but mostly distraught. I’m not sure what it says about who I am as a person—at the core—but I think it says a lot.

I also think that vultures are beautiful when they’re flying. They’re so big and so soaring. It’s too bad they’re not so beautiful up close, and also too bad that their presence signifies death and decay. I love to watch them fly.

Goodbye <3

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