Charcutitude Vol. 20
Charcuterie + Gratitude = Charcutitude <3
Hello, my dear reader! I’m writing to you from a horizontal position, tucked under a blanket with a dog curled up against my thigh. I’m as full as I’ve ever been—full of turkey (which IS actually good), mashed potatoes, stuffing, wild rice casserole, brussels sprout salad, green beans even, and pie—sweet potato AND pecan. I just beat my siblings in a game of Sorry and lost the next one. They want to watch a movie tonight, so I have to get this written for you so that I can join them. I’ll catch about 10 minutes of whatever they choose and then drift blissfully off to sleep.
It’s cheating a little bit to call this a charcuterie because I really only have one thing to offer, though I will include some poems and snapshots for you at the end. But the bulk of it will be this one thing, both in the name of keeping it short and sweet, and also because this is what’s been on my mind this month.
I realized, with some chagrin, that I am grateful for the same things over and over again. Chagrin because I’m supposed to be a creative genius over here, coming up with ever new delights. But no, reliably and repeatedly, my joys are the same. I know this because I keep a running list, and when I look back, as I have this month over the months that have passed, I cannot deny that I sound like a broken record:
I am consistently astounded by the clouds—frequently to the point of tears—and by the fact that I get to see them almost every day. And that they’re new and interesting and beautiful and terrifying every day, every hour, every minute. I will press my head sideways against a windowpane to see them, turn myself the wrong way around in the car, stand on a street corner while the light goes from walk to stop back to walk again just to look at them. I am grateful to be able to sneak onto my roof to be closer to them.
I am also delighted by dogs that look happy when they walk down the street. The ones that lift their feet in such a way that the walk is really a prance, and the head swings from side to side just so. I am grateful when they prance right by me, and I am also grateful when they stop to say hello, acting like they have something important to tell me.
I get to read good books, and I am grateful for them and for the feeling of reading them. How good it feels. I put off writing this until the very last minute because I’ve been reading—The Queen’s Gambit, which I didn’t know was a book first. It’s as good of a book as it was of a show, and I’m going to finish it soon. I’m grateful for the feeling of writing too, which I also love to do and am doing now to prove it.
I have a body that will run when I want it to, even if it hurts, and that too is a source of great astonishment. I am grateful that my body will and can do this for me. I recently have been running in the dark and the way that the Hudson River looks in the dark, like dirty paintbrush water, and the way that it moves, like terror, makes me feel like something deep and primal is trying to communicate with me through the dark undulation.
The seagulls that perch themselves on the broken down pier posts. Or a few weeks ago when it was still just a little bit light during my runs, it was the geese flying low over the water. Before that at the end of summer, the mourning doves on the roof. And always any time, the swallows at sunset. The past couple weeks the flocks of pigeons that fly by my office window around 3:30pm every day are beautiful no matter what everyone says. I know to turn around and look at them when the light around me starts fluttering.
Today at the Thanksgiving lunch, when we went around the table to say what we are grateful for, I said the birds.
I could have also said the evening light on the sides of New York buildings, or the water tower princesses or looking into people’s windows after dark, which in addition to the paintbrush water Hudson on my evening runs is one of the things that makes the early dark more bearable. It could have also been the moon in the morning sky, or the moon in the afternoon sky, or the moon in the night sky, where it’s traditionally supposed to be.
I could have also said couples making out on the sidewalk, kissing on the stoop, men walking home with flowers, friends waving goodbye to each other from across the subway platform, blowing kisses and pantomiming I love yous. Young lovers leaning against the doors inside the subway car, people dancing on the subway platform, maybe the subway itself if I think about it, where all this love and human proximity happens.
Many true things that I could have said, aside from the birds. I could have said instead, that I am grateful to be grateful. That it is, in fact, a gift beyond measure to be grateful for the same things over and over again. If this is what it is to be a broken record—if it means that I will get to skip in this groove forever—then that is what I want to be. A broken & grateful record.
okay, love you, bye <3