Charcutitude

November notables, notions and nice things. Plus! Little moons as bullet points!

Reads:

☾ I stumbled upon this lovely piece honoring the life, legacy and poetry (all three the same thing?) of Louise Glück. Five poets who were close to Louise write about their favorite poem of hers and what it (and she) means to them. Elisa Gonzalez chose “The Denial of Death,” which was one of my favorites from Winter Recipes from the Collective. I love how each contributor approached the prompt so differently. Lovely, lovely and moving.

☾ For anyone else who has become totally captivated by this whole “which seasonal color palate makes you look better and which one makes you look like a grotesque hag” thing that seems to be SWEEPING social media, this Air Mail article is an amusing & relatable read. There’s honestly a lot to unpack within this trend/fascination—like have we as a society really reached a point where we think it’s worth $400 to get someone else to tell us what colors to wear and what colors not to wear instead of just…looking in the mirror??

Peace and blessings to the literally colorblind of course, but I know I look good in green and not in yellow already? But wait…do I? Logically, I know it’s dumb, but emotionally, I still want someone to tell me what colors I should be wearing. It’s like the fashion equivalent of love languages or something. Everyone just wants to know themselves, I guess—no easy feat, so I can understand how $400 seems like a small price to pay.

☾As a somewhat new inhabitant of an apartment sans dishwasher, this Slate piece on doing the dishes—and how often the task is ignored by cookbooks—was insightful. It touches on the joys, neutralities and miseries of the task and also on our increasing inability to quiet our minds and focus on one task at a time (i.e. doing the dishes without a podcast or music). I’ve been noticing how much “multitasking” negatively impacts my productivity and honestly happiness in the past few weeks, so that part hit home too.

Through this article, I discovered that author,

Marian Bull

is on Substack (delightful), and a quick perusal of

Mess Hall

led me to this recipe for DEVILED EGG DIP. Holy shit. If only I were posting this before Thanksgiving. And don’t get precious and weird with me about hard boiled eggs, egg yolks, eggs and mayo. This is a pro-egg space overall, but particularly when it comes to the devileds. I cannot wait to try this—it looks so good with the radishes too.

☾ Lastly, this post from

Letters of Note

that you MUST READ if you enjoy my ramblings about finding joy in the small things (coming right up down below). Rainer Maria Rilke does not ramble. He is eloquent. He gets it right. READ IT!

Most people don’t know at all how beautiful the world is

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Magazine(s) of the Month:

☾ I read three magazines of the literary variety this month. I recommend them all and also just recommend picking up obscure (and not obscure) magazines whenever presented with the opportunity. Create the opportunity like me. Door is a Jar I ordered online, and the other two I bought at my local magazine store. Kennedy was full of beautiful pictures (along with writing) centered on family. Poetry Magazine from the Poetry Foundation was…all poetry (shocking). Door is a Jar was a mix of poetry and fiction and one or two nonfiction pieces but all fairly short-form. It was probably my favorite but mostly because I love the name of it and the pages make a really satisfying crinkly crackly noise when you flip through them. Don’t know how to describe it or why their pages crinkle crackle better than others, but they DO.

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Sounds:

The suggestions my Spotify algorithm served up to me last month sucked. It was like my normal algorithm guy went on vacation or something and was replaced by a total buffoon. This month, the guy who knows me is back, BABY! I was going to say something here about how I have a kind of strange taste in music, and no one has ever asked what I’ve been listening to recently, so I don’t know why I include this. But then I realized I actually think I have amazing taste in music, and no one ever asked for any part of this, but people seem to like it anyway so whatever…here are some tunes that I’ve been loving of late:

☾ “Fancy” by Bobbie Gentry, no commentary necessary

☾ “Gonna Lose” by Built to Spill (actually a song my dad played in the car when I was in Virginia last month, not something my Spotify gave me)

☾ Melanie!!!! Particularly her 1971 (my sweet spot) album Gather Me, “Little Bit of Me” and “Some Day I’ll Be a Farmer” are so good to me.

☾ “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey” by Paul & Linda McCartney, which is weird as hell, but I kind of love it.

☾ “Sexual Healing”—Hot 8 Brass Band version, which I picked up off one of my lover’s playlists and is just so fun. I listen to it while I do the dishes, which I don’t think I’ll give up even though I know I should multitask less.

☾ “Total Control” by the Motels hits a spot. It’s kind of like the 1979 version of “My Love Mine All Mine” by Mitski, which is also a vibe.

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Tastes:

☾ Onions. Honestly no idea what I meant by this one. For a little peak behind the curtain, the way I write these posts is by keeping a running tab of notes throughout the month. This was the first recorded item under my usual “tastes” header with no further context. Just “Onions.” What inspired me to write this down? And when did it happen? No idea, but I do love onions.

☾ Around Halloween, the concentration of candy in my office increased by like 10000x. During that time, I fell in love with the little mini Twix. It’s not like I’d never had one before, I just hadn’t FULLY appreciated. Now I do, and if I don’t have one at 3pm every day, I’ll die. I was worried that the office team would stop ordering them after Halloween, but it hasn’t happened yet. Just in case though, I’ve been hoarding them in the filing cabinet at my desk.

important files

☾ Duck ragu from Union Square Cafe. TO DIE FOR. Also the duck fried rice from Birds of a Feather in Williamsburg. Duck in general. I’ve fallen for duck, and I don’t want to get up.

☾ You guys!!!!! Saved the best for last. The Pinkberry on 13th and 6th is open. I got so excited when I was walking home from the grocery store and saw it like a shining beacon in the night that I did a full blown photoshoot. I looked like a lunatic, but that’s joy, so I’m not embarrassed!

a straight screenshot of my camera roll

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Horrors:

☾ I interviewed a candidate for a job who literally told me (in an excited fashion) that he’s currently assisting on a research project that is ENCODING Dostoyevsky’s words so that some AI or Machine Learning something or other can study his writing style and hopefully one day REPLICATE it????? Someone stop this.

☾ At breakfast on Thanksgiving, we had one bottle of sparkling water and one of flat water. My sister had half a glass of sparkling water and asked me to pour her some more, but I was holding the flat water. I told her, and she said, and I quote, “it’s okay just mix them up.” I love this girl, but I was quakin’ in my boots.

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Happinesses (aka notes from The Joy Journal™, aka things I’m grateful for):

☾ 11/1 - Bodega egg and cheese.

☾ 11/6 - Walking into my apartment to the smell of lilies, which reminds me of my great grandmother, which is a gift.

☾ 11/16 - A man on the street heading home with a bouquet of roses.

☾ 11/18 - Looking where other people are looking.

☾ 11/23 - The leaves on a beautiful Thanksgiving morning, which are very much still on the trees and look like fire when the sun hits them…it feels like the ground is absolutely littered with leaves, so many you would think they’ve all fallen down, but then you look up and realize that half the trees are still totally clothed, and there are just so many leaves in the world, and you feel small. And grateful.

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Tips and tricks:

☾ I’ve said this before, but I’m renewing the recommendation. Be obsessed with something. Anything you want! As long as it’s not bad/evil. If you are a loyal reader, you may have just thought to yourself a moment ago, “Jesus, this girl talks about bodega egg and cheese sandwiches so much, it’s almost weird.” And you’d be right. But much like my obsession with clams, this is something I cultivate intentionally. I’ve honed in on my love for the bodega egg and cheese, and now I’ve tricked my brain into being a happy brain whenever I get to eat one. It’s literally magic!

☾ Get a strainer like this that rests over your sink. It’s a life changing item, and it’s dumb that strainers that stand in the bottom of the sink even exist.

☾ Look at pictures of your dead pets. This might sound like a morbid activity, but it’s honestly really sweet—if you can handle it I guess, or if enough time has passed. Among a sea of things that I get upset about easily and overzealously, dead pets is strangely not one of them. I’ve lost a lot of dogs in my short life—definitely more than the average person because my dad lives on a farm and we’ve never had less than three dogs at a time.

When a beloved dog dies, I am devastated, but I have come to understand that devastation is part of the bargain, which makes it somehow easier to bear? I don’t know if that makes any sense, and hopefully I don’t sound like a cold-hearted bitch! Here’s a photo from 2016 that my iPhone gave me as a present the other day. Two of the three dogs pictured have shaken the mortal coil—I love them so much still along with all the others, and I love to picture them all running around together in heaven, where they undoubtably are.

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In closing, it is officially the best time of the year—CHRISTMAS! I know because the somewhat battered (very well-loved) Elf on the Shelf that my mom carries around everywhere with her for like a month and a half around the holidays has emerged from wherever she goes in the off-season. Rejoice!

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Thank you for reading this long and rambling and totally all over the place letter about nothing and everything from me to you. I really love writing these, which is why they always end up so damn long.

I love you, and I’m grateful for you. All 301 of you (insane!). Kisses until next time.