What I want in life
Miscellanea #55: Some simple and pretty things, plus everything re: coronavirus, and some art I made (all the way at the bottom)
Golden hour on Bienville St.
It’s Friday morning on my porch, and it’s much cooler and less humid today. It’s a welcome change in a time of plenty unwelcome change — I’m doing my best to stay grateful for the small things.
For me, to pandemic has been to ponder — and so the gaps of my new routine have been full of philosophical considerations. Like: should I do the dishes tonight, or save them for the morning? Or: is it alright to start drinking this early? (The answer of which is always, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.”)
In all seriousness, with so much of my everyday life stripped from me in an instant, I felt prompted to consider what I actually want in life. It seems a heavy deliberation, but to mull over anything smaller, for me, quickly becomes convoluted with dumb details and paradoxical questioning. But it only took me a couple minutes to prescribe my life’s desires.
What I want in life: to share things I like with people I love. More than individual legacy (which pathetically enters this reflection at all), I want loving experience. Thankfully, coronavirus can’t take that away from me.
I hope this newsletter finds you well. I’m excited to share some things I like with people I love (heh, that’s you).
Enjoy these things:
Pontcha Surf Club, a brand and Louisiana surf community I started with my friend Keegan, was subject of a short film from a local student sponsored by Vans, then Surfer Magazine picked it up. Here’s a photo I took of Keegan and Billy Hingle, the (probable) first person to surf Grand Isle.
My friend Kyle opened a walk-up coffee window in the middle of a pandemic:
Beautiful live piano and the sounds of a small cafe in Berlin →
“It was a Friday afternoon and people were out in the garden. It was the warmest day of the year so far. It's the kind of place where everyone seems to work there. Familial. I gave a fifty minute concert in two halves. They poured me a drink in the middle. Dunya asked how I found them. I said I just walked past. She smiled and said, ‘That's how I want it.’”
Every week I’ve been making a trip to the craft beer store down the street (beer is essential, and you can’t tell me otherwise). This week I picked up a stout from Omnipollo, a brewery in Stockholm co-owned by their designer. Everything is beautiful →
RIP John Prine. This article from his friend Jason Isbell is beautiful. My friend Winston covered his song Great Compromise. My friend Merle covered Blue Umbrella.
Speaking of great and vulnerable songwriters, here’s my favorite new timely release from Brent Cobb:
Corona Extra
There’s a lot to take in here, and if you’re tired of reading everything virus-related, don’t over-do it.
This essay from Arundhati Roy is wonderful →
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”
Stay home, because ‘This Pandemic Is Not Your Vacation’ →
“Americans struggle mightily with the ideology of individualism: that all that matters, in a particular moment, is what is happening to you and yours. Rural America is asking you to think otherwise. You might “enjoy” your quarantine more. But the rural places so many Americans treat as playgrounds, and the workers who make that play and respite and feeling of safety possible, may suffer profoundly in your service.”
A good website to check for stats →
Any counts, at this point, are wildly inaccurate due to testing inefficiencies, but I still find comfort in being able to look at something like this.
What I learned from living a social isolated life for the past two years →
Good arguments for doing dishes, establishing a routine, and making your house a home.
Tips From Someone With Nearly 50 Years Of Social Distancing Experience →
My personal favorite tip: Embrace the grumpiness! “You get older and you start saying ‘OK, I'm not going to necessarily be pleasant when I don't feel pleasant.’” Ha.
How to Stay Married During a Pandemic →
“The very things that might balance us are painful and challenging. It’s difference and it’s tension and we need difference and tension in order to check ourselves, and to grow. But it’s not, like, a pleasant experience a lot of the time.”
What If a Shrinking Economy Wasn’t a Disaster? →
The Routines That Keep Us Sane →
“A modern stoic,” her fellow poet W. H. Auden once observed, “knows that the surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time: decide what you want or ought to do during the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble.”
The Gospel in a Time of Social Distancing →
When ‘essential’ means ‘expendable’ →
This American Life: Alone Together →
I still haven’t gotten to listen to this, but I’m sure it’s great ☻
P.S. I had my friend Erik of Constance make some 8.5 x 11” risograph prints of one of my iPad doodles. They look great! If you want to purchase one, just let me know.
