Five Cool Things #2
This week: longing for a past that never was, poems that save lives, and a life-changing seed bread recipe
Five Cool Things is a weekly review of five cool things that I came across during the week. It goes out every Friday morning around 10am.
Also, you can support this newsletter by upgrading to a paid subscription.
Here’s Five Cool Things
1. “The Past Your Longing for Is a Past That Never Was” — Marias Cosmos at Grandmotherly Wisdom
I love Maria’s writing. She expresses ideas and thoughts I have about making sense of this world, and “living into community” much better than I do. I take inspiration from both her writing style and her posts.
In this post, she reminisces about her father’s childhood in Poland.
“[When my American friends] complain how [much] harder they have it than their boomer parents did, I’d never trade places with mine. When they speculate about how people used to live in the good old days, I still have firsthand witnesses to tell me how it really was.”
Maria tells the story of how her Dad’s mom was born in 1918 in rural Poland, which was “still with living memory” of when peasants in the country rose up and killed 800 landlords and 200 noblemen in the region, sometimes referred to as “The Peasant Uprising”. The peasants were poor and desperate before the massacre and they remained so afterwards.
Maria writes that while traditional modes of living seem seductive, you can never go back to “simpler times”. Nor should you want to, she argues.
As a solution, Maria advocates that we form small “networks of belonging”. The tradeoff is that we may have to give up some autonomy and optionality in our own lives. Would you do it?
Check out her post, and you can subscribe to her newsletter here.
2. “Attention!” — Adam Karagouz
“Fatigue makes it even harder to sort the trivial from the salient and navigate the glut of decisions modern life throws at us.”
– “The Erosion of Deep Literacy”, by Adam Garfinkle
This short piece by Adam Karagouz outlines the dilemma of reclaiming one’s attention, and gives some great resources for reading and researching more deeply into the subject.
I found Adam’s piece earlier this week when I published my own piece about reclaiming your attention earlier this week.
Adam also gives some thought to practical solutions for reclaiming one’s attention at the end of his piece.
Attention a complex subject, with a glut of content out there. I enjoyed Adam’s post because it collects links to some of the most relevant recent works on the topic.
Here’s some of the source material for Adam’s post.
“The Watchman’s Rattle talks about how when the complexity of the environment outpaces our ability to collectively make sense of it, human groups run into problems. Stolen Focus, Reader, Come Home, and The Shallows highlight how our attention has been fragmented, hindering our ability to focus deeply and for long periods of time. The Your Undivided Attention Podcast and The Attention Merchants discuss the commodification of human attention throughout history…”
It’s something I’ve been thinking about this week and that I expect to write about more.
3.“What’s self-nature?” — @bewithcassandra
I liked this tweet by @bewithcassandra. The idea of having an internal ecology us exciting to me. I don’t know how to answer this question but it seems like a rich prompt for self-inquiry.
4.Writers and Lovers — a novel by Lily King.
My partner read this and encouraged me to read it. I did so over the course of the last week while visiting her in NYC.
The book is incredible. As someone who has invested(or sacrificed, depending on how you look at it) nearly two decades of my life for art and writing, this book hit me deep in the chest.
Casey is the 31 year-old protagonist. She’s a would-be novelist that lives in a potting shed owned by her brother’s rich ex-boyfriend. Casey works at a fancy restaurant, and her mom recently died peacefully while visiting S. America with a group of friends.
For six years, Casey has been working on a novel about her mother’s upbringing in Cuba, to American parents.
The prose of the novel is fluid and tight. It has to be, because Casey’s life is awful. Not only is she grieving her mother, constantly abused by her bosses at work, living in a shitty potting shed, and can’t finish her novel, but as the novel progresses, things continue to get worse.
I don’t want to spoil the plot, but it’s hard to read at times. As the reader, I felt that I suffered with her throughout the book. Not just empathically but just like “Jeez, this is awful. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
There are times in the novel when it seems like Casey is not going to make it. The character reaches a point of disassociation where she relates feeling like her skin is the only thing that holds her together.
The level of suffering in the book is such that it seems like the novel could’ve been set in 1900’s Soviet Russia, or Poland(see above).
That said, there is a redemptive aspect towards the end of the book that feels like splashing into a cold pond.
I’d recommend this book for anyone who is writing or aspires to be a writer. I’d also recc it to anyone who is trying to get back into reading fiction(in the middle of the Venn diagram is me).
If you read it, shoot me a message. I loved the book and want to hear your thoughts.
You can also buy it here to support this newsletter.
Here’s the “suggested reading” from the back pages to give you feel for the book.
5.“English Major Dropout to ‘Making It’ as a Freelance Writer” —Jason Levin(with edits by Paul Millard), at Boundless
Jason shows you how he “made it” as a freelance writer. He gives details on the amount of time, effort, and luck it takes to pay your bills as a freelance writer.
I left a couple of comments below the post. If you have thoughts, join the discussion!
If you’re trying to make a career writing online, read this post.
Honorable Mention
This seed bread recipe is incredible—tasty, nutritious, and good af when toasted. Partner and I made it with a Ginger Squash soup, with sauteed miso kale. Thank you to my friend Chalice for passing it along.
She says, “I love to layer it with a healthy dose of avocado or pb+ jelly. So hearty.”
Was thinking about starting a weekly feature about food here. I love how feed brings people together, and I love to cook for the people I love. What do y’all think?
Photo of finished product.
“How to Start a Secret Society”
I’m kind of tired/bored of tech/crypto, but I’m a sucker for a clever community building manual. This one’s from Urbit.
h/t(read: hat-tip) to Thom Ivy.
“What’s a poem that saved your life?”
Here’s poem by W.B. Yeats that I memorized and then forgot a long time ago.
The coat part reminds me of this image of a 19th century Ladino woman.
For relevant and current memes, follow @taylorlorenz3.0 on ig
Newsletters I Like Right Now:
Chris Arnade Walks the World - Chris walks through different places all over the world and writes about them. Most recently, he was in Tel Aviv. Cult newsletter, great concept.
Sex and the State - Cathy Reisenwitz writes about power, both state power and of sexual/personal power. This is a new one for me, been enjoying it lately.
Culture Study - Anne Helen Petersen’s writing continues to motivate me to become a better newsletter writer, and to build a community around this newsletter. She’s one of my favorite Substack writers, and there are some monster writers on this platform.
Heated — For people who are legitimately angry about the state of things in this country. Clear-eyed and focused. I love the tone and the subject matter of this one. We should be angry about the state of things, and we need to think clearly about where to focus that anger. This Substack does that.
Default Wisdom — Katherine Dee writes about the history of the internet, cultural trends, and dating and romance. Last week, I mentioned her writing about Humdog, who published cult blog posts about being a submissive in the online world of Second Life–in 2006(!). Always excellent, always interesting. Recommended.
Don’t Let the Internet Bring You Down
Just be like Mariah.
Oh and Taylor Swift is gay? I think that’s cool.