New year, new experiment: Home Ec for the Modern Human

There was a moment, in the midst of cancer and parenting during the insanity that was our life over the past few years, when Zach looked at me and said, “do you think our lives will ever feel not-awful?”

At least I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. It might have been me.

This sounds like something I would say much more than Zach. But at least in the twisted world of my own memory, the words came from his mouth – which makes them all the more shocking.

We were so lucky in all the love and support we had received during the incredibly difficult experience of adjusting to new parenthood and encountering cancer at the same time.

And yet in spite of the help we had benefitted from, we were completely overwhelmed.

I wish I could remember the exact moment or the exact circumstances – but there were so many bleary-eyed nights, it could have happened at any time.

But it really stopped me in my tracks. In spite of the bright spots of joy and many points of good fortune, we were not happy.

It was a slog just to get through the day to day grind – changing nappies, sorting dinner, paying bills.

And the realisation that our lives felt awful – and the best we could hope for was “not awful” – really broke my heart.

It was so much worse going through cancer treatment with a baby who wouldn’t sleep. But to be honest, these things made us feel stressed and miserable even before our lives more or less exploded.

At that moment – I started thinking…

I refuse to spend my life so stressed out by the dishes that I can’t enjoy the gift of my one and only life.

I don’t want to be always trying to escape the most basic material of my existence.

There has to be a better way.

For roughly the past year and a half, I’ve been thinking this over a lot.

I feel like there must be something deeply wounded – in our society and also in myself – that needs to be healed so that engaging with the things that keep our lives going (aka the domestic sphere) doesn’t feel like an endless obligation to drudgery.

Things are so much better now for my family than they were when I was in the midst of cancer treatment. But living through a global pandemic – and being more or less confined at home for a year – has brought its own pressures.

So to that end, I’ve decided this year to start an experiment.

I’m calling it Home Ec for the Modern Human.

I’d like to think about the everyday, sustaining things we do in our lives – how to do them in a way that makes life feel like less work and more fun.

Some of this will involve thinking about the little tips and practicalities. But I suspect making sense of our current relationship to the domestic sphere will also involve asking the big questions.

This is stuff most of us don’t really want to talk about or even think about. But even though I am a writer by profession, I spend more time thinking about and executing domestic-related tasks than anything else in my life.

Wouldn’t it be worth taking the time to think about how to handle all of this?

I don’t want to have to turn into a 1950’s housewife to get a bit of a better grip on life. I don’t think I have to. I know lots of people who seem to handle things with a whole lot less angst and resentment than I typically experience when managing these things.

So to that end, I’m planning to use 2021 to create my own Home Ec course – getting to grips with what it means to be living as a modern human – maximising joy and creativity, and minimising stress and drudgery.

Everyone deserves a life that lets them thrive.

Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash

Odds and Ends 10

Jeremy O. Harris Is Spending HBO’s Money on Producing Plays and May Be Funding the Revolution by Helen Shaw (from Vulture)

“As part of his HBO deal, Harris has secured a discretionary fund for experimental-theater production, essentially a weird-art slush fund. So he’s now a producer, first donating $80,000 from licensing his own plays toward micro-grants for artists and then throwing a little of HBO’s Peak TV money behind works by his own coterie.”

I’m Thinner. And I’m Not Happier. by Laura Fox (from Medium)

“I hardly go out. I don’t reply to messages from friends. I snap at my husband. I get impatient with my daughter. I’m tired all of the time. I’ve never been this unhappy in my life. Because thinness wasn’t the answer.

There is less of me. Less laughter. Less motivation. Less concentration. Less emotional regulation. Less intimacy. Less enjoyment. Less fulfillment. Less hope. I got what I wanted. But I have suffered great loss in the process.

The answer to my problems does not lie in the abuse of my body. It lies in connection with others. Connection to my support network. But thinness has severed these connections because they were getting in the way of the pursuit of less.”

The Pandemic Is Messing With Your Memories by Robert Roy Britt (from Medium)

“We don’t get any memory 100% right,” says Marianne Reddan, PhD, a researcher in psychology and neuroscience at Stanford University. “That’s actually a feature, not a bug.”

When a memory is recalled, it’s a bit like opening a computer file for editing. While neurons storing a particular memory are firing, the memory can be reinforced and solidified—or reimagined into something that doesn’t reflect reality. “This is a beautiful thing,” Reddan tells Elemental. “If you learned dogs were dangerous because one bit you as a kid, you can, through this process of memory reconsolidation, ‘unlearn’ your fear of dogs and begin to develop happy relationships with adorable pups.”

Memory is not designed to record every detail forever, Reddan says. “Its purpose is to help you predict (and survive) the future.” But memory’s pliability opens it up to a host of potential errors, with consequences ranging from benign to tragic, from innocent lies to dangerously inaccurate beliefs about Covid-19 or other hot-button issues.” (bold mine)

The Nuclear Family Was A Mistake by David Brooks (from The Atlantic)

“If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options. The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.

This article is about that process, and the devastation it has wrought—and about how Americans are now groping to build new kinds of family and find better ways to live.”

Why So Many Smart People Aren’t Happy: an interview with Raj Raghunathan by Joe Pinsker (from The Atlantic)

I think that as intelligent beings we need to recognize that some of the vestiges of our evolutionary tendencies might be holding us back. If I’m at an advertising agency, for example, or in software design, those are the kinds of fields where it is now being shown in quite a lot of studies that you actually perform better if you don’t put yourself under the scarcity mindset, if you don’t worry about the outcomes and enjoy the process of doing something, rather than the goal. […]

Ultimately, what we need in order to be happy is at some level pretty simple. It requires doing something that you find meaningful, that you can kind of get lost in on a daily basis.”

Making an Almanac by Adam Greenfield (from Playwrights Horizons)

“At some point, roundabout June, it dawned on me: this state, this not-knowing, is the state of making. It’s the space an artist must necessarily enter at some point when making something authentically new. And I opened that old lumpy file, dusted it off (for the imagery), and found this note I had jotted down: “The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do.” (This is Donald Barthelme, thinking beautifully.) “Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how. We have all heard novelists testify to the fact that, beginning a new book, they are utterly baffled as to how to proceed, what should be written and how it might be written, even though they’ve done a dozen. At best there’s a slender intuition, not much greater than an itch. The anxiety attached to this situation is not inconsiderable.”

Me: “Yes!”

What I had left out of my hyper, frantic thinking that week in Spain is a foundational truth about making theater. It’s what every artist knows: every director, stage manager, designer, teacher, and most especially every playwright. To make honest work, you have to go backwards, again and again, and try to do it for the first time, every time. You have to cultivate the state of not-knowing, make friends with it, and learn how to use it. And while I definitely didn’t need the scale of devastation, outrage and anxiety that this year has brought in order to get me there, I accept its invitation to reconsider all that I thought I knew.”

Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash

A New Year

I haven’t made
a resolution in years
January 1 is just
another day

why wait
to reach for
the things you want
in your life?

and yet
this year feels
different somehow
on the cusp of something

perhaps there is
value in grand gestures
and pivot points
with no turning back

the days already
grow longer
while the world
has never felt

more uncertain
wonders surely await
my resolution is
to notice them

Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash

Other Lives

In the dark hours
I imagine your other lives
The ones where our paths diverged
Instead of came together

I see you holding the hand
Of another person
Someone who carries
The sleek gloss of Hollywood
A stark contrast to my own
Rumpled and unready life

In these dreams
You are always happy
You are always laughing
No one pulls away, or fights
You have found the perfect person
For a life of ease and joy

But I also imagine myself
Hovering around the edges
Yearning to still know you
To find some way of being
Unobtrusively in your life
In these dreams, I am the shadow

And then I remember
The photograph of our silhouettes
Joined where you clasped my hand
We are two shadows together

Photo by Zachary Rothstein

Odds and ends 9

You Probably Misunderstand Nigerian Prince Emails: The truth behind the internet’s oldest scam by Sean Kernan (from Medium)

“It’s better to think of Nigerian prince emails as cash advance scams, myriad endless scenarios requiring money upfront. The concept started as The Spanish Prisoner Scheme in the early 1800s in Europe.

A representative (the “trickster”) for a wealthy imprisoned man would reach out to you with a sophisticated, well-written letter, stating they needed cash to bribe the guards for his master’s release. In exchange, the financier would receive a greater sum and his beautiful daughter’s hand in marriage, after the fact.

Such letters worked, remarkably well.”

I Think Beethoven Encoded His Deafness In His Music by Gabriela Lena Frank (From NYT)

“Yet more from my own experience: When I’m really under a deadline, and need to get new ideas quickly, I don’t usually listen to music, as some composers do. In fact, I do the opposite: I take off my hearing aids and stay in silence for a few days. In the absence of sound, my imagination goes to different places. It’s a bit like being in a dream when unusual and often impossible events come together, the perfect place from which to compose. And when I put in my hearing aids again, I can feel all these wonderful ideas and connections fly away, just as a dream disappears when awakening.”

The Business of Rupi Kaur (from YouInc)

“Now success is asking, “am I doing the things I want to do?” If I am, then I’m successful. Many of us spend so much of our time doing things we don’t want to do. Sometimes we do things we don’t want to, but I don’t want to be doing that all of the time. If I’m doing something that’s purposeful, brings me joy, and brings good to the world, then I’m successful. “

Photo by Salomon Riedo on Unsplash

Play

That shape in the middle is called play

Between endless hustling
And weary stagnation
Is a set of monkey bars

They are yours to explore

Swing wildly
Feel your own heft and lightness

Is that the sound of laughter?

And if you slip?
Well that’s all part of the game
Land lightly and spring up

There are no rules

Except those that you invent

Do you want to swing two at a time?
Or scramble over the top of the rungs?
Or invite others into your game?

What new inventions will you make
On this familiar frame?

Your hands may blister and callus
But the fun is so much greater
Than the superficial pain

This is your birthright

Perhaps that laughter is yours

Note: I woke up this morning at 4:50am, and had the first line of this poem in my mind. I couldn’t fall back asleep, but I jotted down this line to save it for later.

There were more lines as well during that very early morning waking. I decided a bit of extra sleep, if I could manage it, was more valuable. I don’t remember those lines – though the second line carries an echo of them – I just know that they were different.

Instead, of trying to get them back, I sat down to play.

This week, inspired by a counselling session, I’ve been trying to think about whether my work feels best when I cling to it tightly or try to mold it into shape – or whether it feels better to hold it slightly more loosely. (The image that ended up feeling best was gently cupping my hands around the little ceramic owl that I call my writing buddy – giving him a safe place to burrow and dream, with plenty of space to cheekily peek out and watch the world, and a window to explore it at his will.)

Isn’t it interesting to think of a poem as a branching road? Or a growing plant? None of the choices are wrong, and a line that might take you one place at one time, may lead somewhere very different when you return to it.

I had no plan when I sat down to write this poem, but as soon as the monkey bars cropped up, I wondered – could I make the lines of the poem look like monkey bars? Does it help our eye swing with the same delicious momentum that they inspire?

Photo by Ryan Sepulveda on Unsplash

The meaning of grace

She spent years learning
How to move
Elegantly, effortlessly
Watching her own reflection
Buffing away roughness
Until she could glide
Across the mirror's surface
Like a water bird
On a still pond.

But she only embodied
The true meaning of grace
When she learned
To turn to others
Who had tripped
And clumsily fallen,
And warmly greet them
With outstretched hands -
Meeting her own eyes
In the mirror.

Note: Today was one of those days where I felt all over the place – scattered, frantic and a bit overwhelmed. There were a couple of places where I felt I had come up against the hard edges of life, where I was hoping to be met with leniency or a bit of extra care. May we all be offered grace when we need it – and learn to offer it to ourselves.

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

Odds and Ends 8

But What Will You Do With Your Own Life by Brianna Wiest (from Medium)

“There is no universal experience, there is only experience, and what we choose to do with it.”

Strangers on a Phone, Theatrically Speaking by Laura Collins-Hughes (from the New York Times)

“In the lockdown days of early spring, after they’d left New York City for their house in a village upstate, Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone — better known as the experimental theater duo 600 Highwaymen — were as eager as any other drama aficionados to dig into the bounty of archived productions that were suddenly, mercifully online.

It wasn’t as much fun as expected.

“I’m sitting in my living room,” Silverstone recalled by phone recently, “and I’ve got my dog in my lap and I’m watching this Peter Brook show, but something isn’t right about this.”

The not-rightness had nothing to do with Brook, the pioneering stage director, and everything to do with the nagging awareness — familiar to those of us who have struggled to adjust to screened theater — that the audience, so vital to the live dynamic, is superfluous to performances unfolding on camera.

“I don’t feel —” Silverstone broke off.

“Needed,” Browde supplied, because they are the kind of couple that finishes each other’s sentences.”

The Mythology of Karen by Helen Lewis (from The Atlantic)

“You can’t control a word, or an idea, once it’s been released into the wild. Epithets linked to women have a habit of becoming sexist insults; we don’t tend to describe men as bossy, ditzy, or nasty. They’re not called mean girls or prima donnas or drama queens, even when they totally are. And so Karen has followed the trajectory of dozens of words before it, becoming a cloak for casual sexism as well as a method of criticizing the perceived faux vulnerability of white women.”

Your Suffering Is Not a Self-Improvement Exercise by Nora McInerny (from Medium)

“I firmly believe that we are meant to be changed by our life experiences. We are not human time capsules or mosquitoes trapped in amber. But the issue isn’t whether or not we are shaped by our experiences; rather, it’s the pressure we feel to alchemize our traumas into trophies. So much of modern-day self-improvement has roots in toxic positivity and our need to feel that we are Doing It Right. The book asking readers if they want to come out of [insert trauma here] a better person. The Instagram influencer posting that pain can become growth, with the right mindset.

Look, I understand the desire to stop loss from having the final word, but can’t we just let it have a say?”

The Affair I Didn’t Have by Katy Friedmann Miller (from Medium)

“I told her about Brian, and she listened without judging. She was curious about the aspects of him that I admired. I admired what I saw as his boldness, his lack of caring if he pissed people off, his ruthless honesty, and even something in him that felt like rage. She asked me to consider if these weren’t aspects of myself that I either wanted to develop or to stop hiding or know more about. She said, “When you know more about these parts in yourself, the energy of the attraction will dissipate.””

16 Mindset Shifts That Will Make You Unstoppable In Life by Brianna Wiest (from Medium)

“When you approach other people imagining that they at least have a relatively positive view of you, it changes the way you act around them. Instead of acting on the defense, you can simply connect, knowing that they probably already think you’re worthy (because you are).”

[AND]

““I am entitled to my own idea of myself.”

You are allowed to invent an image of yourself separate from the pieces you put together of what other people have told you about yourself.

That’s how you create your self-esteem as a child, but as an adult, you have to grow out of it.

Instead of just accepting that you’re the sum of how others see you, you are free to create a self-perception that is more accurate to your honest experience of yourself.

A truly healthy self-image includes good and bad (as all people have) and is built outside of simply how you imagine other people see you.”

How Do I Live Like An Artist? by Heather Havrilevsky (from Ask Polly in The Cut)

“ 7. Pursue joy at all costs. Joy is your guide, your first priority, your best friend, your master, and your servant, all rolled into one. We don’t have that long to feel good. Find a way to feel good. That’s the central commandment of living like an artist. Find your own weird path to joy. Fuck interesting and special. Fuck making something perfect that other people deem impressive or admirable. Just find your version of pumpkin motherfucking spice. If you love how it tastes, that’s all that matters.”

For John Lennon, Isolation Had a Silver Lining by Barbara Graustark (from NYT)

“I had to isolate, using Being Famous as an immense excuse for never facing anything. Because I was Famous, therefore I can’t go to the movies. I can’t go to the theater. But then sitting in this [hotel] room, taking baths, which I noticed Yoko did, every time I got nervous — I must have had about 40 baths — I’m looking out over the Hong Kong Bay, and there’s something ringing a bell. It’s like, what is it? And then I just got very, very relaxed. And it was like a recognition: this is me! This relaxed person is me! I remember this guy from way, way back. I know who I am — it doesn’t rely on any outside agency, or adulation, or achievement, or hit record. It’s absolutely irrelevant whether the teacher loves me, hates me, I’m still me. He knows how to do things, he knows how to get around. Wow! So I called Yoko and I said, “It’s me.””

Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash

Ice

If someone had told me
That adult life means
Getting excited about
Defrosting a freezer
I would have run away
To neverland
Years ago.

Yet here I am,
Watching ice melt
And gleefully collecting
The fallen chunks,
Symbols of my victory
Over chaos
And cold.

Photo by Dev Benjamin on Unsplash

The crust

When I scrape away the crust of anxiety
Beneath it is simply the feeling
That I should be doing something different
From what I am doing.

From the pressing sensation in my chest,
To the buzzing feeling around my brain,
My whole body is electrified
With the terror that time is running out.

Whether I am scrubbing away in the kitchen
Or finally writing a project dreamed long ago
A voice inside intrudes and chants:
“Something else, something else, something else…”

And in those moments, I am somewhere else.
Split. Divided. Caught between the life I am living
And the innumerable alternate realities
That scream for their right to existence.

As I follow those swirling thoughts,
I unravel the fabric of my own being.
I flicker and fade, becoming so disembodied
I can almost imagine light passing through me.

Caught between the cracks of dishes and dreams
I cut myself on the sharp edge of ‘now’.
The promise of ‘something else’ is the life of a ghost.
What if this is enough?


Photo by Renzo D’souza on Unsplash