Mind your feet, ugly bathrooms, don't want, don't have, and more
Discover more from Ani's Newsletter
Mind your feet, ugly bathrooms, don't want, don't have, and more
Dear Reader,
Hello from an emotionally wrecked human who wrapped up Season Four of Vikings and is recovering from nightly midnight rabbit-holes down Scandinavian history.
Here are this week’s seven links to bits of the world I have been exploring, shared with the hope that you will find them to be an inspiring springboard for deeper thinking.
Pause for a moment and think about the things in your life that you don’t have and that also happen to be the things that you don’t want ;-) and watch this (side note, Panda Express should really step up its fortune cookie game).
More than any article, Why Walking Helps Us Think cropped up on my IG feed several times this week due to several sources posting about it. It makes me wonder why given The New Yorker piece was written back in 2014, long before the pandemic made us collectively reassess our lifestyles. In any event, loved the author’s exploration of the “curious link between mind and feet,” and the notion that
“Joyce and Woolf were writers who transformed the quicksilver of consciousness into paper and ink. To accomplish this, they sent characters on walks about town. As Mrs. Dalloway walks, she does not merely perceive the city around her. Rather, she dips in and out of her past, remolding London into a highly textured mental landscape, ‘making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh.’”
All this talk of Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway reminded me of my YouTube book review about a year ago.
I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m deep in Northern European rabbit-holes. This week, I finished audio-reading Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. It’s my first read of his books, and I can see why people have a strong allegiance toward him. He’s a great writer of adventures. Listening to his own narration on Audible was a bonus. He also has a great adventure-affirming voice.
My Ugly Bathroom made me chuckle through the sentences as I chewed down my breakfast this morning. Sentences like, “The water pressure in the sink is almost nonexistent. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with the sink itself but when your bathroom looks like this you don’t think, Oh wow, I really want to improve the water pressure, because bad water pressure goes with the decor.” And ones like this: “The textured ceiling looks like a birthday cake that was frosted with canned white frosting by a person who hates whoever’s birthday it is.” I’m not sure I agree with the writer’s sentiment of being sick of people who think everything has to be nice, and her pleading that some things are better left crappy. But I really liked the satirical edginess of the personal observations.
Honey, I Sold the Kids, examining the problematic realm of monetizing one’s children online, really gave me food for thought after which I became way more sensitive to seeing this week scores of people on Instagram deliberately placing their babies front and center in social media ad campaigns. Idk, irksome to say the least. On a similar note, a friend recently told me she will not reveal her children’s names on social media, but is okay with including photos/videos of them on her page; while another friend who had started off with digitally masking her kids’ faces has now given up doing so. Curious to know what you think of this topic. It’s all so muddy and difficult.
RIP to Book Depository. Here’s what’s in my final cart so far:
quick updates:
watching: I’m sorry but the only thing getting this sadly-no-longer-young body to consistently hop on the trailer this week has been rewatching Gossip Girl and pretending my knees didn’t just screech and crack.
listening: Patrick Raden Keefe’s Say Nothing, but I am switching to Kindle because I couldn’t get an unfamiliar Irish dialect at 1.7 speed to work and I stubbornly refuse to slow down the narration.
eating: more like dreaming of the Armenian gata I’ll be making for Easter this Sunday.
using: these scented matches from Paris (mine are retour d’Egypte)
New weekly addition hello: curious to know about some of your recs! Here’s this week’s inquiry:
Recommendations From You: Banana bread recipe?
I’ve got browned bananas in the fridge waiting to be baked into a delicious evening treat. Help?
affiliate links: sometimes, I include links to my Amazon storefront (often for books or other recommendations around the home/self I’ve found useful and hope you will, too). This means I make a few pennies whenever someone makes a purchase using the link. It doesn’t detract from my recommendations coming from a place of a genuine desire to share with you. It just helps provide a few tangible tokens for my effort.
support: I love writing these newsletters and creating deeper threads of connection to you in this absurd world of ours, but in any case, it is a time-consuming endeavor. If you are enjoying my journey, and if able, please consider supporting it by way of interaction (follow along on Instagram, YouTube, or leave a comment/like here!), subscribing to my paid-tier here on Substack, or by buying me a coffee here! It is hugely appreciated, and my gratitude is with you.
Until Sunday, friends, for Essay No. 1. (for more info, head over to my ‘About’ page :))
Have a lovely weekend!
Hugs,
Ani