This is a past newsletter.
Each week or so, I send out a newsletter with provocative or interesting or funny links worth sharing, plus advice and a haiku and usually a short love letter at the end. Below’s a sample.
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Join the party here. There’s Triscuits and everyone is dancing to that tune you love.
This week
I love a woman who has no romantic interest in me. And, when your ex is a garbage fire.
Also, it’s the one-year anniversary of this essay about being “Native enough.”
I’m diggin’
The always-excellent Mac McClelland on psychedelic therapy and moody vaginas.
A whole bunch of people named Phil Campbell visited the town of Phil Campbell, Alabama.
For International Women’s Day, a bookstore in Cleveland displayed all books by men backward.
Great long-read on Roxane Gay’s rise to fame.
Inside the anti-science forces of the internet.
A geeky look at the great waffles vs pancake breakfast divide. (I’d rather have french toast, personally.)
This man created an entire orchestra OUT OF ICE (IN A CAVE!)
A dying wife writes a dating profile for her husband. (You might cry.)
What’s the endgame for freelancers? (I struggle with this often. What is “success”? I asked this question to Melissa Etheridge, actually, in our interview a few months back. She said: “Understand that there isn’t something you’re going to achieve that’s going to give you this sense that you’ve done it—it’s a continuous process, day by day by day and every now and then, every year or so you look back and go, Ah! Look how far I’ve come. And then you just keep wanting and desiring and dreaming and moving forward with it. It’s a journey, it’s not something you’re going to accomplish this year, or next year or the next year. You don’t want it to be accomplished. You’ll find that when dreams do come true they’ll be so, oh, expected almost that you’ll already be on to the next one. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s workout routine.
The forgotten story of the three teachers in Minnesota who built The Oregon Trail video game. “I made that bitch famous.”
I Love Dick by Chris Kraus. LOVED this book. It’s a “memoir” and art theory and love theory and over-educated-white-people-behaving-weirdly theory. My friend Erica recommended it for “well-read slutty ‘over-thinkers’ who are comfortable not understanding everything all the time.”
Saturdaiku
I love your wild
tenderness. My heart is an
ocean of your name.
xo,
Anna
PS: Someone found my website by searching “young lisbians eating pully.”
PPS: Here’s a snippet of my novel. (I FINISHED! A first draft anyway.) In this scene, Blue reads Elizabeth’s palm. They are trying to not fuck each other because Elizabeth is married. But that’s not going super well, as a general plan.
“You expect a lot out of life, and as such, you’re never satisfied. You’re only happy when reaching, striving, rescuing. You illuminate everyone around you, even a casual glimpse from you can lift someone up for days. People tend to worship you, which you love, but you can never be possessed, because you refuse to give up your power.”
Elizabeth found herself unconsciously tilting her head toward Blue’s voice. Was she imagining it or was Blue’s hypnotic tremolo getting softer and growlier, forcing Elizabeth to move closer to her?
Blue went on, drawing each word out like a hymn, like a near-silent prayer.
“But the thing is, you want to be possessed. You ache for it. Your heart is full of black wants. You long to sweat a river of names, to be dug into like thirst.” Elizabeth clenched the hand Blue was not holding into a fist beside her, her knuckles turning white. She felt herself slipping, growing weaker and stronger simultaneously, and when, in Blue’s endless chant, she mentioned Elizabeth’s fingers, holding them close to her face—“Even the stars envy these”—Elizabeth could no longer help herself.
She slid two fingers into Blue’s mouth, practically baring her teeth as she did so. Blue startled, but welcomed the salt-sweat of Elizabeth’s fingers. Her first thought was, strangely, of the homeless man’s rant, the carpals and metacarpals and phalanges, the 27 bones of the hand.
Blue wanted to feel everything, every bone and tendon and muscle—she wanted Elizabeth’s body, not just her body, her synapses and cells and black graphite covering her. But just as soon as Blue’s thought had crystallized into want, Elizabeth pulled back abruptly. Her fingers fled Blue’s mouth like a vacuum, making a small popping noise in their wake.
They sat, unspeaking, for several moments. They’re breath escaping in odd pirouettes. “It’s nearly 3 p.m.,” Elizabeth said. “We have to go.”
