The acupuncture room where it happens
I got acupuncture this morning for the first time in a year. Pre-pandemic I went to the community clinic down the block at least once a month, treating my various everyday aches and pains with deep coma-naps under one of those silvery marathon blankets on a cot bracketed by other cots occupied by various needle-filled strangers. For obvious reasons, community acupuncture is no longer an option.
I waited for the clinic to renovate into a warren of little treatment rooms before I thought about going back. Was it worth the discomfort of lying face-down on a massage table with my masked face in the little face cradle? I think “yes,” though it was scary. Not for COVID reasons, more because this was the first time anyone other than Keith and my children has touched me for a long time. I wonder how long it will be til it seems normal to go to the doctor, the dentist, the hairdresser, the nail salon et cetera. I mean, I know some people have never stopped. Maybe one of the reasons that they never stopped is that if you do stop, it’s so weird and hard to get your body to trust other people’s bodies again.
For the first fifteen minutes or so of the session, as the needles were going in, I had to actively fight the visceral urge to leap up, brush off all the needles, throw my shirt back on and run out the door. The therapist burned some herbs near my achy T3 vertebra and I could smell them super strongly through my mask and my mouth briefly filled with pre-vomit saliva. But then I forced myself to imagine the needles doing their magical thing, realigning my energy, sending little subtle coded messages along my nerves. I thought about the dream I’d awoken from three hours earlier, where I’d been interviewing a boring celebrity in a giant beautiful suburban house, and tried to find my way back into it. The next thing I knew, the therapist was gently removing the needles. I had slept so soundly that I’d drooled into my mask a little bit.
I had a whole newsletter planned about how Raffi continues to be really into Hamilton and how much I hate Hamilton and also love it, am its prisoner, have most of it memorized, deeply resent the sexy/sexist parts, and am reminded of my own formative musical theater nerdery. There would have been a bow-tie at the end about how, I guess, even art that I have a ton of problems with can sometimes “spark a meaningful conversation” with my kid, who was surprised to learn that until recently women had no rights and could not own property or vote. (Next, I guess, we take on “what are ‘women’?”) I might still get around to writing about that but I think unfortunately my brain is done for the day. I do just want to set down for posterity that the absolute hack-est line in Hamilton, so hack that it is kind of majestic, is: “You’re an orphan? I’m an orphan!/God, I wish there was a war/So we can show we’re worth more than anyone bargained for.”
Here are a handful of cultural recommendations from both me and Raffi that aren’t about horny founding fathers and maternal, accommodating women who just want to be part of the narrative:
RAFFI:
Wow in the World is the new podcast hotness chez nous, superseding Story Pirates (which I think we’ve listened to every episode of), and Circle Round, which has joined the growing pile of things that are, to my chagrin, “for babies.” Wow sates Raffi’s need for new facts about science, nature, etc to mansplain to us, and is fairly tolerable to have on in the background. Try it on your 5 year old and let me know how it goes.
The Ramona Quimby Audio Collection, in which Beverly Cleary’s masterpieces about a very real, very Raffi-esque troublemaker and her schoolmarmish older sister are read sublimely by the goddess Stockard Channing, is currently permitting me to get an extra 15-30 minutes of semi-sleep every morning. Raffi just comes into my room and asks me to turn it on, and then I do, and then he eats granola bars and grapes on the couch while cradling the Bluetooth speaker thoughtfully til he gets bored and wakes us all up. I guess this is why people get Alexas, but I won’t succumb. Stockard Channing does voices for literally every character, even very minor non-recurring ones, and deserves a lifetime achievement Grammy (she has at least one Emmy and a Tony, fwiw).
EMILY:
Detransition, Baby deserves more than my on-1% brain, all I can do is beg you to read it. If you do, we can talk about it — I would 100% have a book club about it with subscribers and if anyone is interested I will totally … figure out how to do live chat on this thing. Also if you live in Brooklyn and need a copy, I have a spare, hmu!
The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood comes out in March and I also have spare galleys for anyone who is intrigued by the idea that it was my gateway drug back into the world of actually really enjoying novels again and always being in the middle of one continuously since I read it. I just flipped it open to a random page because it’s full of perfect zingers, and this is the one on the random page I flipped to:
“She tried to make the smile that her therapists did, that little pursed smile that signaled neither approval nor disapproval but simply stated the relationship: We are in therapy, was the ultimate meaning of the smile, and I am a therapist.”
Ok, I think that’s definitely all for today. Thank you for reading. This newsletter is free and subscribing is optional. Occasionally, I send out subscriber-only issues, and only subscribers can comment (which is good because otherwise I’m sure someone would come at me for insulting Lin-Manuel Miranda.) Want to subscribe? Here’s a button!
Half of January subscription proceeds will be donated to 4Kira4Moms, which advocates for improved maternal mortality prevention policies and regulations.