Dear friends,

There are so many things to say I don’t know where to begin but I suppose I should heed the name of this newsletter and take it bird by bird, word by word.

I will not say that I "hope this message finds you well" because we’ve all written and received too many of those the past two years. But I do hope this message finds you, wherever and however you are, and I hope you know that I am sending warm thoughts and love your way, regardless of the state you’re in (and of course I do hope it’s a good one).

When I started this newsletter in spring of 2020 (and many of you received the first two missives), I had the naive zeal of somebody who didn’t realize just how much the turmoil to follow would render it impossible for me to know how to articulate everything I wanted to share.

Between the big stuff–the surging pandemic, racial violence, police brutality, civil unrest, election circus, global conflicts—and the personal struggles–the loss of loved ones, horrendous reflux that soured my love of eating, moving during a pandemic, crying over news from Palestine, the realization that stress was causing every single hole in my body to take turns staging a coup against me–there were frankly too many birds flying at me, flying at all of us (and taking a giant shit on our heads) to process them one at a time.

Mind you, there were wonderful things happening amidst that turmoil–my partner Enrique getting his green card, long walks with friends, vaccines (!), two road trips to see friend-family, sharing meals with my mom again, so.much.bread, establishing a Friday sourdough pizza tradition (and the waning of that aforementioned reflux), running into familiar faces on campus again and encountering delightful new people, unmediated by a screen.

But I still couldn’t bring myself to write this.

It is only now, sitting at home on the couch under two blankets (thanks Kristina and Maria!), with cancelled travel plans like so many of you, that I finally have the reserves to compose something non-work related. At a juncture where we are all so Very Over It, writing to you all feels like an act of hope, a reminder that there is still so much to celebrate and relish, and so many people to share joy with.

Before I list some of the odds and ends I enjoyed this year, allow me to reflect on something I am so profoundly grateful for: home. Two weeks ago, I learned that one of my aunts, my mother’s sister Nadia, died of COVID in Damascus, Syria. She had a life framed by war: born in Nablus, Palestine in the spring of 1948, uprooted with her 5 older siblings only months later to Damascus (where my mom was born a year later, on this very day, December 31), moving to Kuwait as an adult, living through the Gulf War in 1990, and returning shortly after to Syria, where a civil war would begin in 2010. She was suffering, barely speaking towards the end of her life, and there is comfort in knowing her final journey was to a place of ultimate rest. Her story and my entire family’s diasporic scattering is sadly not uncommon in this war-torn world we inhabit, but it is a constant reminder to me of the value of peace and safety, of having a place, and a community, to call home.

A New Home

This February, I officially moved out of the Palo Alto apartment I had lived in since June 2009 into a rental house with Enrique in Mountain View with a yard (aka Squirrel & Crow Habitat the size of a small park), thanks to low pandemic rates and a bonkers landlady (friends, please come visit when it’s safe to do so!). I had 5 different roommates in that apartment (love you Susan, Killeen, Lucia, and Susana), the last one being my mom (love you too, mom!), incredible neighbors, and more memories, dinner parties, all nighters, friends crashing on the couch, kitchen experiments, and cheap landlord fixes than I can account for or convey in these two small collages of crappy old phone photos. It was in that apartment that I received a call in the middle of the night in July 2014 from the hospice that my father had died and in that apartment three years later where I would get ready for the Halloween party where I would meet Enrique.

I was the rare millennial who had stayed put in the same place for more than a decade, who never had to decide what dusty unread books or secondhand furniture to give away so that I could fit my life into a few moving boxes. My kindred spirit Jenny calls me “a builder of nests,” and I think this is also the reason why I feel totally at peace, despite being an excessively social extrovert, with all this staying put we’ve had to do the past two years. Home and roots are not something I take for granted and at a time when we are all so fucking sick of being told to stay at home again, I am constantly reminded of how lucky I am to have one--and to know so many of you who I’d love to have at my table (when that doesn’t require 14 tests and a side of anxiety). Home after all is not just a physical edifice or a stationary destination; it is a feeling we create that transcends time and space. It is the sense of being at peace in our own bodies, and it is our relationships with one another, built on foundations of trust and care.

With that, I will wrap up and share a scattering of things I’ve enjoyed this year. If you’ve made it this far, please write to me for more specific details on anything you’re curious about, since I am trying to keep the rest of this short and would love to hear from you. I hope you feel at home, wherever you are, and that 2022 brings health, nourishment, levity, and love.

Warmly,

Natalie

{Read}

Poetry: Wrapping up the year with "Hope and Love" by Jane Hirshfield and "The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road" by Ada Limón, with shared heron imagery illustrated by the one and only dear Kristina Closs, who also illustrated all the poems I posted last April for National Poetry Month. Truthfully, I was not in a poetry discovery mood for much of the year, but my favorite new collection is The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser.
Fiction: What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad | Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason) | Intimacies by Katie Kitamura) | Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters) | Afterparties: Stories by Anthony Veasna So | Weather by Jenny Offill
Fact or Fiction? Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
Memoir: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner | Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad
Nonfiction: How the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Equality in America by my fiercely intelligent and compassionate friend Priya Fielding Singh | Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong | Having and Being Had by Eula Biss | The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan | Fiber Fueled by Will Bulsiewicz--and yes, I would be happy to nerd out with you about fiber and plant-based lifestyles any day.
The Internet: Too many compelling essays and articles tucked away in browser tabs than I can bear to look at now. Also more doctors, scientists, academics, and writers on Twitter than I probably should’ve been reading. I will spare you. On second thought, please do read this stunning essay about fear by the Palestinian writer, poet, and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan.

{Listen}

One of my friends saw my Discover Weekly recently and said I should just open a coffee house already. Fair enough. Here’s a playlist I made of some mostly newish tunes/artists/albums I’ve been enjoying this year, including works by my dear friends Andy Clausen from the brass quartet The Westerlies and Charles Gorczynski’s Redwood Tango Ensemble (If you don’t have Spotify because your ethical compass is better tuned, write to me and I'll send you the list). Feel free to shuffle because the order is a bit haphazard, except the first song, which is from the album I listened to the most this year, Arooj Aftab's gorgeous, mystical Vulture Prince.

For hours of impeccably curated modern alternative R&B music, the official Insecure soundtrack delivers.

Here’s Jon Batiste singing Freedom for when you need some pure joy.

A conversation that made me weep the first time I heard it, and again when I played it on our road trip this August to Louisville, CO, which has been tragically devastated by fire in the last day: Krista Tippet’s On Being interview with writer and poet Ocean Vuong.

{Watch}

TV: So much. I would tailor these recs depending on who is reading this (and if you are seeking intensity, laughter, romance, high school throwback with depth, etc.) butttt: Insecure | Mare of Easttown | Veneno | Reservation Dogs | Ted Lasso | Gentefied | Acapulco | Station 11 | The Chair | Call My Agent | Love Life | Hacks | Starstruck | Succession | Only Murders in the Building | How To with John Wilson | The Sex Lives of College Girls | Foundation | Never Have I Ever | Ramy and Small Axe–two must watch(es?) from 2020, especially the "Lovers Rock" episode of Small Axe.

Movies: Didn’t see many this year and finally caught up on last year’s but for what it’s worth: Jesus and the Black Messiah | Nomadland | Minari | Sound of Metal | One Night in Miami | The Father | Together, Together| King Richard | CODA | Barb and Star Go to Visa Del Mar | Don’t Look Up | Soul | Vivo and Encanto (especially joyful watched with children, and I'm not usually an animated movie fan).

{Two Parting Thoughts}

The world needs togetherness, not separation. Love, not suspicion. A common future, not isolation.

-Etel Adnan (1925-2021)

The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.
– bell hooks (1952-2021) from Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations