May 20, 2022

Cucumber Salad #1 🥒

Contents

a) Why make a newsletter?

b) Why “Cucumber Salad”?

c) Readings: The Clean Body by Peter Ward

d) Movie review: In Time (2011)

e) Personal updates: week in review

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a) Why make a newsletter?

As a centralised social media platforms heavy user, I tend to also be extremely critical of those platforms.

Overusing Instagram was taking a toll on my mental health specially over the pandemic period.

I tried to apply a bimbofication praxis (under an accelerationist point of view), but it just made me really sad and disconnected from my interests.

My current instagram feed is very messy, I’m mostly interested in keeping up with my close friends, but since I’ve had the account for almost 10 years and follow over 1k accounts, the content that really matters usually gets lost in the ether.

Most of the content on my Instagram feed at this point is just brain candy, not really meaningful or worth spending lots of my time scrolling through. (I’m going through a "mass unfollow process", it’s taking a while but I’m going to get there).

I decided to make a newsletter because It will give me the opportunity to share more meaningful information with my close friends, keep them weekly updated about Im up to seems more organised and timed than making 40 stories a week. Also since stories get lost after 24 hours many people don’t have the opportunity of properly catching up, with the newsletter they can just take a few minutes one day of the week and get the whole picture of what I want to communicate with my close friends.

I was also very inspired by my friend’s Trav newsletter. It felt super nice to spend some time reading his updates, also felt much more dedicated and thoughtful than an Instagram post.

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b) Why “Cucumber Salad”?

I’ve been interested in not using my name as my main alias for a while, not only for privacy reasons but also because I thought I could find something that would give a more meaningful vibe than my name.

I love cucumbers and I think they’re extremely refreshing, they’re great for the eye area of the skin as well, my current eye cream has cucumber extract and keeps the dark circles away.

I think about a nice cucumber salad with mangoes, sesame seeds, mint and some greens, something very refreshing, light and hydrating and I think that is the energy I want to be associated with.

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c) Readings: The Clean Body by Peter Ward

As some of you may know, I (still) spend lots of time watching youtube video essays. I’ve recently been watching many videos from Mina Le.

In one of her videos from 2021 “so rich people want to be dirty now?” she references the book The Clean Body: A Modern History by Peter Ward.

As I got very interested in her mentions of this book on the video, I started reading as soon as possible and It’s been insightful so far.

It opened my eyes to the social construct around the daily bathing ritual and made me understand the whole of showering and bathing in my life from a more anthropological approach

Being a daughter of a doctor and born and raised in a tropical country I always had a very medicinal and therapeutical relationship with showering:

• showering to lower fevers

• showering to calm down

• showering to sober up

• showering to cleanse the skin

• shower to refresh (no soap)

• shower to beautify the body

As bathtubs are not very common in Brazil I’ve always had a very idealized idea of bathing, understanding it as a self-indulgent act.

It is interesting to understand that these habits and concepts have only been strongly established in the western society for the last 150 years. But unfortunately, the book has a very small cultural scope (only North America and some prominent European Countries). It makes me wonder a lot about the bathing traditions of Native Brazilian and African cultures because I’m very sure they play a huge role in the showering culture of the Brazilian individual. (I’ve personally taken showers solely for their spiritual functions, using certain ingredients in certain parts of the body to open spiritual channels etc.)

I’m also very curious about bathing rituals in Eastern Asia, since those cultures have a strong bathing house culture that goes back from centuries (I guess? Throwing that approximation there lol).

Scene from "Her Love Boils Like Bathwater" (2016)

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d) Movie review: In Time (2011)

As much as I love movies, it’s important to say: I don’t watch a lot of them! I try to take my time to digest the movies I watch, sometimes I spend months on that process, until I come into a conclusion of what I actually think about it.

That being said, some movies are actually very simplistic and, watching with my husband, we like to comment on our impressions together and sometimes I take notes on those because I think there were interesting insights and that’s the nature of the reviews I’m going to be incorporating to the newsletter.

Yesterday we finished watching this 2011 film with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried called In Time. I’m not going to make an in-depth analysis or talk about the director’s work because that’s not the point of this review, I just want to give my impressions.

First, I think the concept is very interesting (a society where time has substituted money as the currency) but it’s extremely poorly explored. Most of the writing is very uninspired and you could just replace the word “time” for “money” in many lines and get the same effect. I understand it is the point of the metaphor, but makes it kinda simplistic.

I’m very interested in world-building so I really got crazy imagining how people who live with very little time would try to make the best of theirs. I imagined a house full of appliances to make things quicker, lots of electric portable vehicles (like bikes and kick scotters) to commute… none of that was explored in the film. In fact, people who live with a very short time count still walk to work spend time having meaningful conversations, which just seems weird for the context.

The same world-building exploration lacks for the time rich, who just have the lives that rich people do nowadays. I imagined people going to retreats to learn how to let time go, because they just have way too much time? Having to adapt to the concept of living forever should require for lots of psychological adjustments that would have been interesting to explore.

There’s (obviously) this unnecessary romantic subplot that doesn’t add anything to the story at all, but I think you kinda have to do it because it’s a Justin Timberlake movie…

Overall it make me think a lot about a movie (also sci-fi with Amanda Seyfried also directed by Andrew Niccol) I watched a while ago called Anon (2018) that has a very shallow plot, but deeply explored the world-building aspects around it’s concept (a world where privacy has been rendered obsolete). The scenarios are just extremely well thought and it’s just such a joy to watch because you want to know how’s the solution going to be for the next situation that will be presented.

Screenshot from “Anon” showing how all the nutritional information is available.

I have a very long watchlist that I want to get through, at least, until the day I die, but I can spoil that the next movie I’ll watch is Everything Everywhere All at Once.

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e) Personal updates: week in review

This is a part of the newsletter structure I actually want to present every week.

• This week my friend Trav is staying over at my house. We’re having a great time, went biking and did tons of tech support (including helping me setup this newsletter).

• Also, we’re having some nice and inspiring vegetarian meals, I’m interested in eating lots of fresh produce during the spring and summer.

• Recently got an iPad mini and making the most out of it, reading lots in there. (will at some point talk about why I got an iPad!).

• Researching into getting an E-ink phone (will discuss this further on the next newsletter) but I’m super interested in the Hisense A5 so far.

• Interview for Kinopio Guide about Personal Pages was released (now writing one for the skincare journal)

• Trav found an old iPod boombox on the street, he wanted to carry it with him for the rest of his trip, but the boombox is too heavy so he gave it to Max as a gift. Serendipitous!

The iPod speaker boombox (also featured: tiny phone)

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I'm sorry this first edition was very lengthy, I will try to make the following ones shorter, I just had a lot to say this week.

Also, I want to make clear this newsletter is supposed to be more of a conversation than a monologue, that being said I’m super excited about getting replies about your impressions, ideas, etc. Let’s talk! Hello@cucumbersalad.me

With love 🐝 ,

Ana Luisa