everything else: nostalgia edition
dear internet,
my newsletter is a day late because it got flagged by tiny letter's automated system! i leave it to you to figure out which of these innocuous thoughts sounded like a violation of terms of service—your guess is as good as mine.
this week,
i’m thinking about: my retreat into nostalgia, which means that i make fusilli and remember packed school lunches; i cut open a mango and think of lying facedown on the floor of my living room in the zenith of summer, the sound of the fan from my grandparents’ room downstairs coming through like the ocean in a seashell. i'm reading old books and listening to old songs and taking my temperature slightly less often than i did last week.
i watched: the sondheim concert, for which i woke up at 5am, and have no regrets. two days later i woke up at 4:30am to watch marisa tomei and oscar isaac do a live reading of “beirut”, a prescient-then-and-now 80s play (marisa started in the original production!) about a man quarantining from an unidentified virus, and his girlfriend, who sneaks in to visit him. family karma has ended, and with it, i think, my brief flirtation with reality tv.
i listened to: this playlist, a careful recreation of the music me and my sister listened to from 2007-2009—these were the days i downloaded songs individually on limewire, often with little interludes from the tv shows they played on (we think fondly of the version of 'white horse' by taylor swift where someone says 'scalpel'), then burned them on to CDs i’d listen to on my discman. a simpler time!
i cooked: this pomodoro sauce which is my favourite thing to do with cherry tomato: i add lots of chili flakes and whatever herbs (fresh or bottled) i have on hand.
i saw: you know, the usual. some excerpts from my nighttime Rear Window observations:
i see the child walk to the mother’s room. the lady in the salwar kameez and sneakers. the man with dangling earphones. the streetlights form perfect triangles of light like a painting, and bugs swarm in the glow. nighttime barbet’s familiar call, one light on in each office building, the juddering breath of the neighbour’s a/c. someone coughing in the distance. a dog’s bark echoes. black and white cat darting across road. every time i see more than one person at a time it feels illicit. in a basement someone drops a pan. the clank makes my teeth ache.
it's may; one day at a time, i said at the start of all this, and it's still the only thing i have to say. i’ll see you next week.
love,
t