I found myself saying “only boring people get bored” this week - in response to a conversation about having limited options if you don't have money to spend in the Bay Area. Because in my experience, the Bay provides. (Anyone who has a four year old who watched The Good Dinosaur about a million times might know where that phrasing comes from.) Every time I go out looking, I find more than I set out to find. This week it was the Silent Book Club — which has an Oakland chapter, which I cannot believe I only just discovered — a gathering where people come together specifically to read alone, in public, in community. I'm attending my first event at the Bay Area Book Festival next week, where I've also registered for three talks (How to Find & Create your Literary Community, Maker, Mentor, Muse: the Spirit of the Work, and Heartware: Robots, Relationships and the Future of Us) as well as a zine making workshop. I love that the three talks I chose without thinking about it form something like a syllabus: community, then mentorship, then the future of connection itself. My subconscious has opinions.

On Wednesday I had a mocktail at Bar Shiru with a new friend I met at my first Dark Parlour Society event — which I want to formally nominate as an ideal venue for someone like me. Good ambiance, no music trying to talk over you, genuinely lovely.

Friday brought the May Summer Stroll — catfish po'boys for dinner and then what I can only describe as an epic coloring battle with Otis, which he won on volume alone. That morning I'd made it to Blake Garden, where I spotted my spirit animal in the wild: a miniature chocolate poodle on a leash, unbothered, magnificent.

On the making side: I worked through Batches 2, 3, and 4 of my caramel experiments and I'll be honest, only one of them was actually edible. The rose petal batch. It turns out caramel is a little more exacting than I gave it credit for. I also made it out to Oakland Chinatown to source some loose leaf jasmine tea, and to a Middle Eastern grocery in El Cerrito for rose items — dried petals, rose petal spread, rose syrup — all for ongoing Dark Parlour recipe experiments that I'll share more about when they're ready.

Speaking of Dark Parlour: inspiration struck on Tuesday and I knew immediately what the second experiment was going to be. I've been troubleshooting double-sided printing and Cricut cutting for one component of the project while trying to source everything else locally. I also finally tested my new custom DPS rubber stamp — the one with the lily of the valley logo — on a batch of fortunes I'd had made. They turned out beautifully and I'm looking forward to handing them out this month.

I made meaningful progress on the crochet tank top I've been working on — the body is finished and I'm into the final top ribbing. I’m hoping I can complete it before the months over.

And two things I couldn't stop thinking about this week: I fell down a JW PEI rabbit hole and found myself genuinely moved by what they're doing — simple color palettes, dramatic and delicate details, and I'm not a bag person but the Siamese cat clutch stopped me cold. Also: the Harry Styles video for Dance No More, with choreography by Ryan Heffington. The Marc Jacobs gym look is iconic, but what really got me was the movement — joyful, accessible, genuinely felt. There's something in it that reminded me of George Michael, something about permission, about a body doing exactly what it wants to be doing. I've watched it several times now.

What I finished reading this week: Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman — a book that made me feel called and called out in equal measure every time I picked it up. It's full of people whose names I knew but whose actual impact I didn't, and it keeps asking an uncomfortable question: what are we doing right now that future generations will look back on the way we look back at slavery? I had a lot of thoughts. If you want to read more of them and keep up with what I'm reading, I'm on Goodreads at goodreads.com/user/show/191601432-jem.

I updated the music page on jemdesanti.com this week — most of what I've made over the years is there now if you want to go digging.

Until next time, Jem