Hello!

Here are some things I’ve been into/spending time on/thinking about lately.

1. On note taking, the “spark file”: I love the thought of an idea that doesn't make any sense suddenly coming into focus years later. I recently saw Ann Friedman and Jade Chang call this spark file idea “compost.” As in, you throw your scraps (or sparks) into a pile (file) and revisit to see the connections later. I squirrel away many notes but don't currently really revisit anything, which raises the question of what the point of all those notes is anyway. It's just not an activity that occurs to me to do without any external prompting. For a long time, I thought my problem was a lack of a system for notes, but now I think it might be that I never actually read them, wherever they are. It never strikes me as an urgent task, but perhaps turning the mental compost is a nice activity for a languorous summer afternoon.

2. The first time I stumbled into Maggie Appleton's website I was immediately fascinated. I can't tell if digital gardens are now having a moment or if I am just now attuned to spotting them (or I’ve tuned various algorithms to present them to me; I no longer trust my experience of the internet, which is perhaps an idea to dig into later). There were a few fun ones in that playlist of website tours I linked to a few months ago. Carolyn Yoo has recently written about hers, and I'm thinking about how to build one out without changing platforms or overhauling my existing WordPress setup. I am working on another project (very very slowly) that has the potential for digital garden structure so I'm excited to explore the potential here.

3. Ad hoc book club! This probably works best with books that are very buzzy because chances are you know people who are also reading them at the same time you are. For some reason it had not occurred to me to do a one-off book club for a specific book before, but I liked this. I ended up doing this for two different books in the same week. I’d do it again. No one said a book club had to be a commitment!

4. Microseasons: This concept has been knocking around in my brain lately. I've been thinking about it as we are wrapping up our first entire year in our new house, surrounded by new trees and plants. The former owners seemed to be avid gardeners, and it's a constant surprise to see what is blooming and when. Of course, Japan is already on top of it. A few years ago, Chad noticed that the crows gather in the cemetery near our old house the same week every year ("it's a corvid convention!"). One of my personal microseasons is window washing time. This happens in mid to late February when the light must start to change in a way my body notices and then I have an urgent need for clean windows.

5. Kid art: I swiped one of my kid's drawings last winter. As soon as I saw it, I knew I needed to keep it. I wanted to frame it. I wanted to embody it. I wanted her to embody it (yet never wield its energy against me or her dad). I hadn't really thought beyond framing it and hanging it on the wall, but last summer I went to a friend's huge birthday party where he had a sticker swap table. So many silly stickers. People just did things! Adults, with jobs, made funny little stickers and shared them with their friends. I had recently been cracked open, literally and figuratively, by the birth of my third baby and buying a new house kind of unexpectedly and getting bees all within six weeks, and through this crack came the really embarrassingly obvious realization that you can just do things?? You can just have an idea, it doesn't need to make money or be “worth” your time in a material capitalistic sense, and just do it?? If it has no point other than your own enjoyment or amusement that is simply fine?? You don’t need to think about it for months or poke holes in it or convince yourself it’s dumb before acting on it?? I don't know where this soul-deep reckoning was in my early 20s when I really, really needed it. Maybe it is something that really only comes into focus in a new and urgent way as one creeps closer to 40, or maybe it just took this long to outgrow my pathologically practical upbringing. I simply don't care anymore. I want to see this image my kid drew plastered around town in little corners, on hand dryers and refrigerators and electric boxes. In bars and in bathrooms. On corners near crosswalks. And so I asked that friend with the sticker table at his birthday party where he gets his stickers printed. And then I ordered some. I'm going to make more. Because who cares? Someday we'll all be dead and at least we will have had some fun stickers beforehand.

Other things:

I was able to snag a physical copy of the first issue of Quiet Media magazine. More like this, please!

As ever, my bee notes remain on my website, mostly for my own future reference, but if you are curious feel free to have a look. I’m hoping to have some honey harvest updates later in the season.

ok bye!

Lisa

Quote credit: Chris Silverman