Here. Eat.
There will always be a space for you at A Writeloudly if you need it.
I moved into my house a little over five years ago. The summer of 2019 was spent bouncing back and forth various locations in St. Louis County trying to find a place reasonably close to my office (comedy) and putting in bids for a couple places and getting massively outbid every single time because I was in fact an invidual. Eventually, I lucked out and my real estate agent found a house that hadn't been listed yet and got me in direct contact with the sellers and that's how I ended up with my own space.
Having one's own space comes in handy for a lot of reasons. Say recovering from diabetic ketoacidosis. Say isolating from a world entering shut down. Say adopting two cats. Say hosting friends when the world returns to some semblance of normal.
I named my space “A Writeloudly.” It's the opposite of a speakeasy. It's a cute designation that I really only I use, but there is power in naming a space. There is a power in cultivating it. And there is a power in sharing it. One of the first things I learned to do as an adult adult was to exist in and make space (physical, digital, or otherwise). Space becomes community, and community provides a net for you to figure out who you are, and out of list of things I am thankful for this particular week, I'm mostly thankful that I have been lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time and brave/foolish enough to try and stake a claim and become a better version of myself.
But all of this talk of self-acutalization stemming from community stemming from space veers us right into Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs, and as has been an oddly recurring theme for this newsletter, we need to talk about consumption again.
As someone who has managed to confidently pretend to be a functional adult long enough that I have actually become a functional adult, I am someone people turn to on occassion during times of duress. And over many consulations over many years, I have learned that after the “how are you feeling"s and “what can I do to help"s, a helpful question tends to be “have you eaten?”
And that's also a helpful questions during not stressful times as well. Checking in with folks to make sure they have eaten breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We are unfortunately in possession of bodies, and sustenance helps keep those bodies running.
The acting of eating a meal is the simplest ritual and it remains one of the most potent. Before there is the concept of space/shelt, there is the concept of food and water. Food is also cultural, is also familial, is also nostalgic.
Back to A Writeloudly, when I moved in 2019, for a brief period of time there was a Filipino fusion place by the name of Guriella Street Food and it was a great, and for some reason they decided to open a small outlet a few minutes away from my house in an aggressively white part of the Greater St. Louis area. And for a very, very short period of time, it was a place where I could get a remixed taste from home. And then the place closed because capitalism is horrible.
As luck would have it though, a more conventional Filipino bakery set up shop and managed to garner enough support from the locale community to set up a proper restuarant and it was food that tasted like my mom's cooking and aunts' cooking, like childhood. And for many years, I have been a regular. And of course, in the aftermath of the 2024 election, I have been informed that the owners support 45, which is not that surprising, but it is sad.
As The Good Place once espoused on, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
However, that's not an excuse to consume.
As (un)luck would have it, I discovered my spot's owner's political affliations after I placed an order with them. And I've been thinking a lot about this order. I've been thinking a lot about “being a good person isn't a prerequisite for making good art". I've been thinking a lot of karma and the energy we put into the world. I've been thinking a lot about offsets and spaces and purpose and luck and luck and luck.
I think it's gonna be the last time I get food from there. Thankfully, there are three other Filipino brick and mortars that inexplicably exist now so I will still have access to childhood memory even if it won't be as convenient. And I'm going to put my money where my mouth/hands/words are and put some of my tech writing money towards a couple different charities as my friends' discretion.
I don't know if that's enough to balance scales or things. I don't think I'm necessarily trying to balance scales or things. I think I'm just trying to be better. I think I'm trying to make sure my friends are getting fed. I think I'm trying to make/hold spaces that i would have appreciated having growing up. I think I'm trying to bastardize a series of things I learned during pscyhology 101 into a much more complicated schema that is general existence.
I don't know. But I hope this week you have food, you have space dear reader. And if you find yourself in St. Louis, know I will try to off these to you.