> a hovering like grace appears
You're tuning into Cheers, a newsletter made by Tiffany Xie. This week: the revelation of slow-roasted salmon, a gratitude workbook, feeling Asian, and faint music.
Hello friend,
> Making: Sam Sifton's biscuits and Samin Nosrat's slow-roasted salmon (which is divine, definitely the new default salmon recipe).
> Couldn't-sleep crêpes: A few nights ago I couldn't fall asleep so I made crêpe batter at 1:30 a.m. When I can't sleep, it's usually because I'm thinking a lot so my thoughts went to the leftover lemon from the salmon in the fridge. I forgot how tasty they are, sprinkled with sugar and doused in lemon juice, folded into quarters.
> I've been editing a zine for the last few months and it's finally out! You can find the online version of the Soupbone gratitude workbook here. We're also selling print copies to raise money for Liberation Library, an abolitionist org that brings books to young people in Illinois jails and prisons. The pre-order form is here! Each copy is $15 and all proceeds will go to Liberation Library.
> New episode of the pod (now on more pod platforms!): in which Genevieve and I thank our teachers and talk about who's on our acknowledgments page.
> Thinking about this episode of the Feeling Asian podcast (with guest Mary H.K. Choi!), mostly the part where they talk about the complicated love of growing up with Asian moms.
> We found this one house that synced its Christmas lights to music and parked on the curb for (I kid you not) a good 45 minutes while we watched the whole rotation of songs. It was a good light show.
> From "Faint Music" by Robert Hass:
Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.
When everything broken is broken,
and everything dead is dead,
and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt,
and the heroine has studied her face and its defects
remorselessly, and the pain they thought might,
as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves
has lost its novelty and not released them,
and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly,
watching the others go about their days—
likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears—
that self-love is the one weedy stalk
of every human blossoming, and understood,
therefore, why they had been, all their lives,
in such a fury to defend it, and that no one—
except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool
of poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automatic
life’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light,
faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears.
> "Shrine-like properties with humorous undertones" brought to you by Alexander Liberman.
Cheers,
Tiffany