Since the election I've been taking self-defense classes with some friends--  all YA authors, actually, a bunch of women who spend our days writing books for teenagers, and who have committed one evening a week to learning about the difference between a kitten fist and a flat one. (In a kitten fist, the pinky and forefinger's knuckles stick out past the middle and ring finger's; it makes your hand more vulnerable, the hit less forceful.

"Three minutes, bag drills," our instructor, W, told us recently, and we misheard him. We all stood perfectly still, finding each other in the corners of our eyes, trying to figure out how to say that we like him and all, but we were not going to be called "bad girls" by absolutely fucking anyone.)

W is the handsome son of a very famous, handsome actor, which feels right, for Los Angeles. He isn't showing us how to go for the eyes or the groin so much as how to box and wrestle, how to learn to control a fight. I'm not sure how useful it would be if you came up behind me in a dark alley, but I like the thrust of it: the idea that my body is a weapon in a more than metaphorical sense. My favorite thing so far is a particular kind of brush-off, a move that brings your arm up from the inside to swat away at hand at your shoulder. I like standing under the flourescents, barefoot in the ring, and training my body to say reflexively: no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I've been thinking a lot about the pleasure of walking around by myself at night, lately: taking up space in the world, claiming even its darkness. There is no time, no place I do not have the right to exist.

-

Which is particularly hard to think for a lot of people for a lot of reasons right now. I wrote about one of the recent, personal ones: the recent wave of bomb threats against JCCs. Plus bonus cemetery vandalism! Love to keep updating a draft with new white supremacists actions hourly, really makes me feel like I've got my finger on the pulse, I'll tell you what. Jewishness in Trump's America is becoming one of my beats: I've written previously about the conservative (small-c) Jewish response to 45 and his boy Bannon, and this sermon-y thing that somehow has the most notes of everything I've ever written on Tumblr, including a post about Taylor Swift. 

In other taking up space news, I interviewed Lauren Elkin about her book Flaneuse, and we talked about protest and women's marches and lit bros and living in a language. And walking, I guess, obviously! 

I also interviewed Rihanna's personal chef, Debbie Solomon, back in December, and am still !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! about it.

Finally, I drank the most expensive matcha in the country, which is sort of the other end of the spectrum from boxing, in terms of thinking about embodiment and pleasure. It's good to have variety in your life, right?