Favorites 6.9.14
Summer city street at night: People, dogs, drunkards. Hustle. Tears and laughter. Just, LIFE—unfolding right there in front of you on your picnic table drinking your beer.
Whole milk in your coffee: "Whole," as in, how it came out of the cow's insides. Not so thick that you can't pour a healthy amount in, but deeply rich and creamy—creating a cup that wants not for sugar nor cinnamon sprinkles.
The promise of June: The sun abides; the sky opens up and is blue in the way you would hope the sky to be. My garden looks better than it does at any other time of year in June (everything ragingly in bloom, the lawn still green, etc). And it's just the beginning.
Breaking your iPhone screen a week after you're eligible for an upgrade: Drop your phone 800 times over the course of two years and it remains serene. The second you're contractually allowed to get a new one, the old one's screen splinters into a million diamond shards against the sidewalk one afternoon. The next day, you walk into the Verizon store and get an i-5S, which is cool as F (even to someone "not into" electronics).
Favorites 5.23.14
Manual labor: For someone who engages in brain cells, keyboards, and computer screens for a living, it's deeply satisfying to spend the day doing work that is real (at least in the physical sense). Also? It kicks one's ass. Which is nice.
A cold apple: Put your apples in the fridge and be rewarded with exactly the right thing for a sticky afternoon.
Painting the ceiling: Look up. Ponder. The ceiling is the cosmos of your home. Whitewashing it every now and then brings a sense of lightness and expanse into the room.
Delivery man: Funny, but not your typical Vince Vaughn slapstick. A silly, heart-string-y type deal with good balance. A small, quiet movie that ends up being big.
Favorites 4.21.14
Evening sun breaks after dark, downpoury Saturdays: Right when you were about to turn on the tele and chock the whole day up to sweatpants, a beam of sun spears through the cloudbank. Next thing you know, you're walking across a field scattered with miniature daisies, dog by your side, squinting into the most delicious sideways sunshine.
A pile of fresh herbs: This week, I kept a mass of fresh dill in a water glass on my countertop and sprinkled piles of its chopped fronds into everything I ate. It was the best.
Decaf: Coffee is so much more than a way to wake up. It's a gustatory delight, to be savored at any hour of the day. But! I roll decaffeinated after that first morning full caff. This keeps me from sweating and chewing the insides of my cheeks all day.
Captain Phillips: A classic nail-biter action movie—minus cheesy Hollywood-action-movie acting (you get Oscar-nominated acting, instead). Based on a true story about Somali pirates hijacking a container ship off the coast of Africa. Real-deal edge-of-seat type stuff.
Favorites 3.17.14
The last 3 minutes of every True Detective episode. A remarkable show that's very much repping dark, heady shit like Twin Peaks and Nietzsche. But the last few scenes of each episode—crikey! They wind down by winding you up with the haunting-est poetry of voiceover, soundtrack, and direction of photography. Not uplifting—but definitely captivating.
Grating and roasting your cauliflower. Discovered recently! When cauliflower encounters a cheese grater, it crumbles into a texture perfect for salting, olive oiling, and roasting on a cookie sheet until all its ragged little corners are brown and crispy. Then you can make all manor of things with it (fake rice bowl, fake pizza crust, fake hamburger meat)—or you can just, you know, eat it.
Doing whatever you want on a Saturday. Yes, yes, Sunday you'll do all that crap on your list. But Saturday, lovely sun-washed Saturday—it's the cool-down day after a hard week, made for doing exactly what you feel like with no underlying agenda. Like, parks and dogs and skateboarding and friends and long lunches at picnic tables with cups of wine and stuff.
"How to make courtesan au chocolat" via Wes Anderson and Mendl's: One is inspired to place dollops of frosting on everything.
Current Needs
Unlike the Buddha, I'm always in the process of wanting a bunch of stuff that I probably won't ever end up having. It's okay.
There is no equilibrium in my home to how much pleasure I get from coffee vs. how much time/money I put into it. I have the cheapest coffee maker, buy middle-of-the-road beans, and then I expect an incendiary cup of coffee? Makes no sense! Due to having spied renegade whole beans in my jar of coffee grounds—and also an inability to remember the origin of my current coffee grinder (I suspect it goes all the way back when I moved out at age 17)—I've been coveting a "nice" grinder.
Maybe someday I'll tell you all about my adventures in plantar fasciitis, how I never paid any mind to taking care of my feet (running in shoes until they disintegrated, skating in Vans slip ons or the equivalent, etc.), and how now those same feet bring me to my knees on a daily basis. Instead, I'll just say this: doesn't rubbing your sorest foot on a nobby massage ball while you watch TV episodes sound nice?
A gardeny gin without the juniper—made instead from elderberry, pine, black tea, rose, dry orange peel, cubeb, angelica, sage (obvi), lavender, spearmint, dandelion, thyme, sumac, rosemary, licorice root, and fennel. Wow, right? I have this feeling—call it intuition—that squeezing the juice of one blood orange into a glass of this stuff and topping it with soda water might transform your whole day, maybe even week, maybe even life.
Giant Jar Of Easter Lilies
During times such as this when we aren't getting as much sunlight as we should, a jar of fresh flowers gives hope to tired men. These flowers in particular—they come surrounded by a thundercloud of deep, spicy perfume. You'll catch a whif every time you walk by.