Vol. 5 No. 12
Hello there,
(NOTE: I'm spring-cleaning my newsletter! Starting next week I'll ALSO be posting the newsletter to my blog because there's a chance some of you may accidentally get skipped as I clean, ESPECIALLY IF YOU USE GMAIL, so if you don't want to take your chances, please sign up for this blog at the bottom of this post. You can also check to see if Gmail is putting this newsletter into your "promotions" tab. If so, please drag it over to "primary." Things will be back to normal soon, thanks!)
I’m back from my travels and so glad to be home! While we were gone, all the snow disappeared, crocuses popped up, and our forced tulips exploded with blooms. It’s spring!
I. Love. Spring.
I get the most writing done in the spring. I get the most cleaning and decluttering done in the spring. I feel optimistic, energetic, joyous.
I know lots of people who love fall, and even people who love snow and cold. But fall and winter people often seem to want to “explain” their likes. “I like fall because it’s sweater weather.” “I love the holidays.” Etc.
Spring doesn’t usually need an explanation.
Summer? Well, some people just don’t like the hot weather. I get that, I do. I love hot weather, but then I’m from Hawaii (it’s not very hot in Hawaii, by the way—the tradewinds keep everything cool so that even in 80 degree weather you’re not hot). I tend to find anything under 70 a little uncomfortable--too chilly! But my kids all roundly dislike hot weather, especially for sleep, so I get it. People struggle with summer, even people who enjoy barbecues and being outdoors in the summer.
So we’re left with spring as the season that needs no explanation. Following up on this, I’d like to share a springtime quote from Austin Kleon’s newsletter. If you haven’t come across him yet, he’s an artist and an essayist, and his newsletter is one of my favorite reads. You’re a reader, I’m a reader, so I know you’ll enjoy this. He called it, Read at Whim!
I find that when my reading life goes wrong, it is usually because I have failed to pay attention to my interest and to my interests.“
The first, paying attention to my interest, is fairly easy. Am I turning the pages? is the question I ask myself to gauge whether a book is for me at the moment. I trust the simple act of turning the pages. If the pages seem to be turning themselves, then I know for sure the going is good.
(Books, I think, have an energy. They are the crystallization of thought and energy channeled into the pages by the author. This energy lies dormant until I, the reader, unlock it with my attention. Sometimes our energies are not right for each other.)
The second, paying attention to my interests, is actually harder. Keeping track of one’s interests can be tricky, especially when one is interested in a lot of different things. It can also be hard when you don’t accept your genuine interests, when they don’t seem worthy, or if they somehow contradict each other.
You also want to leave things open to the fact that you are an ever-evolving thing. You want to leave room for yourself to be surprised, and to grow.
Here, I’m mostly inspired by my kids, who don’t have trouble with any of this. They know when a book is boring. They know what they like and they know what they need. They will drop a book after 5 pages, and they will re-read a book 500 times if they want to. They are Whim machines.
This spring I want to be more like them. I want to Read at Whim.
When I read this, I felt the kind of astonishment that happens when you recognize something in a place or space that you thought was new to you. YES, I found myself thinking. I want to be WHIMSICAL. To me, that’s the essence of spring. It’s the sense that you are floating on a breeze, and yet you’re entirely purposeful, because you’re being true to YOU.
So the next time you find your mind wandering as you read, or perhaps the next time you push yourself through a chapter that just doesn’t grab you, put the book down…for a moment, for a day, or forever. If you’re not feeling the energy, perhaps you would benefit from asking yourself if you’re paying enough attention…to YOURSELF.
Work-in-progress
Okay, folks! New deadline on Ever Your Affectionate: I had a short conversation with my editor and I’m aiming at being done in a week! If you are a praying sort of person, please pray for me! I’m starting to think that maybe I should have made this project a “regular” project with a “regular” deadline from the start. I was trying to expedite this one because it’s a novella—I thought it would go quickly, ha!—but foolish me, it ended up much more involved than I expected! Alas, the things we don’t know until we know!
What I'm listening to/watching
I’ve written about Japanese singer-songwriter Fujii Kaze before, but I’ve only just gotten into the single he released at the end of last summer, Mo-eh-yo, which he’s translated as Ignite. He had announced plans last summer for a free concert at the gigantic Nissan Stadium in Tokyo in September, and since it was going to be streamed, I was excited! But unfortunately, COVID numbers shut down the possibility of a huge public concert, and he ended up doing the concert in a completely empty stadium. I’m sure he was devastated. I watched the concert (it’s up on YouTube) and it just felt so sad to see him performing in the middle of this vast, empty arena. That was the day he had chosen to release his new single, Mo-eh-yo, and I have to admit I wasn’t “into” it at the time, perhaps because the concert felt so sad. But I’ve been listening to it lately because he’s just released a new album, hurray!
First of all, here’s my favorite, the live version (I’m really judgy on whether a singer can really sing, and thank goodness, he can!).
However, you may enjoy the music video version because there are English translations of the lyrics as subtitles.
Second, I’ve just started watching Severance on Apple TV+. Yikes! Creepy, scary, intriguing, all of those things…but incredibly well produced, from set design to art direction to editing. Even the music is just right for the mood. It’s sci-fi, about a big pharmaceutical company where there are employees who have volunteered to be “severed,” to have their personal memories inaccessible while they are at work, and their work memories inaccessible when they leave. So the workers feel like they never leave work, although then any painful experiences from their personal lives are completely “forgotten.” Here’s the trailer.
Since this is the kind of story that you peel away layers from as you go, it’s possible that at some point the execution will disappoint me, but right now I’ve seen four episodes and I’m still watching!
What I'm celebrating
- my eldest daughter’s birthday this week! She kept saying she didn’t want anything for her birthday, but then she tried on my noise-cancelling headphones and said, um, yes please. I sent her a birthday cake via Goldbelly.com, somewhat pricey but I’m hoping she’ll share with friends!
- One of my twins is going to Oxford this summer! She’ll be studying Tolkien and C.S. Lewis! Her university doesn't have courses on those two authors for some reason, but there is no better way to study them than to go to the university where they taught and wrote, she decided. We'll have to figure out these logistics for her somehow but I'm sure it'll work out!
- Aaaaaand my husband just left for his first international trip since COVID messed up our lives in winter 2020. He was so thrilled to finally be restarting his work life properly after all this time.
Finally...
Since my husband is away on business for awhile, it’s just me and Linus here at home! I’m enjoying the quiet, and so is he! He's a very pampered kitty this week! 🥰🥰🥰
​