california (or, really, los angeles).

September 27, 2016

aka, the land of 100+ degree heat waves at the end of the september, with weather so dry and punishing that my sinuses, lips, and skin revolt. it's autumn in new york city now, and i am pleased as punch.

i spent the last week in california with family, which, as it turns out, mostly means that i spent last week eating. i was born in queens but grew up in the suburbs of los angeles until i moved back out to nyc in august 2012, so going back to california always feels like going back in time — and i keep calling it california, like california isn't a massive state with vastly different poles and middle. i just like the word "california;" i like the way it fits in my mouth; and i have little love for los angeles, anyway, that barren land of heat and tinsel and traffic ...

... which might sound like an unfair statement because i do sincerely enjoy my time in LA.

seriously, though, if LA were a person, despite all the good times, we would not be friends.

los angeles is all about the familiar; i rarely deviate from what i already know. i go to the same restaurants and eateries, seek out the same food, buy the same salad from trader joe's, and part of it is that i am a creature of habit and, thus, gravitate towards what i know and crave, especially when my time in LA is so limited.

LA, to me, means comfort: tacos, korean food, jack in the box. it means gogi and sushi. it means mum's cooking because mum makes the best korean soups and marinates the best kalbi. it means a whole lot of fruit because fruit (aside from apples) tastes better and is cheaper in california, and my parents eat a lot of fruit.

it means driving a lot and trying to avoid traffic and going around blocks looking for parking. it means hot days and chilly evenings; it means sticking a tissue up one nostril because of course only one nostril is congested because my sinuses hate the dry weather. it means craving chocolate all the time, and it means crazy beautiful open skies because all that flatness of los angeles is good for that at least, for opening up that blue and making it a canvas you can't ignore because you're stuck in traffic and what else are you going to do but marvel at the colors?

LA is a reminder of where i come from, where i've left, where i've rooted myself. it's a reminder of how place shapes us, of how places can be kind to us or reject us, and it's a reminder of the people and things that ground me.

ultimately, it's a place i can't seem to shed, at least not while my parents are still living there.

girls.

September 14, 2016

girls are the only ones who can really give each other close attention, the kind we equate with being loved. they noticed what we want noticed. (the girls, 30)

i’m all about girls.

i don’t care about “squads” or “girl gangs” or whatever term is trending; just give me girls in all their messiness, complicated-ness, and weirdness. give me girls who come together and form friendships and loyalties, girls who might fight one instant and stand up for each other the next, girls who rally around each other, not because they’re BFFs but because they’re friends and they’re living in this moment together.

last week, i watched “청춘시대 (age of youth)”, a twelve-episode drama about five girls in their twenties who live together in a share house. they’re strangers who end up together because they need a place to live, not because they’ve rounded up friends with the intention of getting a place and being flatmates — korean society doesn’t actually work like that; generally, you live with your parents until you get married. (it’s why love motels are so prevalent.) maybe it’s proximity, maybe it’s the nature of shared space and being away from family, but, whatever it is, they become friends — and, for twelve delightful episodes that squeezed my heart and made me laugh and cry, i thought, i am all for more dramas/films/books about girls.

roughly two weeks ago, i caved and read emma cline’s the girls, which, it’s fair to say, was one of this summer’s most heralded releases and a highly-anticipated debut by a twenty-something girl. maybe it’s not fair to call a twenty-something a girl, but i don’t know — i quite like the word girl, and i don’t use it condescendingly.

the girls is loosely based on the manson murders. we follow evie, a bored, unattached fourteen-year-old whose personal life seems to be caught in the in-between. her parents are getting a divorce; she’s distanced from her best friend; and, when she comes across suzanne and the girls, she’s immediately intrigued. she starts spending more and more time with them on the ranch, where the leader, russell, has amassed a cult following, and all of this, the entire novel, is pointed toward the gruesome murders of victims who are essentially in the wrong house on the wrong night.

cline captures the wide-eyed wonder of what it is to be a girl beautifully, to be caught in the limbo of adolescence, wanting to be someone, to be part of something. there was quite a bit about cline’s writing and storytelling that i liked, despite her tic of phrasal fragments that drove me absolutely up the wall — cline would honestly benefit from falling out of love with her own language because she has talent and potential, and it will be exciting to see how she grows and matures as a writer.

ultimately, however, i found the girls flat and anticlimactic. cline does capture the era of 1960s california beautifully, and she encapsulates the nostalgia with which people tend to look back at that time and place. however, she fails to do much with it and doesn’t actually bring us into the murders from a different perspective. evie herself is too protected, her removal from the murders too orchestrated to be a successful attempt on cline’s end to preserve the integrity of evie’s voice as an innocent. suzanne and the girls also aren’t fleshed out enough so they don’t feel like actual people, as anything more than ciphers of russell’s demands and the objects of evie’s fantasies — and, even if the latter were the point, that evie projected her wants and desires onto these girls and therefore could never see them as real, dimensional people, cline also fails to drive that home.

in the end, the girls failed to deliver what i’d hoped it had promised. it didn’t give anything new or interesting or insightful regarding the murders. it didn’t take us into the girls’ minds or sink us into what makes these girls so interesting. it didn’t give us much that was solid or complex or real about these girls at all.

a glossary of terms:

unni (언니): what a girl calls her older sister — or a girl who is older than she is
dong-saeng (동생): a younger sibling — or someone who is younger
sun-bae (선배): someone who’s been at school/work/setting longer (i.e. a third-year)
hoo-bae (후배): someone who’s newer to school/work/setting (i.e. a first-year)
jon-dae-mahl (존대말): honorific speak
bahn-mahl (반말): casual speak
chung-choon (청춘): youth

things to note about korean social relationships and language:

korean society is all about hierarchy.
- the easiest way it breaks down is obviously by age.
- however, once you get into college or the work place, it’s not necessarily about age but who enters the school/work place first. you could be older than someone age-wise, but, if s/he started school before you did, s/he would be your sun-bae.
- accordingly, instead of going by the year you'll graduate college, in korea, you go by the year you enter college.
korean has different levels of speak, the two most common of which are john-dae-mahl and bahn-mahl.
- when meeting someone new, if the age and/or status gap is glaringly obvious or has already been defined, the older/higher-ranked might use bahn-mahl from the start.
- otherwise, you start by using the honorific with each other. at one point, you will establish how you will speak by figuring out your social relationship to each other. if you’re older (or of higher rank), you’ll “lower” your speech. if you’re younger, you will continue to use the honorific.
- if you’re the same age, you’ll likely both lower your speech.
you generally never call someone older than you by name.
- (my brother tried to do this once; instead of calling me nuna, which is what a boy calls his older sister, he tried calling me by my name. he never tried it again.)
- usually, you will call someone by his/her surname, followed by the relevant social label. for instance, in this drama, we know the characters as yoon sunbae, kang unni, song (or ji-won), ye-eun, and eun-jae.
- eun-jae, because she’s the youngest, calls everyone in the house sun-bae (if they go to the same university) or unni (if they just live together) and uses the honorific. on the other hand, yoon sunbae, as the oldest, calls all the girls by name and uses bahn-mahl.

what was the point of this linguistic/cultural education? i’ve no idea. i just think it’s interesting, especially the ways that language creates a structure/foundation on which relationships are built.

it’s also interesting because, when i think of girls, this is what i recognize: this social hierarchy that provides structure and protection, these defined relationships that situate us in connection to each other and give us a place and a role, these girls who flock together within this structure and look after each other.

it’s interesting because the language demonstrates clearly that we exist in proximity to and in relationship with other people.

i’ve never been the sort of reader who looks for relatability or recognizability in books. i grew up on the white canon, reading only the classics from british, russian, and french literature, so the notion of being able to relate to characters wasn’t one that even crossed my mind as a possibility. i didn’t read to find myself or see myself. i read because i loved language and story, because i was entranced by these worlds i’d never know, characters i’d never meet, places i’d never go.

maybe it helped that i never felt like i needed to find a place to see myself reflected. i grew up bilingual and bicultural, watching korean dramas and listening to korean music; all my media and cultural touchstones are korean. even now, i have no idea what’s going on in western entertainment, whether in the pop scene or in hollywood, and this is certainly something i never thought much about and maybe took for granted, that representation (or the lack thereof) was something i should think about.

a growing awareness of this has shifted the way i read in recent years, and going from the girls to age of youth was a reminder of where i come from, how i approach literature, what i find relatable and recognizable and why. it was a reminder of the things i’ve sometimes yearned for, the life i might have had had i been born and raised in korea, these social relationships i know and understand so intimately yet have not partaken in.

it was a reminder of who i am, that i am korean, specifically korean-american, that these are two contributing sides of my identity that inform the ways i see the world. my ethnicity and nationality are not the defining forces of my life; i don’t think any one thing is (we contain multitudes after all); but there will always be this hybrid in me, this double-stranded thing that keeps me on the fringes of both cultures and usually tends to place me outside them, despite my attempts to fit.

to be honest, sometimes, i still don’t know how to feel about that.

i didn’t really believe that friendship could be an end in itself, not just the background fuzz to the dramatics of boys loving you or not loving you. (43)

i knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. (237)

there’s something universal about being a girl — how we’re taught to obsess over our looks, to define ourselves according to how others see us, specifically how men see us and, also, desire us (or don’t). there’s something universal in the way girls are torn down, reduced to their physical appearance, taught to be critical of themselves and of each other, and there’s something so painfully familiar about the self-loathing, the insecurities, the meanness.

it doesn’t matter your ethnicity; i certainly see it on both sides of the pacific. cline, in particular, does a stellar job depicting this in her novel, and that was my favorite thing about the girls, the way cline captured this sense of girlhood, what it is to be a girl in her adolescence, waiting for life to happen and disappointed with its banality. i could see why evie was drawn to the girls, why she kept going back to the ranch, and there’s a lovely, nuanced poignancy to her adolescent self, a loneliness girls can recognize as well as that moment of realization that this is the world, and it is one that is not kind to girls.

and i think that’s what makes female friendships so precious, this notion that we have each other and understand each other, that we know and recognize the dangers of the world. it’s what made age of youth such a delight to watch, to see these girls come together as friends, not in the romanticized sense of BFFs or forever friends, but in the everyday, in the ways we learn to live with each other, in the ways girls band together and get through life.

i loved this drama. it wasn’t a perfect drama; some of the story lines were too dramatic, some of the episode endings abrupt; but it was genuine, heartfelt, and real. it got to the heart of what makes female friendships so intense and wonderful, and it got into all the pettiness, the craziness, the loyalty of girls.

it gave us five fully-fleshed, unique girls, each with her own life and desires and loneliness, with her own quirks and fashion style and personality, and it brought them together and showed us what friendship looks like. they stand by each other; they yell at each other, fight with each other; and they cry and scream and throw bags out windows — but, then, something happens, one of them is hurt, and they’re there, no questions asked.

maybe they won’t always be there because maybe this is a friendship reserved for youth, but that’s not the point. forever isn’t the point.

the point is that they’re in their twenties, and they’re going through their growing pains, and they happen to have met at this juncture in their lives. what’s important is that these girls are living in this moment, that they have these friendships with whom to experience youth.

what’s important is that they’re present; what’s important is now.

it's national suicide prevention week.

September 8, 2016

trigger warning for depression and suicide.

as people who kill themselves are, more often than not, depressives, depression is one of the deadliest diseases on the planet. it kills more people than most other forms of violence — warfare, terrorism, domestic abuse, assault, gun crime — put together.
even more staggeringly, depression is a disease so bad that people are killing themselves because of it in a way they do not kill themselves with any other illness. yet people still don’t think depression really is that bad. if they did, they wouldn’t say the things they say. (25)

earlier this year, penguin published matt haig’s reasons to stay alive stateside. it’s a memoir of haig’s experience with suicidal depression in his mid-20s, published in the UK in 2015 to positive reviews, and i was intrigued by what i’d heard, despite my usual instinct to avoid books about depression and suicide.

this might be a weird way of putting it, but i loved it — reasons to stay alive is one of the most honest depictions of depression i’ve read. it’s almost difficult to read because haig doesn’t try to gloss over the darker realities of depression, but he isn’t harsh, unforgiving, or judgmental, is kind and gentle instead. it's worth noting because kindness, i find, is crucial when we write or talk about depression and suicide, kindness to ourselves, to the people around us, because depression is a disease that breeds cruelty in so many ways.

what i appreciated most about reasons to stay alive, though, is that haig doesn’t give us false happy endings. he gives us hope and encouragement but acknowledges depression for what it is — darkness, a state of being trapped in a cave without air, without light. he doesn’t diminish it, neither the pain of it nor the reality of living with it, and he doesn’t allow the reader to harbor false illusions of a total “cure,” of some kind of magical thing that will fix everything forever.

it’s a sobering book because of its reality. according to the american foundation for suicide prevention, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the US. for every suicide, there are twenty-five attempts, though this number isn’t accurate; because of the intense stigma surrounding suicide, attempts are believed to be largely underreported. suicide isn’t an epidemic unique to the US, either; according to the world health organization, korea has he second-highest suicide rate in the world.

so why don’t we talk about it more?

the tattoo is a symbol; it’s a reminder of why i kept living.

nell is the band i carry with me, literally because i’ve their logo tattooed on my right wrist. people sometimes ask what it is, what it means, and the truncated explanation is that it’s the logo of a band that means the world to me. the deeper, more honest response is that it’s a reminder that i’ve been here before, in this dark place where there is no hope, no air — that, in that darkness, there was this band that i loved, whose music comforted me and reached me when nothing and no one else could.

to put it more bluntly, the tattoo is a reminder that i have struggled (and will continue to struggle) with depression, but that i have survived, that i kept living.

the weird thing about depression is that, even though you might have more suicidal thoughts, the fear of death remains the same. the only difference is that the pain of life has rapidly increased. so when you hear about someone killing themselves it’s important to know that death wasn’t any less scary for them. it wasn’t a “choice” in the moral sense. to be moralistic about it is to misunderstand. (18)

these are not words i write or share lightly. it’s terrifying to put them out here to be read; it’s easier to hide behind fiction, to talk about the book i’m working on, these short stories that have to do with suicide. it’s easier to offer some kind of abstract, oh, i’m interested in human darkness and pain and self-annihilation, as to why i write about suicide — which is true, yes, but doesn’t tell the whole truth.

one of the things i’m learning is that it’s impossible for me to write and present my best fiction if i’m not willing to be more open about why i write the stories i do. it’s also disingenuous for me to say that it’s hugely important to me to open up safe dialogue about depression and suicide if i’m not willing to talk about it first, to find some kind of courage to come out and say that i’ve been there, i am there, and that’s okay. i can’t ask people to be vulnerable and honest without first being vulnerable and honest myself.

similarly, i hedged a lot over whether or not to use these photographs with this post. i find it weird and discomfiting to put my face anywhere, but, in the end, i [obviously] ran with it for one express reason: to say that i am real, and i am here.

it’s easy to forget that there is a real human being actually creating the content we see on-line and on social media. it makes people say all sorts of shit on-line, shit they’d never have the gall to say to someone’s face, and it makes it easy to make assumptions about people’s lives. it’s easy to see the good things, the happy things, the celebratory things, but it’s hard to see the pain, the sorrow, the grief. it’s hard to see the human being in all his/her dimensions. it’s easy to forget even to try.

when i talk about depression and suicide, i want to put my face out there as a reminder that i am human, that depression is an expression of humanity, broken humanity but humanity nonetheless. i don’t want this conversation to be one that is depersonalized and dehumanized, hidden behind a mask of books and food. i don’t want these conversations to be stale and robotic; i want them to be vital reminders that we are human and we are here.

depression itself isn’t a lie. it is the most real thing i’ve ever experienced. of course, it is invisible.
to other people, it sometimes seems like nothing at all. you are walking around with your head on fire and no one can see the flames. and so — as depression is largely unseen and mysterious — it is easy for stigma to survive. stigma is particularly cruel for depressives, because stigma affects thoughts and depression is a disease of thoughts.
when you are depressed you feel alone, and that no one is going through quite what you are going through. you are so scared of appearing in any way mad you internalize everything, and you are so scared that people will alienate you further you clam up and don’t speak about it, which is a shame, as speaking about it helps. words — spoken or written — are what connect us to the world, and so speaking about it to people, and writing about this stuff, helps connect us to each other, and to our true selves. (1-2)

if you’re depressed and/or suicidal, i am not here to tell you it gets better. when you’re spiraling, when you’re trapped in darkness, it won’t feel like it will ever get better until it already has. i am also not here to tell you this will never happen again. maybe you’ll be lucky to go through this depression once, but you also might not — i certainly wasn’t. i am also not here to patronize you by saying that you will get through this, partly because i don’t know that, but mostly because i don’t know how to tell you how to get through it, either.

i am, however, here to tell you that you are worth saving.

i am here to tell you that your pain is real, that you’re not crazy, that you’re just human.

i am here to tell you that you’re not alone, that, for what it’s worth, here is a stranger on the internet who understands. i am a real, solid human being who reads a lot, maybe thinks too much, takes photos of everything, and i struggle with depression. i have days when i can’t get out of bed. i have nights i do nothing but cry. i have moments when i want all this to end, not because i don’t want to live but because i’m so exhausted and drained from the pain and defeat and hopelessness. i want to believe that things will get better but have no basis for that kind of hope, that kind of faith, and i feel like i’m grasping at straws every day.

but here is the other side of it: i’m here. i’m still here. i’m still writing; i’m still [over]sharing; i’m still living.

this — all of this — is what the tattoo signifies. that i have been there and survived, that i have gone back and survived, that i am still here because there are people out there like you and me, people who suffer and struggle and survive. that there is this band that i love, whose music comforts me and has constantly been that lifeline in my darkest moments, and that alone keeps me safe. that there are people in my life who love me and support me and have faith in me when i’ve long run out.

that all of this is worth living for, even if living sometimes hurts so fucking much.

now me: […] you have a life. it is not perfect. no human life is. but it is yours. (177)

if you’re in crisis, please get help, whatever help looks like to you. if you want stories of hope, of survival, check out the #ikeptliving hashtag started by to write love on her arms for their national suicide prevention week campaign this year. if you want to talk to someone, in the US, the national suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. in NYC, the samaritans are 212-673-3000. calls to both lines are confidential and available 24/7.

if you’re not depressed, anxious, and/or suicidal but know someone who is, this is for you:

how to be there for someone with depression or anxiety
1. know that you are needed, and appreciated, even if it seems you are not.
2. listen.
3. never say “pull yourself together” or “cheer up” unless you’re also going to provide detailed, foolproof instructions. (tough love doesn’t work. turns out that just good old “love” is enough.)
4. appreciate that it is an illness. things will be said that aren’t meant.
5. educate yourself. understand, above all, that what might seem easy to you — going to a shop, for instance — might be an impossible challenge for a depressive.
6. don’t take anything personally, any more than you would take someone suffering with the flu or chronic fatigue syndrome or arthritis personally. none of this is your fault.
7. be patient. understand it isn’t going to be easy. depression ebbs and flows and moves up and down. it doesn’t stay still. do not take one happy/bad moment as proof of recovery/relapse. play the long game.
8. meet them where they are. ask what you can do. the main thing you can do is just be there.
9. relieve any work/life pressure if that is doable.
10. where possible, don’t make the depressive feel weirder than they already feel. three days on the sofa? haven’t opened the curtains? crying over difficult decisions like which pair of socks to wear? so what. no biggie. there is no standard normal. normal is subjective. there are seven billion versions of normal on this planet. (119-20)

it’s incorrect to think that we can save people. however, we can be there for people; we can seek to sympathize even if we cannot empathize; and we can love. and that love — as simple and small as it may sometimes seem — can go a long, long way.

it’s national suicide prevention week; let’s talk.

food, bodies, & healing.

September 2, 2016

if you need a gift for a friend [...] and you’re not sure what to get, buy a book. new, old, used, whatever. a world filled with books is a better place for all of us. (new school/old school, "school daze")

it's happened to me, too. people are meant to connect, to empathize. sharing openly has made me a real person in other people’s eyes. i’m no longer just a picture of a cute looking cake. of course, you always lose followers. i remember posting a photo of myself on instagram during my first chemo and i think i lost a few hundred followers. which was totally fine, because they were only there to see the cakes — more cakes, dammit! ha. but the comments on that photo were very meaningful for me. i really felt the support of people all over the world.” (eat my words, "reality bites," 45)

i have a complicated relationship with food — or, maybe, it’s more accurate to say, i have a complicated relationship with my body.

i’ve hated my body for over fifteen years, which is half my life. for years, i wanted to disappear my body, wished it would shrink into itself, and i wanted my body to be something no one would see because, in the world i was raised, i was taught that my body was directly connected to any potential — any future, any relationship, any career would be determined by my body, by the size of it.

koreans have one standard of beauty, and it is one in which a woman must be thin and pale with double-lidded eyes, a straight nose, and a v-line jaw. it’s one in which she must wear makeup and dress a certain way, and, if she does not conform, she is shamed for it, openly and without remorse, by family and strangers both. this is the society in which i was raised (despite having been born and raised in the states), relentlessly made aware of the fact that i wasn’t skinny, told over and over again that i would be pretty if only i’d lose weight, made to feel like my body was a direct reflection of my character and ought to be judged accordingly.

no one escapes from such constant judgment unscathed, and, in that regard, i am no unicorn.

i’ve been in a reading slump as far as fiction goes, so i’ve been reading a lot of food writing instead. part of it is an endeavor to learn more about what food writing is, what i respond to, what i don’t, and another part of it is an endeavor to figure out what kind of writer i am outside of fiction.

another part of it, though, is an attempt to work through my relationship with food, with this mess that it became over years and years of being torn down over my body. it’s an attempt to articulate why i love food, the aspects of food culture (and, specifically, korean food culture) i respond to, and it’s an attempt to allow myself to love what i love and to be bold and unashamed of it.

this is not sponsored, endorsed, whatever by cherry bombe. if you haven’t noticed yet, i have a compulsion to share things i like and am reading — plus, this is sort of like closure. i kicked off this summer reading cherry bombe (issue number 4) and baking a sponge cake, and i’m closing this summer reading cherry bombe (issues number 3 and 6) and baking a sponge cake. it’s been a good summer of sponge cakes.

i cringe inwardly when dining companions use terms like "guilty pleasure" and "indulgent" to describe food. this cultural dialogue pushes women to feel like they’re either eating too much or too little. i try hard to ignore the "good" versus "bad" dichotomy concerning food, and dining alone gives me the space to focus on the visceral experience of eating, and not what anyone else thinks about my choices and cravings. (girl crush, "table for one," 56)

in june, i went to an event where the writer wei tchou read from a piece in which she talked about how she never felt comfortable saying she loved food because she didn’t want to be cast into the chinese stereotype. i didn’t even know such a stereotype existed, but i could understand where she was coming from — for so long, i felt so self-conscious about the fact that i loved food because i felt like people would judge me for it, like, oh, she’s fat; of course she likes to eat.

i used to wonder if maybe my love for food was a reaction to the body shaming. was it because i wasn’t allowed certain foods while on stupid diets like jenny craig or while counting calories? was it because i was denied the desserts and pastries that i found so beautiful and intricate, that i wished i could create? was it because of the way i would be openly shamed, given dirty looks, made to feel guilty for the pall that would settle over the room when i displayed any kind of enjoyment of food?

do i love food because i wanted more of it, or do i love food because i love food, because i love the craft of it, the discipline, the artistry, the way food says so much about us?

for my whole life people have asked me*, “why aren’t you fat?” and i’ve just responded, “i have a good metabolism.” but the truth is i was a really fat teenager and people always said to me, “you’d be so pretty if you’d just lose some weight.” then i had the really good fortune to meet my first husband, a man who likes large women. he looked at my large body and thought it was great. it was the first time i didn’t hear that voice in my head telling me i couldn’t eat. we moved in together and i lost 35 pounds. i was cooking fresh food for him. i’m convinced that when we don’t eat good food we’re so unsatisfied we keep eating more. (girl crush, "turning the page," 66)
* ruth reichl

as it turns out, unsurprisingly, the food writing i love best places food in the world. it’s more about where the food is coming from, who is creating it, how it’s being consumed, with whom, in what way, than it is about the food itself. food becomes almost a detail in a bigger picture, which isn’t a diminishing of food and those who create it — i have huge amounts of respect for chefs, bakers, cooks, like i do for all artists, for all of us who dedicate ourselves to passion, obsession, and craft in pursuit of something worth pursuing.

however, like books, food doesn’t exist in a vacuum. everyone must eat, and we all bring our own habits and preferences to what we eat, the way we eat. we have our own attitudes toward food, whether it’s purely utilitarian or a marker of status or taste-driven, and, in the same ways, we bring our own damage, our brokenness, our hurts to our kitchens and our tables.

food, for me, has been a way of healing and recalibrating. i’ve always been that cliché of a writer who escapes into her kitchen when she needs to work things out in her head — or, maybe, is it a cliché of a human being who loves to work with her hands, who loves how tactile and methodical baking is, how it forces you to slow down, take deep breaths, and think things through? baking is an exercise in discipline, in patience, though my love for baking is never one that’s been recognized as such — people hear baking, and they think indulgence, they think fat, they think lack of control. people hear, i like to cook, and they think, but of course.

to me, though, the kitchen is a place where bodies disappear, where they become things of utility, not things to be catalogued by societal labels. it’s not about what you look like, whether in gender, size, race, but what you can create and why, for whom. by extension, the table, too, becomes a place where bodies disappear, where they become participants in relationships, in community, in culture — and all this sounds so obvious to me, but, at the same time, it’s been a long time getting here, to this place where i can appreciate my body for what it can do, not hate it for what it doesn’t look like.

and this is what i love about the food writing i’ve been reading, whether in cherry bombe or lucky peach or the new yorker — that there is this acknowledgment that food plays a part in everyday life, that food is culture, reacts to culture, shapes culture. that we all approach food in different ways with different needs, whether as professional chefs or home cooks or people who eat and cook and share on social media. that there isn’t just one way to think about food but many because it is an essential part of our lives and, as such, we should think about it, and we should embrace it. we shouldn’t be ashamed to love it.

some books that i’ve loved that discuss food and/or bodies:

alexandra kleeman, you too can have a body like mine (harper, 2015)
park min-gyu, pavane for a dead princess(dalkey archive press, 2014)
han kang, the vegetarian (hogarth, 2015)
esmé weijun wang, the border of paradise (unnamed press, 2016)
lee seung-u, the private life of plants (dalkey archive press, 2015)

four years ago, i moved back to new york city from los angeles, essentially fleeing the place i’d grown up. i needed space to shed the ghost i’d become, space to grow and expand and fit into my own skin again, and it’s been four years of slow, painful progress. sometimes, i look in the mirror and see a monster, but, other times, i look in the mirror and see someone who’s just fine as she is, who has her fears and insecurities and flaws but who also has a heart of her own, a mind of her own, a body of her own.

like i said, it’s been a long time coming, and there’s still a long ways to go, but i’m happy to say i’m getting there.

… donuts, or doughnuts as they were once spelled, are another thing entirely. they’re not baked, they’re deep-fried — crisp and just greasy enough and, at their best, not too sweet. they’re nuggety bombs of decadent toothsome animal deliciousness; they stick to your ribs and give you a zingy kick and don’t make you crash. (new school/old school, "hot potato," 108)

solnit, stories, & autumn.

August 24, 2016

what’s your story? it’s all in the telling. stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. to love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story. (the faraway nearby, 3)

the heat wave has broken and given way to significantly cooler, dryer temperatures in new york city, and it’s got me thinking autumn.

autumn’s a great season; it means cool weather, jackets (which mean pockets), beanies, the world done up in oranges and reds, comfort food. it means the brooklyn book festival (september 18!) and the new yorker festival (october 7-9!), and it means big fall releases (a post on that coming soon). it also means new starts, new endeavors, new attempts to find courage — which has me turning to rebecca solnit again.

the bigness of the world is redemption. despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. to dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, into the larger world, into the openness in which you need not clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest. being able to travel both ways matters, and sometimes the way back into the heart of the question begins by going outward and beyond. this is the expansiveness that sometimes comes literally in a landscape or that tugs you out of yourself in a story. (30-1)

there’s an empathy and grace to solnit’s writing that i love. she clearly thinks deeply and seriously about the world, and she conveys this thoughtfulness and consideration in writing that i find absolutely lovely. solnit doesn’t write like one who wastes words or uses them carelessly; she is, rather, careful about how she presents her ideas, observations, and thoughts, not in the control-freak, obsessive sort of way but in the way of someone who understands and respects the value of the printed word, of expression.

like plath’s unabridged journals, solnit’s the faraway nearby is a book i like to keep in arm’s reach at all times. solnit makes me want to see the world in different ways, to be more expansive in my thinking, to seek connections and stories in places i might not have otherwise sought, and she feeds my desire to see the world, to get out of my bubble and comfort zone and explore different perspectives. she makes me think about story and story-telling, why story is so essential, and that, in turn, makes me reexamine why i tell stories and why i tell the stories i do.

it’s not everyday that you find an author who challenges you to be better, to do better, to write and think and tell stories better. if and when you do, it makes sense to keep him/her close.

to hear is to let the sound wander all the way through the labyrinth of your ear; to listen is to travel the other way to meet it. it’s not passive but active, this listening. it’s as though you retell each story, translate it into the language particular to you, fit it into your cosmology so you can understand and respond, and thereby it becomes part of you. to empathize is to reach out to meet the data that comes through the labyrinths of the senses, to embrace it and incorporate it. to enter into, we say, as though another person’s life was also a place you could travel to. (193)

like many others who turned into writers, i disappeared into books when i was very young, disappeared into them like someone running into the woods. what surprised and still surprises me is that there was another side to the forest of stories and the solitude, that i came out that other side and met people there. writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. i sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone. (60-1)

writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone. or rather writing is saying to the no one who may eventually be the reader those things one has no someone to whom to say them. matters that are so subtle, so personal, so obscure, that i ordinarily can’t imagine saying them to the people to whom i’m closest. every once in a while i try to say them aloud and find that what turns to mush in my mouth or falls short of their ears can be written down for total strangers. said to total strangers in the silence of writing that is recuperated and heard in the solitude of reading. (64)

sometime in the late nineteenth century, a poor rural english girl who would grow up to become a writer was told by a gypsy, “you will be loved by people you’ve never met.” this is the odd compact with strangers who will lose themselves in your words and the partial recompense for the solitude that makes writers and writing. you have an intimacy with the faraway and distance from the near at hand. like digging a hole to china and actually coming out the other side, the depth of that solitude of reading and then writing took me all the way through to connect with people again in an unexpected way. it was astonishing wealth for one who had once been so poor. (65)

nell, my favorite band in the world, released their 7th album, c, last week, and i think it’s a perfect segue from summer into autumn. it’s an album i absolutely needed at this moment in my life, and it’s brighter in tone than nell’s sound usually is, but it’s just as comforting and reassuring as their music always is.

more on nell next time, though. i can’t not write about nell and their new album.

after years in new york city, georgia o’keeffe moved to rural new mexico, from which she would sign her letters to the people she loved, “from the faraway nearby.” it was a way to measure physical and psychic geography together. emotion has its geography, affection is what is nearby, within the boundaries of the self. you can be a thousand miles from the person next to you in bed or deeply invested in the survival of a stranger on the other side of the world. (108)