Dead Letter Department #110
weather report
I’ve been trying to get myself out of town a little bit more, now that the weather has finally turned & my energy level has taken a corresponding tick upward. A friend gallantly agreed to drive down to the Lynnwood HMart with me at 6:30 in the morning a couple of weeks ago so we could spend a couple of luxurious hours wandering the aisles before it gets insane, which provided me with a pile of various exciting ingredients: kim chi, udon noodles, gochujang, wildly cheap baby bok choy, surprisingly delicious instant coffee for when caffeine is necessary but battling with the french press seems like too much of a chore. We also stopped at a nearby bakery & collected a pile of Japanese sweets to bring back to various people. I’m hoping to make it a regular field trip—shopping somewhere I don’t usually go was briefly inspirational in the kitchen in a way I need badly, since dietary & budget restrictions have sucked so much of the easy-going pleasure out of food prep.
Afterwards, I realized we were really quite close to the shoreline, even though it didn’t seem like it from the sprawl of condos & strip malls we’d landed in, so we took the pastries up to the Mukilteo lighthouse & wandered on the beach a little. The ferry landing was visible from where we were walking, the enormous white and green shapes gliding slowly across calm waters, which of course filled me with longing to take a ferry somewhere, so maybe that will be the next outing.
The tulip festival down in Skagit has been going for a couple of weeks, so I drove down last Sunday morning, stopping at Breadfarm in Bow for the best breakfast danish, to gaze at the fields, which remain uncanny: great ranks of uniform color, marching off across the horizon. Somehow I took not a single photo this year, so you will simply have to imagine it: the low, flat countryside rolling off to each side, the long rows of yellow and then red and then pink, the somewhat pitiful look of the faded daffodils, now past their blooming prime. I’ve never actually parked (& paid) to go through one of the gardens, which I would like to do sometime, but the crowds are punishing, and by the time I was headed north again, each parking lot had a small army of hi-vis vest traffic controllers & an endless stream of people with beautiful babies, prepped for their photo shoots, trailing into the interior of the farms.
My own tulips, the ones that survived the various predations of the year before, have made a nice little showing, and the huge rosemary is positively spangled with little purple flowers, which seem to be inviting the dogwood above it to finally bloom.
Every day seems to bring some fresh headline horror to try to either metabolize or reject like a chip of bone suddenly found on your tongue. This morning I am particularly grieved & angry about the news out of the UK & the recent ICE raid at a local roofing company. I have nothing intelligent to say about any of it; I imagine you are likely caught in the same whirl of despair & frustration.
Later today I will go to my doctor’s appointment at the low income clinic, which is also, of course, one of the locations where there have been rumors of raids, meaning that my neighbors now have to decide if they can keep their medical appointment and risk being detained, or suffer without care. I will have my little scrawled list of things I want to talk about, which we will have ten minutes to address, several of which the doctor will decide are not believable, because I am fat and trans. Every time I fill a prescription, I wonder how long I will have access to it.
reading room
It took me nearly a week to recover from reading We Both Laughed in Pleasure, which is currently sitting underneath the pile of books to take notes on, feeling like a bit of an emotional landmine. I keep thinking I’ll write more about it (though likely in the Secret letters) and then not being able to do it, and in order to break the streak of being frozen, I went to the thrift store and wandered the shelves of used books, because I still have it in my head that’s a cheap source—it’s not really, anymore, or at least not that much cheaper than the actual used bookstore, which also obviously has a massively improved selection, or even Biblio. I guess the prices went up beyond what I would think of as actually cheap at about the same time the dressing rooms were removed & all the cashiers were switched over to self-checkout.
Anyway, I found a copy of the House of Mirth, convinced myself I didn’t own it already (untrue, as it happens), & have spent the past few days with poor Lily Bart advancing inexorably down the corridor of fate. Something a little less devastating might be good for my next read, so if you’ve got something that feels appropriate to the season, I love suggestions & can be found at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com. I am behind on replying at the moment, but have office hours with a friend scheduled tomorrow & one of the things I hope to address is the inbox, along with the tottering pile of book notes to take.
one good thing
The Supermodernultragraphic at L&L Libations—which I just spent five minutes trying to find a description of online—is my new favorite cocktail. I would have three, right now, if you were here & willing to commit to a morning of day drinking with me, though I suppose we should both try to be more productive than that. Maybe on the weekend, though.
Thank you for inviting these dead letters to arrive in your inbox along with all the other things there you contend with. More soon, and in the meantime, may your own office hours provide a sense of restored order.