Dead Letter Department #52

weather report

I’ve had social media off my phone again for a few weeks—although if somebody sends me something I need to watch, sometimes I re-download an app & then delete it again, which always seems a little ridiculous even as I’m doing it. Really, I ask myself, you can’t just have some self-discipline about this? But experience proves over and over again that I, in fact, cannot. I feel substantially less well-informed, embarrassingly so, but I’m not actually sure what that means to me these days—do I just want more news? I usually read a fat Sunday edition of the newspaper every weekend, half ritual & half attempt to catch up on Events, & mostly what happens is I cry about wars & form inappropriately intense attachments to people I’ve never heard of in the obituary section before enjoying the style section. Do I miss the exposure to people’s opinions or do I miss the idea of myself as someone who is online & knows what the fuck is going on in that world?

The ability to have a complete, non-fragmentary thought does continue to increase more the longer I keep this particular discipline, which is probably enough of an answer on why to do it. I’m writing long fiction. I need to hold entire worlds in my head. It isn’t negotiable. My ability to read has been increasing too, although I’m not back to where I was pre-pandemic when I could still whip through a pile of books a week & somehow absorb & respond to them all. The key there has been dedicated time (usually after dinner, in the soft light of the white paper lantern), & also following absolutely any whim. Do I want to reread pulpy, repressed gay stuff from my adolescence for an entire month? Great. Is the only book I’m hankering after unavailable through any library or regular bookstore? Fine, I’ll get it on Biblio (& accidentally end up with a beautiful first edition, for no extra cost). It does means my ambitious to read pile lingers and even grows while my beloved librarians field all the online hold requests, and a steady stream of oddities drops into my mailbox.

I’ve been trying to think more about cultivating the kind of mental environment that is good for the creative work I want to do, although I am still, weirdly, in the beginning stages of it. My attitude in the past has largely been pretty grind-based—just sit there & work, until the work is done, & then do that again the next day, until you’re too tired to do it anymore. If that actually did what it says on the tin, I don’t even think I’d quarrel with it, but it does have diminishing returns, especially over a period of unusually isolated years. When you don’t fill the reservoir occasionally, properly, not just with a firehose blast, then every time you scrape down to the bottom, it gets harder to refill. I’m trying to be more open to ideas, here, & to trying different things & seeing what works, but I am extremely protective of my various rituals and habits, superstitiously so, which makes it hard to break off & do something new.

What I want is one of those Into the Gloss articles (rip OG Glossier, I guess) or Strategist Things I Can’t Live Without lists but from writers & artists about their work days, something that goes into absolutely insane granular detail about daily routines & process—like, give me the name of the tea & exactly how long you steep it before you sit down to work, tell me every detail of the process you use to make the clay. I want the studio tour, the names of the different kinds of pencils, all of it.

Maybe the next time there’s a studio tour day around here I should go visit some studios & see if I can get a taste of what I’m looking for there, but I’m a little worried I’d be unpleasantly intense for the nice artists who are letting people walk around in their spaces. The last time I did a studio tour it was on Lummi Island, so we ended up criss-crossing it multiple times, rising to the top of those winding, narrow roads & seeing the glittering bay below us before sinking back down again. I don’t remember the art we saw, but we did stumble across a nursery set in a clearing surrounded by tall green pines, a truly magical place—I wouldn’t be surprised if I tried to find it again & the fairies had already whisked it away. There was a woman there doing some process by which she would, I think, ask the plants what you needed & then give you some potions according to what they said. I didn’t go through the process, but I have since sometimes wondered what the plants would have said I needed. I did buy a little pot of lemon verbena that has since taken over the whole stretch between the rosemary & the dogwood, & I do suspect it of having some extra qualities, although I couldn’t tell you what they are.

one good thing

Trader Joe’s has had something they coyly refer to as frost-kissed artichokes, which means the produce is slightly damaged by the wildly fluctuating weather. Are they cheaper? No, sadly, but they are uglier (always appreciated, in this world of polished shining produce), & they are enormous, fresh enough that the leaves squeak when you surreptitiously squish them, and more importantly, they are delicious. I steam one for about twenty minutes, melt a little butter, squeeze a bit of lemon, & drape myself in a voluminous cloth napkin in a usually futile attempt to avoid butter drips. The last time I did this I also took off my shirt and, of course, with unerring timing, my neighbor happened to be up on his roof repairing something at just the right moment to glimpse the spectacle of me, topless & eating a colossal artichoke, while watching Real Housewives—it was a special moment for both of us, I am sure, but I will add to my bare bones recipe that you might consider closing your curtains if you intend to follow my example.

If you like the newsletter, please share it with a friend or consider subscribing to the secret edition, where I’m writing about transition & shifting identity—if the subscription is out of reach, just shoot me a note & I’ll see if I can comp you. Write to me anytime at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com. I hope to see you here at the Dead Letter Department again soon, & in the meantime, may your own reservoir be rising.