Dead Letter Department #68

weather report

I spent most of the weekend getting so dirty in the garden that even after washing my feet with the hose I still left muddy footprints across the kitchen when I came indoors that I had to chase down with a rag. Having neglected the yard this spring on account of surgery, there’s a ton of blackberry & buttercup removal to do, but for some reason that’s not what I concentrated on, instead allowing myself to be seduced by the plants at the garden center and all of their fresh, unthorny possibilities.

For a long time, all I had energy for was keeping the wheels on: same routine, same meals, same chores. I clung to routine during the worst of the pandemic because it was the only thing keeping me even partially afloat, and even then my head went under more than a few times. Post-surgery, for the first couple of months, it was about gradually increasing: range of motion, activity level, energy reserves. The past few weeks, though, I’ve finally felt like it was possible to make some improvements.

I actually tried a couple new recipes: specifically that cheeseburger from the end of the movie the Menu, which was exactly right, just how a burger should taste, a spinach salad with hot chicken strips (bought at the deli, I am not fucking around with frying in this heat, or possibly ever), a watermelon cucumber goat cheese salad. This sounds like nothing at all, but there was a while there when it felt like I would probably just continue eating the same couple meals over and over until the end of my days because the cognitive load of trying to figure something else out was literally impossible.

I’ve been doing some deeper reading, letting myself get really obsessed with single authors & their letters & their legacy, or writing on Japanese architecture even though I don’t understand half the terms. The pile of books waiting for their turn at the note-taking was positively towering, but I took a chunk out of it this weekend in the too-warm afternoons & hope to get it whittled all the way down before long. It makes me feel like the circuit is complete, & I can shelve the book, or release it back into the library.

My neighbors had to take out a line of trees along their fence, which means I suddenly have a sunnier strip on that side, so I finally went & fulfilled my long standing desire by buying a tiny $30 coral bark Japanese maple & digging a home hole for it out of the lawn. It looks quite gallant standing there fluttering its leaves, & I so hope it makes it, along with the oak leaf hydrangea in the front & everything I put into the little bed where the butterfly bush used to be. I guess what I’m saying is all this takes something next door to optimism, to imagine that it matters at all if I plant a beautiful little tree, or, if I can’t get that far, just to have the energy to do it anyway.

It feels like summer is already beginning to race away from us, even though I know part of that is just the accelerated retail schedule we’re all on it. Part of it’s the dryness, too, the crisp brown burnt up front lawn, the scattering of dry leaves in the back that make it look like fall even though we’re not yet halfway through August. Last night my neighbors were burning their yard waste, sending up columns of sweet smelling woodsmoke, making the air look yellow & autumnal. The list I made at the beginning of the season remains impossibly long, but that’s part of the point of having it, a sense of expansive possibilities, & the things I have knocked off it were delightful (rookery, youth Pride, regular Pride, Bar Cicitti for cocktails, etc).

Time-wise, I’m going to prioritize a few more dips in Lake Whatcom, at least one at Lake Samish, where I haven’t been in years, and, smack in the middle of the month when the moon is darkest, going to find out if I really can see bioluminescent plankton in the harbor in Blaine. You have to let your eyes adjust, I’ve read, and wait for the warmest, darkest nights of the summer, so next week should be just right. I’ll report back to you then.

one good thing

As my part of the city slowly changes from feeling like a weird, isolated way station between downtown & the mall wastes, more & more new places have been getting built. It’s funny, I have disliked so much the sight of the dull, four story, retail on the bottom, apartment buildings going up all over the place: they all look the same, they’re too expensive for what they are, the developers suck, they’re not including any parking, somehow convinced that people are going to bus & bike everywhere despite all evidence to the contrary, and so on. But as soon as people move in & start throwing their towels over the balcony railings & putting plants in the windows, suddenly it’s just where the neighbors live, & it doesn’t bother me at all anymore.

More people means more restaurants, and one of my favorites is the banh mi place, Banh Mi & Bubble Tea, in the gas station parking lot. I can’t speak to the bubble tea, because even though I try it every few years to see if my stance has changed, I am resolute in my dislike. The banh mi, though, is delicious, simple & tasty & wildly inexpensive, & the fresh rolls are always good too. There’s iced Vietnamese coffee, just the sweet kick in the teeth I needed to get back to work on Saturday afternoon, and I’m also a great admirer of the worker’s handwriting, seen above, which is extremely artistic.

Thank you for reading. If you like the newsletter, please share it with a friend or write to me at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com. I hope to see you here at the Dead Letter Department again soon, & in the meantime, may your end-of-summer list have just the right ratio of impossibility, leaving you plenty to look forward to next year.