Hi friends,
It feels weird to be in Texas, land of space and extravagance, of seclusion and pride, taxidermied walls and Southern savoir faire. I can go down under into work holes, 110% go go go, never mind the world spinning around us, for the demigods of anarchy could not stand before the gods of productivity.
A quick hello to new subscribers—great to have you! Here are a few things to help decide if this space is for you, also on the about page:
Who is this for?
You like creative nonfiction but not enough to subscribe to The New Yorker
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Your family considers you an overthinker; friends considers you thoughtful
You wonder, there must be more than this
Today’s newsletter is an example of the sort of thing paid subscribers might get: an experimental mélange of custom hand illustrations and designs, words with a little less coherence, feelings with a little more gut. If you’re interested and able, considering subscribing today ($5/mo or $50/yr) for the full experience.
Starting with one of my favorites, Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic Margo Jefferson—
From her memoir Negroland:
Aside from the privilege of actually being white, [the girls of Negroland] had been denied the privilege of freely yielding to depression, of flaunting neurosis as a mark of social and psychic complexity. A privilege that was glorified in the literature of white female suffering and resistance. A privilege Good Negro Girls had been denied by our history of duty, obligation, and discipline. Because our people had enduring horrors and prevailed, even triumphed, their descendants should be too strong and too proud for such behavior. We were to be ladies, responsible Negro women, and indomitable Black Women. We were not to be depressed or unduly high-strung; we were not to have nervous collapses. We had a legacy. We were too strong for that.
Being home in TX is a throbbing reminder of legacy. I must carry myself beyond reproach. Svelte and agreeable, poised but not aloof, strong but also meek, desirable but not fuckable, self flagellating if I get too thick. My best case scenario is that marriage becomes my primary profession. The worse case scenario is it becomes my secondary profession. There is no other scenario.
Negroland, continued:
My enemies took too much. My loved ones asked too much. Let me say with care that the blame is not symmetrical: my enemies forced my loved ones to ask too much of me.
For every loving slight my mother tenderly hurls at me—quick! To the notebook! Immortalize it and thus strip it of its power! What more harm can it do when I’ve lost to both sides already?
I’ve offered my grief as a sacrifice to journalism and woke America, arranging it at “its most becoming angles” à la Jefferson has, subverting my tenderness into daggers, when what does violence solve?
That’s why the pen is mightier than the sword. It doubles as a shield.
The Chinese government again proves its efficacy against the American. I don’t need to live under it to feel censored. It’s beset in generational parenting, in my blood, the thorn in my side I can’t remove because I’ll bleed to death if I do.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer:
Before us was the Grecian facade of the National Assembly, formerly the city’s opera house. From here our politicians managed the shabby comic operetta of our country, an off key travesty starring plump divas in white suits and mustachioed prima donnas in custom-tailored military uniforms.
Mustachioed prima donnas is the image that is getting me through this week.
The book is about the Vietnam War (and after), which reminded me of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, which somewhat helped to realize that the best writers often carry the thorniest burdens.
Joy Harjo’s “This Land is a Poem”:
This land is a poem of ochre and burn sand I could never write, unless paper were the sacrament of sky, and ink the broken line of wild horses staggering the horizon several miles away. Even then, does anything written ever matter to the earth, wind, and sky?
If nothing matters then we should also mention the Burger King rebrand, complete with squishy typeface, that the discourse overwhelmingly approves of. Below I have found the first tweet that still recognizes the superiority of McD’s.
Take it easy, and please remind me to take it easy too,
Vicky