Friday Frivolity no. 1: The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica
how to keep going when everything's frozen, empty, & dark // orchids, greenness, & experimental architecture! // charles dickens on success & dedication // summer fruits supremacy
This is the start of a new series called Friday Frivolity. It’ll arrive in your inbox every Friday and, in contrast to the longer, more in-depth essays I’ve been publishing, is meant to be lighter and more casual. You’ll get about 500 words of a topic that’s been on my mind lately, plus a moodboard for the week, 3 things I’ve been loving, a quote I’ve found insightful from my past week’s reading, a little shimmer of poetry, a “beauty tip” for incorporating more beauty & pleasure into your everyday life, and a question to spark thought.
Consider this first issue a test run, and please drop a comment to tell me what you think!
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Our efforts are not always fruitful and do not always produce the results we expect them to. In school, it is easy enough to tie together cause and effect and keep them relatively attached. The collar may jingle as the dog Effect tries to shake it off, the leash may lie loosely in Cause’s sweaty palm, but they manage to walk along together well enough until they are home safe, and if one runs ahead, the other is not far behind in catching up. In the arena of the real world, however, causes and effects go flying in all directions and are like motes of dust blown from the hand of fate, scattered to the four corners of the world. They are like the lovers of Aristophanes, always searching for their other half because the gods have split them in two.
All my life, I have been an incurable procrastinator. The psychology behind it boils down to arrogance (I’ve done it before, so I can do it again), delusion (10,000 words? In an hour?? Why, that’s plenty of time! In fact, I can take a 10 minute break!), fear (Too scary, let’s not think about that just yet…), great and endless faith in the kindness of others (Just ask for an extension!), and sheer stupidity. In spite of all this, I have more or less managed to muddle through. Sure, I never felt that I was really hitting my potential, but that twinge of discontent would be quickly masked by the mere exhilaration of having completed the task and saved myself narrowly by the skin of my teeth.
Everything I have accomplished, I owe to panic. Panic about time running out, panic about not being good enough, panic about potential scoldings from my parents, panic about not matching up to my peers, panic about panic. The pandemic, however, deactivated this panic button (separating the “pan-” and “-ic” with a damn “dem”), and I slipped into the lassitude of an endless summer vacation. But to be an adult means you have to, first, recognize your faults, and then, to the extent to which they hinder your life, attempt to correct them. After all, youth builds the trunk of the tree, middle age the branches, and old age simply the twigs.
Now, last week I have had the opposite problem: I have worked consistently, to no avail. I did X, thinking Y would happen, or at least Z, or the whole sorry stream of the alphabet, when in fact the result was that venerable non-numeral invented by my Indian ancestors. This hollow result opened up an abyss at my feet. I stared down. I teetered. Reader, I nearly tumbled in.
What is it that pulls us back from the brink at such moments?
Reality: to hold onto this moment as it is being lived now, not to wallow in what has happened or worry over what hasn’t yet. Faith: to believe that something stronger than you holds you in its hand and won’t let go. Joy: the joy of the world’s beauty, the joy of love, most of all the joy of creating, which always sustains me, always upraises me, always amazes me.
The tree can always be cut down, after all, and a new seed planted.1
This Week’s Moodboard
(from left to right, top to bottom)
I dream of a world, green and serene….2 Green is such a spiritually healing color, such a calming and peaceful color. Green for the reflection of summer leaves in water, green for abundance, green for new growth, green for rooting ourselves, for feeling ourselves flow with the breath of nature.
Sculpture by British artist Marc Quinn. In 2000, he created Garden, which contains thousands of flowers preserved in silicone oil, and afterwards has done numerous sculptures and hyperrealistic paintings of orchids. “[Orchids] make you realize it is colour, life, and sexuality that keeps the world turning. They are a celebration of life.”3 We have two beautiful orchid plants on our windowsill, and it brings me so much everyday joy to see them there.
Marc Quinn, Garden (2000) and Basel Blooms (2009) This bedroom reminds me so much of the movies of Éric Rohmer, and if you know me, you know that I’m always dreaming of a Rohmer girl summer. Crisp white bedding, old wooden furniture, pale green walls reflecting lots of light, a beautiful view of greenery from the window. A perfect room to read a book in, daydream, write with a fountain pen.
Portrait of a lady, Unknown, 17th century. The shade of green of the drapery here is absolutely perfect, as is the way it frames the painting’s subject. Mughal miniatures are always so lovely and precise.
Roman mosaic glass bowl, 1st century AD, from the Zadar Museum of Ancient Glass in Croatia, photographed by Gareth Harney. This is so beautiful, and it’s amazing to think of the sophisticated techniques they had in ancient times to create something like this! I love the color scheme, the gold, the way the stripes curve and aren’t the same size.
Slim Aarons, Summer in Monaco (1957): I just finished Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel set in the French Riviera, which is about a wealthy couple who go swanning about through these beautiful towns with all of their problems. It’s actually quite dark, and it mirrors a lot of things Scott and Zelda were going through, but the Riviera vibe reminded me of Slim Aarons, who was known for his pictures of the glittering midcentury jet set. Howard Hawks (director of some of my favorite films—Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday) is in this picture, along with his wife Dee and the French actress Capucine. As an aside, Slim Aarons is actually buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, which I wrote a little about in this essay!
More orchids!4 I love seeing more and more bouquets dare to be strange.
Chloé Spring/Summer 2015: I’ve been in the mood for light, floaty fabrics, cotton and linen, silk chiffon, a looseness to let the wind through. I first saw this collection as a teenager, and it rose up to the surface of my mind again this week. This collection is what I imagine a modern pastoral goddess would wear—the young Persephone plucking flowers, the daughters of the wind god Aeolus. The ad campaign—just girls being girls with their horses on the beach—is also wonderful—I’d kill for those sunglasses.
Came across this on Tumblr and it’s been going through my head all day like a prayer. Of course, the first step to a beautiful life in June is strawberries!
3 Things I’m in Love With
Maangchi’s yachaejeon recipe—this is a recipe for a Korean vegetable pancake, and it’s so simple, delicious, healthy, and—best of all—easy to make. All you need are some basic vegetables (green onions, leeks, zucchini, sweet potato, mushrooms, or whatever you have on hand) and flour, water, and salt.
Practicing Ralph Vaughn Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” on the violin, and reading the George Meredith poem that inspired it.
This article in The New Yorker about Kanye West gutting a Tadao Ando house on Malibu Road in order to replace it with… James Turrell-esque tunnels in order to live faux-primitively in a multimillion dollar house?? Not surprising for Kanye, but it raises a lot of interesting questions about the limits of transferring creativity from one field to another, about how ego can cloud vision, about whether an artist’s success is often his or her downfall, about the silly things rich people do with their money and how far they can go before someone will say “no” to them…. I liked this article mainly because it made me think a lot more about architecture! And now I want to learn more!
Words of Wisdom
I will only add, to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come on its heels, which I then formed….
My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in my life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that, in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as fulfillment on this earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put one hand to anything, on which I could throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules.
— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
I started David Copperfield maybe two or three years ago, then abandoned it halfway through, not for any lack of love for Dickens, who’s one of my favorite novelists, but probably because I’m always in the middle of a million books at the same time. I came back to it this week and read the last 200ish pages in a mad rush over a couple days.
It turned out to be my favorite Dickens novel (so far) and one of my favorite novels ever. Apparently it was also Dickens’ own favorite among his works and partly autobiographical—the young Copperfield starts out in the legal field and, after his aunt loses her fortune, uses his mornings, evenings, and weekends to learn shorthand and work as a copyist for his former teacher. He begins to write fiction in his spare time, publishing short stories and eventually novels, and finds fame and fortune as an author.
In Charles Dickens: A Life, Claire Tomalin describes how, with a feverish, obsessive energy, the young Dickens, while working as a parliamentary reporter, also went to the theater (according to himself, “every night for three years”), studied to become an actor, realized it wasn’t for him, got into writing, started writing the little sketches that would become Sketches by Boz, reviewed plays, wrote a libretto, oversaw the proofs of his first book, and also got engaged. I was feeling a little discouraged about the progress of my writing this week, but reading this passage gave me the inspiration I needed to keep rolling the rock up the hill.
Poetry Corner
This summer, we drank cardamom iced tea sweetened with agave-- savoring an idea of sweetness lingering, not as if we actually ate honey from the lovely overflow of liquid summer heat and soft beeswax…
— from “On June Blossoming in June” by Karen An-Hwei Lee
This poem was published in Poetry magazine, and you can read the rest of it here! I love, love, love the succulent food imagery here, the plentifulness and indulgence in the beauty of what life has to offer—it’s such a lovely celebration of the beginning of summer.
Beauty Tip
Spend a sunny afternoon eating fruit with a loved one.
Lingering Question
Is there an area of your life you’ve been feeling stalled in lately? How can you throw open the windows of that room to let in a new breeze? Is there a new angle at which you can approach it, or a small way to restore joy there?
The title of this newsletter comes from Bernadette Mayer’s poem of the same name.
image source: https://www.tumblr.com/itsanoodi/750207711227019264
It is light and well wrote
Love this Ramya! such a beautiful beauty tip!