Juniper Disco | No. 30

Searching for good spaces in a time of weltschmerz

Before we sink further into the dark season filled with anemic colors and deep shadows, I should tell you about the light.

In January, I resolved to enter good spaces this year. Spaces of comfort and security filled with energy generated by people who also care about being in good spaces. People who are curious and self-contained and at ease with themselves. The ones who barely notice the pretty-pretty-this or the pretty-pretty-that of the partying affluents who dominate the high season.

My resolution has also meant leaving bad spaces and spaces with people and energy that are not for me. I found myself exiting a lot this summer. Or simply just opting out.

My good space was my deck — surrounded by my dog, my birds, my plants, my disco ball, and more than a few good books. I’d stare at the lush greenery and the insects and birds who visited, including a gang of goldfinches who attacked my zinnias, pretty salmon-colored petals flying everywhere.

Summer is the ultimate gift for finding joy in the mundane, the every day, the small. The smell of tomato leaves, the green bees on my dwarf morning glories, the tiny bunny butt I glimpsed hopping away from the clover patch every morning, the satisfaction of returning library books I just finished, the sun on my face as I listened to my morning meditation. These were my riches.

I left town some weekend days to do soul-affirming things in quieter places. I spent the good weather days at the pool, sheltered by my earphones or the distancing that a soft buzz from a steady rotation of Pool Boys and the Lime in the Coconuts provide. I stayed out of the fray and kept to the edges of it all. And I waited.

We may have been pummeled by rain and storms for months, but I am feeling more like myself, more settled and able to breathe. I’m venturing out again, tentatively gracing the doorways in search of the good spaces. And the good people. The ones who are also breathing easier, returning to their centers, and feeling that sense of relief when we get our spaces back.

That feeling has been amplified this month by the acute awareness that there are those in this world who have been so displaced that they will never return to their spaces again. Their good spaces of safety and comfort are gone, violated, obliterated, stolen. They do not have the luxury of choosing a good or bad space.

There is a German word that captures the overwhelming grief in this time of cataclysmic global rupture. “Weltschmerz” literally means “world pain.” I feel it deeply. I also feel gratitude for the ease my good space provides. Feeling both simultaneously is confusing and difficult and human. Perhaps you all feel this too?

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Remember when I was freaking out about getting my seedlings planted? Well my tomato plants grew to be taller than me. I have bags of frozen peppers and roasted tomato paste and sage leaves stashed in the freezer.

A sunflower snuck in with my flowers and I watched it tower taller and taller. Until a racoon snapped that bitch right off in the middle of the night, leaving the crime scene to traumatize me in the morning.

In the evenings, I watched a hummingbird guard his feeder from a slim branch nearby. He darted through the sky for hours, chasing any interlopers away. Why are tiny things so aggressive?

I’ve started stretching every time Stephen stretches.

A lot of streets don’t connect here so people forge unofficial pathways where they can. One of my favorites has a hedge of native honeysuckle intermingled with beach roses. The scent on a warm day whispers of magic.

I spilled my la cravate noire that I waited 25 minutes for all down the front of my shirt and the sacred bag containing the pasteis de nata I bought at the Portuguese Bakery down the street. (Tragically, they are no longer making my beloved trutas. Please feel sorry for me.)

The Super Mr. threw out the first pitch at an Orleans Firebirds game and it was a evening of delightful wholesomeness in the land of straight white people. I forget that other places are like that. Afterwards, we ate lobster rolls in the parking lot at PJs.

I started my Fall List on August 1. I also ordered elderberry syrup and amaryllis bulbs. And I signed up for the Fall Fire Challenge. “To be interested in the changing seasons … is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.” — George Santayana

Oh, TripAdvisor, you continue to provide gems:
-“Sadly other than my wife and a handful of the staff and locals the other guests weren't particularly attractive.”
-“It was the only real relaxing area without loud mouth Americans talking about shots.”
-“We had a lizard in our room and they refused to change the room that night and stopped answering the phone.”

I dreamt that I passed my dad while he was driving a car in the opposite direction. And I found out that everyone knew he was alive except for me. When I woke up, every cell in my body felt heavy and bruised. I cried all morning.

I have 21 books left to reach my 1,000 book goal. It may seem like a lot to finish by the end of the year, but I’m determined to have a good go at it.

Standing in line for an early morning whale watch, I noticed an 8ish year old girl who was very invested in the birds around her. She named them. Terry the Pigeon was of special note. Her family was not interested in her observations about the animals around her. They seemed much more engaged in their sons who were sitting there. Looking at their phones.

I went three months without a panic attack.

Phrases that made me click:
”Which Star Wars character is most like your dad?” (HAN SOLO!) + “the meaning of Ayni” + “find your own smultronställe” + “Algerian Baklava Syrup” + “eucatastrophe”

I desperately want to be someone who sound baths, but, alas, I am the opposite. Ever the optimist, I made another attempt and spent 30 minutes staring at the twinkling lights above me, counting the beats of my heart pounding in my chest, and trying not to run out of the room. Again. There was a gong this time and I could feel the vibrations in my liver. There will not be a third attempt.

We had a close swipe from a hurricane. Nothing is as isolating as when you are the only one preparing for a potential catastrophe. The peculiar pride of New Englanders who feel they are invincible and can survive anything is usually endearing. Not so when there’s a Cat 5 pointed directly at you. Luckily, Mr. Lee fell apart and just made for some windy ass days.

I sat in a cushy chair in the children’s section of our local library and listened to Rio Cortez read about imagining Frasier Crane as a black woman. I also shook the hand of a National Book Award winner.

I watched the sparkly green belly of a pregnant sand wasp disappear into the sand as she burrowed into the dune to lay her eggs — a moment of complete and utter happenstance facilitated by my dog, Stephen, who always stops to smell the roses and brings these magical shimmers into my life.

My niece and I listened to the deeply textured, spirited vocal stylings of Yoli Mayor, the only show I went to this summer. She sent us home with tiny vials of a purple liquid, the scent of her native Cuba.

We sailed the ocean blue on the Cutter Bloodhound, our group the most popular with the two boat doggies. I like to think it was our vibe. It was most likely the prosciutto.

Currently rejecting:
AI (have we not seen Battlestar Galactica?) + TikTok (part personal protection of my time, part personal protection from whatever sneaky bits are in that app) + the clusterfuck that is the Republican party and politics in general + the constant barrage of retail hype

Things that are working for me right now:
creating Sunday Stories in Insta + my On sneakers (like SPRINGS on my feet) + watching dog videos for hours + my manta sleep mask + blasting Swing Out Sister in the car on the long way through the dunes + Dave’s Killer Bread + my personal daily turn down service (every evening, before it gets dark, I set up my bed for sleeping) + Shazaaming the dance party that is just walking down the street in my neighborhood + French hair pins for my now shoulder length hair + Dr. Teal’s ginger and clay Epsom salt baths

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I’ve been thinking a lot about:

• “For displaced Palestinians, connections to Palestine are weakened with every passing generation, which threatens the erasure of Palestinian-ness.”
  
  A Palestinian artisan and professor designed handcrafted objects to “capture the role of the matriarch and the sensory olfactory system that elicits memories and narratives of Palestine” in four Palestinian rituals — “making maamoul, applying orange and mashmoom perfume oil to hair, pouring Palestinian olive oil and dispersing sage tea leaves within a family.”

• “Go deeper and weirder and make something that is so human and so strange that it can't be duplicated by an algorithm.” — Owen Egerton, who left his beloved Austin, Texas to protect his trans kid, and moved to Boston

• This gaslighting title: “The COVID Pandemic Was Devastating. But Was it Trauma?”

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Also, here’s some stuff:

• The MYSTERY LINK.

• Filling up my Blackwell’s cart with the reissues of the green Penguin Modern Classics – Crime & Espionage. Twenty titles in that super cool green cover.

• I once took a class on bird coloration and not only did I get to handle colorful dead birds (Fine. I wasn’t supposed to touch them.), but this octopus was hanging over our heads in the classroom. Look at her now! (Also, if Skip Gates was in the room and an a cappella group was singing in the corner and we were eating ice cream sandwiches with the veritas shield on them — these exist — while someone was yelling at me, it would have been the most Harvard thing ever.)

• The How We Live Now podcast episode, “Kerri ní Dochartaigh on the mystical everyday.” // The “Beige Flags” episode of We Can Do Hard Things had me giggling all the way to Hyannis. // For a scary eyeopener, listen to the “Mosquitoes are Winning” episode of The Daily. // Shira Ehrlichman’s beautiful commentary on “The Jungle” episode of Slowdown.

• Heartstopper (Netflix). HIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!! I could write an entire newsletter on this topic alone. This show is the SWEETEST, most HEARTWARMING, most UPLIFTING thing I’ve seen in forever. I am obsessed with all of them and Kit Connor now dominates my algorithm. I finished season 2 and immediately put all of Alice Oseman’s books on hold at my library. I tore through all of them and then devoured her unpublished pages online. And I even joined the Patreon to get each new page as she finished them. I am wearing Nick Nelson vans and the cutest Heartstopper tshirt and drinking from a mug each morning with an image of Nick and Charlie embracing. I send memes and interviews and clips back and forth to my niece and to my bestie. Nick and Charlie and their entire friend group are the antidote to EVERYTHING. Oh, those leaves!

  

• Swiping America (Max). I’ve followed Reagan since she was married to that guy and shared all her trials and tribs about her disabled daughter, Piper, in her blog. She is a DELIGHT on this reality dating show that I never would have watched. // Smartless: On the Road (Max). Spoiler alert! Sean Hayes is a warm, wonderful human being, Will Arnett does not stop talking, and Jason Bateman would drive me bonkers IRL. But they all had me howling! // RHONY (Bravo). I only watched this for Jenna Lyons (of J Crew fame), mesmerized by her being awkward and making everyone uncomfortable, while also wanting to be her. // Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (Disney). Hear me out: It’s like a Sarah McLachlan commercial. The animals need help!

• Say She She. SO JOYFUL!!
  

The last word, according to Catia Lattouf, savior of hummingbirds:

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Currently Reading: Ace of Spades, Faridah Abike-Iyimide  

NOTE: I recognize the length of these posts correlates to the length of time since I last wrote. I’m working through the logistics of writing shorter bits more frequently in 2024.