I wish flattening was like jumping into the sea.
That once you left your hesitation behind, once you leapt, there was nothing to do but embrace the salt water.
I write to you from a small fishing village an hour outside of Palermo, where the cicadas and the Italo pop are always in acoustic competition.
Our host's entire family greeted us when we arrived. They filled our fridge with fresh lemons from their orchard, local cheese, and sweet nectarines.
Across from our apartment lives a rather leathery Sicilian couple who spend most of the year in Belgium. Throughout the summers they sit on their balcony, smoke, eat, argue, sweep, nap, repeat.
An occasional guest stops by from time to time.
These are my role models.
*spikes camera* Before we continue, I just want to put some things on the table. This will not be an eat, pray, love newsletter nor will I employ the use of dolce far niente for the next two some months. Flattening does not equate to doing nothing. It is my attempt at a slower, more present, and more intentional path with life, with work, with self.
But, it turns out, transitioning to my flattened state has been a massive headache.
My last week at my job, the week that I released my first newsletter, everything that I had said emphatically yes to in the last 12 months, invited itself straight onto my nearly flattened stack. Festival jurying, book club and party hosting, wonderful creative projects, promised readings of others' creative pursuits. They stacked, and they stacked hard.
I barely slept. I left for Roma with a smaller stack, but a stack nonetheless.
As I write this, a massive thunderstorm and concurrent flash flood is hitting our slice of heaven.
The power is out. Everything around me is dark, except where it’s lit by candles. But my face glows from a laptop screen.
I lie to myself. Just these last two and we’re home free. We’ve flattened.
The cobblestone staircase that I had laid out on, tanning in this morning’s sun, is now a waterfall. And yet, somehow, I’m still fighting the stacks that my brain forms.
I’ve been here for just under a week and only today I noticed the silly fish magnet with a mercury thermometer on the fridge.
I’ve always wondered how much life I’ve missed under the stack.
Here’s to finding out.
Things I’m reveling in this week—
watching: Nick Cave on Hope—If you have two minutes this week please watch this, if you have longer the whole interview is worth it, and if you have even longer, one more time with feeling will change your life.
I will write more about hope and grief in a later newsletter—but for now I guess it’s important to note that I’ve always had a complicated relationship to hope (which you could read more about in my friend zoe’s newsletter, how to have fun in an apocalypse) and how we, especially we climate folk, employ it. Nick changed something in me this week when he said:
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position it is adversarial it is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.
—Nick Cave
enjoying: shooting on my super 8. I was considering not lugging it over but it has given me such joy to capture tiny moments.
reading: out on the shore in my undies I read Patti Smith’s Woolgathering cover to cover. I smiled as I read the intro:
Someone asked if I would consider woolgathering a fairy tale. I have always adored such tales but I am afraid it does not qualify.
—Patti Smith
By chance one of the only other books I brought with me was six fairy tales from the brothers grimm with illustrations by david hockney. For those who don’t yet know, the film I have come to Italy to develop is largely centered around a modern armenian fairytale.
A lovely synchronicity.
slurping: I am usually not a shrimp girly (hello the climate implications) but this local crudo was tangy and buttery.
listening: Raffaella Carrà - Pedro - I know TikTok made this trendy but watching the Italian wil’ out to this has been so joyous.