Flattening Intro

on the transition to a slower, more intentional, more creative life amidst a warming world.

I’ve lived my life under a stack of my own creation. 

Cimmerian Steles, Bosporan Kingdom, c. 6 BC

My childhood, filled to the brim with everything from competitive dance, surfing, and beach volleyball to Russian, tennis, and art lessons, never left me a moment for boredom. Over time, the act of stacking became a habit, and that habit became an identity. 

I grew up, and the stack grew with me. I found success balancing undergrad, part-time jobs, and making art. Life under the stack felt safe, comfortable – like home even.

Then a new kind of stack formed, entirely out of my control. 2018 brought the unrelenting hellscape of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, Trump unfriending the Iran Nuclear Deal, Trump as a general concept, and, of course, the IPCC special report letting me know we had 12 years until we were fucked. 

The weight of this left me in bed for a week, until Rebecca Solnit pulled me out. She put it simply: if the French civilians did not see past the monarchy, they would have never been able to topple it.

The motivation was new, but my approach was not. I founded Cooper Climate to help me live with the weight of the future. We programmed large public events. The community grew. We met three times a week, and did it all unpaid. There was a global pandemic. The community grew larger, and my stack grew with it.

I kept myself busy until the Nagorno Karabakh war re-started. I was devastated, and in my devastation, all I could do was write.

But the show must go on, I told myself. I went to grad school, met my partner, began processing the Ukraine War, found a dream job, and started a supper club. The stack was bigger and shinier than ever before. But it no longer felt like home.

Walter Dahn, The Peak of the 20th Century, 1986

My friend, the stack, never allowed for any grace. 

Sometime last year I began to choose myself. I made room for grace. Somewhere between the artist way class I took last fall with Ella Fitch at Index Space, increasing psychosomatic manifestations of stress, and making my first-ever serious New Year’s resolution (to figure out a non-default way of living), I steam rolled right over my stack. 

I made a promise to be a more porous person. I blew up the risk-averse-fast-track I had set up for myself. I quit my job. I started saying no. I flattened the stack.

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Welcome to flattening, where twice a month I’ll be bringing y’all along on transitioning to a slower, more intentional, more creative life amidst a warming world. I’ll be traveling, sitting still, writing, reading, eating, taking photos and doing a little bit of something, and a little bit of nothing. 

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Stacks I’m resisting this week: 

Connections: It’s so hard to choose to pause momentum. Flattening means saying no to connections to cool people, cool work, cool projects, cool public speaking opps. 

Things I’m reveling in this week.

Nibbling: I can’t get enough

Tomatoes from Norwich Farms, Union Square Farmers Market

Listening: Saâda Bonaire - Heart Over Head—A bop

Going: Donald Judd Foundation—For 7 years I have been meaning to schedule time to go to Donald Judd’s live/work space in SOHO.

If you’re looking to escape the heat and go home wildly inspired - run, don’t walk. 

Donald Judd in his kitchen, 1984.

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