Since yesterday, I’ve been luxuriating in the short-lived state when a new first draft is finished but no notes have come in yet. I know this will all change very soon (Cailin, if you’re reading this, stay ruthless, I love you so much). This phase is the unsavory “vom draft” - you know there’s a long road ahead, which includes an undetermined yet infinite number of revisions, but when you squint, you just might make out a movie in there somewhere.
It’s my first rom-com-dram, my first time playing with a non-linear narrative and my first time writing in both French and English. The whole screenplay is in English though, so for the scenes in French, I wrote them in French, then translated them in English and put the dialog in italics. A real brain-buster but the most fun I’ve had writing in a minute, and I’m curious to see where this seed of a PDF will go…
I’ve written a couple other projects since The Short History of the Long Road came out but the combination of pandemic/burnout/general despair about the overall state of the world has made things very slow going. If you too have been wrestling with how to get out of a creative rut, I see you and I offer you J.P. Brammer’s answer, which made my heart come alive. “My emphasis, either way, is on my routine, on feeding my craft, not having a finished project. Finishing a project should come, I think, as a by-product.” Generally speaking, I love everything he writes. His memoir is hilarious and full of wisdom, structured in essays using questions he’s received from his advice column ¡Hola Papi!
In addition to the creative seeds, Sophie came over to the backyard and we finally planted the hundreds of bulbs that have been sitting in a paper bag in the kitchen for almost two months now. It’s finally been cold enough to plant them.
Last month when I was wandering with Kira, we met the people behind the Crown Heights Keepers who were hosting a plant sale. They’ve spent the last four years turning their stoop on Franklin and Eastern Parkway into a container garden filled with native plants. At the height of the pandemic, they were growing veggies and herbs in planters and raised beds, feeding neighbors and filling the community fridges with their bounty. At the plant sale, two women mentioned that the Daffodil Project was giving out bulbs at Grand Army Plaza.
We made it there just in time to pick up the last couple of free bags. The Daffodil Project started in 2001 as a living memorial. In the aftermath of 9/11, Dutch bulb supplier Hans van Waardenburg and the City of Rotterdam sent NYC a million daffodils, a gift facilitated by public garden designer Lynden Miller. Now in its 21st year, the project has also functioned as a tribute to the lives lost to the pandemic. You can sign up for their newsletter to reserve your batch for next year.
While we wait for the bright blooms, here are the other things that have been holding the 4:30PM darkness at bay:
Contemplating whether to join a ceramic studio and getting very inspired by works from Ulrica Trulsson, Susan Robey, Hannah Lawrence and Cynthia Lahti (not to mention the O.G., my aunt Pam.)
Someone signing off their email with “as warmly as ever.”
Discovering that birds can fly across oceans without stopping because they only use half their brains when they sleep.
Being left speechless by “All That Breathes” Shaunak Sen’s documentary about brothers running a bird hospital out of their basement in Delhi. Sen said during his Q&A, he “didn’t want to make a sweet movie about nice people doing good things”. The way he weaves in bigger issues of climate change and xenophobia is so very deft. Each scene is one long take, with a camera going back and forth on a glider set up between two tripods. It allows for a wealth of poetic moments to unfold: watching riot footage from the back of a rickshaw, figuring out how to fix a broken meat grinder, taking turns bandaging a broken wing.
Tracy K. Smith reading her poem “The Universe is a House Party”.
Alexis Cash’s $10 community yoga class at Tangerine, with all proceeds going to The Okra Project, a non-profit focused on bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People.
Frances “Fannie” Benjamin Johnston’s hundreds of hand-painted glass lantern slides featuring gardens in New York between 1895 and 1935. Her collection now resides at the Library of Congress. She was one of the first female American photographers, taking portraits of Mark Twain and Susan B Anthony and documented the vanishing architecture of the American South. Ironically she never planted her own garden till she was in her 80s.
Learning that the opposite of paranoia is pronoia - the irrepressible fear that other people are conspiring in your favor. What if everything worked out?
A French TV show bringing together people with funny laughs… hilarity ensues. It is scientifically impossible to keep a straight face through this. Also as someone with a freaky cackle, I feel seen?
Usha Uthup’s cameo as the jukebox messenger in the 1972 movie Bombay To Goa.
Buying tickets (even though I’ll be out of town) to the next Disco Tehran party that Arya is throwing. If you’re looking for a fun Night-Before-New Year’s, tickets are still available and the funds go towards providing free VPNs to Iranians so they can access the internet.
Till next time,
ASK
Looking out the window and seeing squirrels made me wonder where do city animals go to die?
Why do we not see lots of dead animals in cities?
Your new film project sounds so exciting!! Can't wait to learn (and see!) more <3