Dear readers,
Spring is a fitful, disorienting season. The weather is temperamental, and so are my energy levels, my capacity for socialization, my creative outputs. I start projects in fervent sprints and then burn out just as quickly. Yesterday I took an accidental three hour nap in the middle of the day.
The world is waking up, and I feel the corresponding urge to do, do, do. Incessant productivity and accomplishment. But as Jacqueline Suskin reminds us in her thoughtful book A Year in Practice, most plants don’t burst forth with flowers at the first sign of sun—they put out tentative buds, keep all those delicate petals close and guarded until they’re sure it’s truly time to step wholly into this season.
Perhaps fittingly, the first snail mail newsletter of March was about doing nothing, and the second one is shaping up to be centered around sabbath and retreat. And snail mail readers, you received dried petals from the gorgeous tulip bouquet pictured at the top of the email in your first letter this month—the bounty of a slow, patient practice!
If you’re reading this and you want to get on the snail mail train, be sure to subscribe by 23rd to be on the mailing list for March’s second letter.
Thank you to each and every one of you who supports my work. I love reading your replies and seeing you share your mail online and with friends. It means the world!
Thinking Straight — Listen wherever you get your podcasts!
Okay, I’m cheating, because podcasts exist very much in the digital world. But I don’t think I’ve plugged the podcast I co-host yet in this newsletter, and I should! Lena and I have a lot of fun making it. Tune in every other weekend to listen to us review and analyze contemporary heterosexual romance novels—yes, in the vein of Colleen Hoover, Fifty Shades, and Sarah J. Maas. Expect jokes, despairing feminist tangents, debate over the worst euphemisms for genitalia, and above all, an abiding love for love.
SAVE THE DATE — May 8th, 7:00pm at Sisters
I’m excited to share that I’m launching a monthly reading series this spring in Brooklyn! Full details, fancy graphics and more to come, but in the mean time, mark your calendars for May 8th. Our inaugural event has the most kick-ass lineup. I can’t wait to tell you more.
Do you know of any cool literary events, retreats, workshops, and offerings happening in and around the NYC area this spring? Please feel welcome to share!
It’s been a minute since a book kept me up past my bedtime several nights in a row, and Gideon the Ninth did just that. It’s come highly recommended to me several times (lesbian necromancers in space! easy pitch!) but I just got it out from the library at the end of February. Any book that has me up at 2am with my feelings hurt after racing to the finish line is a five-star read to me. It was truly propulsive! I’m also really enjoying Leila Taylor’s Darkly, a nonfiction book which serendipitously came in off the holds shelf on the same day I picked up Gideon. It’s spring, let’s get goth!
- writes a great newsletter called , and last week’s missive was a really thoughtful reflection on activism & care. Give it a read.
There are all kinds of little guys to enjoy at the Brooklyn Museum. Humanity has always been about making a new little guy. I was also pretty delighted by “Photocopying Pigeons” in the Copy Machine Manifestos zine exhibition.
I’ve recently discovered the magic of psyllium husk for gluten-free baking and have since whipped up several perfectly springy, structurally-sound loaves of bread for my girlfriend. You cannot imagine the look on my face when I rolled and shaped a baguette and nothing crumbled or cracked. What is psyllium? Why the husk? I have no idea. If you or your loved ones suffer from this dietary restriction, buy yourself some of this weird magic powder that turns into a weird magic gel and bake yourself some very bread-like bread. The Loopy Whisk has some great recipes.
I’ve been enjoying the muted greens and greys of the season and the hints of life coming forth. Nature offers us so much incredible texture, which really informs my fiber art practice (something I haven’t picked up in a while!). From day to day, the landscape on my block can look totally different, and it’s nice to see the world in process and a little rough around the edges before it teems with obvious beauty. From Mary Oliver’s Upstream:
Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin-flowers. And the frisky ones–inkberry, lamb’s-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones–rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms.
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
That’s it for me this week. See you in the real world ✨
🌱 Nadine
Oh Nadine, I just love this. 💙💜💚