Kew Gardens
Inside the Palm House, Ellen McHale © RBG Kew
Inside the Bee Hive
Outside the Bee Hive
The bridge over the lake, golden hour.
A few good podcasts
Rewire your brain. Dr Tara Swart on DOAC.
Beliefs are just thoughts we keep thinking - and we can change our thoughts.
Creating a life you like. Abbie Schiller on Goop.
Learn to manage your thoughts and feelings. We can’t control what pops into our head, but we can control rumination.
Stop chasing balance and start chasing purpose. Molly Fletcher on the Rachel Hollis Podcast.
You should have three mentors - and one of them should be you.
What if you were made for a time such as this?
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Robert Henri, 1916
February, one line a day
asemic writing
1 - It’s finally not January. Found a new yoga studio that doesn’t suck.
2 - I tortured myself all day, and then published a substack that maybe 10 people will read. Not enjoying this.
3 - Boring day.
4 - Boring day. approaching sad.
5. Boring day. Sad.
6. Went to The London Library for a literary event celebrating the legacy of Carmen Callil and Rachel Cooke, the author of The Virago Book of Friendship.
7. Went to a workshop called Shadow Work for Creatives in the basement of the Atlantis Bookshop, the oldest occult bookshop in London. My tarot spread was ‘juicy’ but I still haven’t figured out what that means.
8 - Woke up with a terrible headache. Went to yoga because I thought it would help. Instead, I paid £18 to sit in child’s pose for 55 minutes. Slept the rest of the day.
9 - Saw The Brutalist with B. Still no sunshine. And also, it’s still February.
10 - S was home on study leave so took her to Megans for brunch. Spent the rest of the day doing all the things on my list. By 7pm, I had run out of things to do. Very nearly opened a bottle of wine and turned on the TV. Instead, took the dog for a walk in the rain. I walked 17K steps and regretted most of them.
11 - Made good healthy choices all day to no avail. M says everyone is struggling this winter. She said there is heaviness in the air. We haven’t seen more than 5 minutes of sunshine since October. Politics and war and the stress of trying to make meaning out of your life when the world around you is indifferent. It doesn’t matter. What matters? Does anything matter?
12 - Finally a good day. Met a friend for dinner who is a no bullshit kind of friend. Talked real and true.
13 - Went to The London Library for an Emerging Writers Event. Wasn’t in the mood to go, but glad I did! Heard some fantastic readings and got inspired to maybe someday write again. Maybe.
14 - Valentines Day. I did yoga and ate a protein bar and drank a glass of wine while watching the worst romcom ever produced for television. Later, I walked to Bailey and Sage to get some things for dinner: fresh pasta and sauce, some risotto, a baguette, a few cheeses, and a bottle of merlot. We ate around the kitchen counter because the kids were working on a puzzle in the dining room. Later the foxes were screeching for each other and Míša was distressed.
15 - What is happening when you are bored: Your family is safe and healthy. You are not in financial crisis or in a mental health crisis. You are just bored.
16 - Started planning our trip to India! I think we’ll do 4-5 days in Karala (wedding) before heading north to Dehli, Agra and Jaipur. I have to go shopping for Indian wedding clothes!
17 - Travelling tomorrow, so today was errands, etc. Went to The London Library but found it impossible to be productive, so browsed the back stacks instead.
18 - Flight from Heathrow to Marrakech, Morocco. We got lucky with passport control and were in a taxi within 90 minutes of landing. The hotel is nice - a few heated pools, several restaurants, a nice spa, etc. When we arrived they served us Sweet Mint Tea and I forgot how delicious and refreshing it was! Ate a late dinner at the French restaurant on site and went straight to bed.
19 - Took a long walk through the medina and markets. What a chaotic jumble of streets, each stall overflowing with goods for sale. Sensory overload! Later, B and I got a hammam scrub at the spa which B thought was a bit too harsh and I though was way to soft. Breakfast and Lunch at the hotel. Dinner - we walked to a place called La Maison de Arab which was just okay, but a nice atmosphere and live music.
20 - Proper vacation day. Spent the whole day reading and napping beside the pool. The most exciting part of the day was the death-defying tuktuk ride to/from the evening restaurant.
21 - Another long day at the pool. B and I did a little sight-seeing and shopping. After dinner (Indian, at the hotel), we all three went to the night market at Jemaa el-Finaa - music, dancing and drumming, plus vendors selling everything you could possibly imagine and then some. Snake charmers and monkey trainers too.
22 - Travel day back to London. Left the sunshine for grey skies and drizzle. Our bags did not make it and we must return to the airport tomorrow to collect them.
23 - Got bags. Did laundry.
24 - Back to rainy, grey life in London. Cheered myself up with a little retail therapy: got some leggings, 2 new sports bras and 2 new tank tops. I’ve been training 2 times per week for several months now and this is my reward!
25 - I think I’ll curate a recipe collection and have it printed. Should be a quick and easy project.
26 - Took a free one-hour class online about cookbook publishing. It was worth every penny. Why do I look elsewhere for what I already know?
27 - Went to a literary event at The London Library called Murder in the Library: The Golden Age of Crime Fiction. Super fun! Think: readers who love Murder She Wrote.
28 - Surprise visit from BL - we had drinks at home and then went out to dinner at the Chiswick Fire Station. Even S came! Lots of laughs and a few too many cocktails.
Creative Ideas Worth Sharing: February
1. Did you know that an Apollo rocket is actually on course only 2-3 percent of the time? That means at least 97% of the time it takes to get from the earth to the moon, it's off course. The astronauts know this, accept this fact as part of the process and are constantly course correcting.
In other words, your work doesn’t need to be in perfect alignment every single day. Just keep trying and keep adjusting.
2. Publish at 70% (Oliver Burkman)
3. There are two sides to creative productivity: proactive and receptive. We focus a lot on the former and not enough on the latter. When we aren’t creating enough, we tell ourselves to go out and fill the well. Consume more creativity, so we can create more creativity. But I think the key to overcoming / avoiding burn out might instead be to make enough quiet space to receive ideas.
The last time I was feeling super inspired and in creative flow was a few summers ago, when I spent literal hours everyday floating on my back in the pool.
I wasn’t “filling the well” with countless books and experiences. I was just … floating on my back and staring at the sky.
So the question is: how do I get out of GO MODE and into FLOAT MODE? Particularly when I’m living in London and I haven’t see the sun for weeks on end?
(Podcast: Helping Writers Become Authors)
4. Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. - Mary Oliver.
5. “Anyway, that is a thing art does for us: allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permit a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear. Whereas in life, from moment to moment, one can’t tell an onion from a piece of dry toast.” - The Women’s Room, Marilyn French
Believing in beauty.
‘I believe them all, and none,’ he said. ‘I am more than one thing, you see. I am a Hindu; I make offerings at this temple for Radharani. I am also a scholar at the college, discovering another story about the Universe that does not include Shiva and Rama. Which is true? I cannot choose one - how can I, when there are so many? All the stories are true, or none. I find more beauty if they are all true.’
Spirited by Julie Cohen
The Paris Novel by the delicious Ruth Reichl
The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl ~~ Self‑Portrait, c. 1876. Victorine Meurent (b. 1844). At the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
The Paris Novel follows the story of a young woman named Anna who moves to Paris to uncover the story of her mother's past - and ends up solving the mystery of a long-forgotten French painter, Victorine Meurent. It’s a super fun read and made me so happy!
Half of the book is set inside Shakespeare and Company and the other half of the book she’s traipsing around Paris eating, drinking and solving a mystery. What else is there?
Flâneuse, another
Défense d'afficher, Paris, 1937 by Marianne Breslauer
Défense d’afficher. Do not advertise. And yet, there she is, Elle s’affiche. She shows herself. She shows up against the city. - Lauren Elkin
Your backdrop matters
Drawing my Days, by Jane Heinrichs
“Because when suffering is unavoidable, the only thing one gets to choose is the backdrop. Crying one’s eyes out beside the Seine is vastly better than crying one’s eyes out while traipsing around Hammersmith.”
― Meg Mason, Sorrow and Bliss
Photo via library of congress, a strip mall in Plainfield, Indiana
On strip malls:
Don’t we deserve better? Humans don’t just thrive no matter where you put them. Environment matters. Environment is determinative, constitutive; it makes you who you are, it makes you do what you do. My father’s best architecture teacher, Louis Kahn, used to tell his students to think like the beams, feel like the beams, what’s pushing you in, what’s pulling you down, and that’s how you think through a building.
- Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse
Leaving isn’t the hardest thing.
“Fact is, there are more than two doors, forgiveness or Kathy Bates. The third door is, you don’t have to forgive at all. You can just go right on living your life with one less asshole to deal with.” - Lauren Hough
Suzanne Valadon: A Creative Life
Suzanne Valadon and her son, Maurice
“A circus performer, single teenage mother, and art model turned painter, Valadon blazed a unique path through the Belle Epoque, and created a body of work as vivid and honest as her life.” - Messy Nessy, read more here.
On Shadow Work
The Swan, Hilma af Klint
Uses of Sorrow
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
- Mary Oliver
Rules for being human
Handed down from ancient Sanskrit:
You will receive a body.
You will learn lessons.
There are no mistakes, only lessons.
A lesson will be repeated until it is learned.
Learning lessons does not end.
‘There’ is no better than ‘here’.
Others are merely mirrors of you.
What you make of your life is up to you.
Life is exactly what you think it is.
Your answers lie inside you.
You will forget all of this.
You can remember it whenever you want.
The February Newsletter
Cartoon by Paul Noth for The New Yorker
I sent out my monthly newsletter. I did it the crunchy way.
Once a month I send out a newsletter called I’ll Have What She’s Having. It includes book and culture recommendations + writing/creative news. You can sign up here!
Flâneuse
“I will soon write a long, sad book called A Woman Shopping. It will be a book about what we are required to do and also a book about what we are hated for doing. It will be a book about envy and a book about barely visible things. This book would be a book also about the history of literature and literature’s uses against women, also against literature and for it, also against shopping and for it. The flâneur is a poet is an agent free of purses, but a woman is not a woman without a strap over her shoulder or a clutch in her hand.”
- Anne Boyer, Garments Against Women
“An American Girl In Italy” by Orkin, Florence, 1951.