Hey Loners,
This week's a short one and an early one.
Took the dishwasher apart to figure out why the water wouldn’t drain. Never felt so Napoleon at Waterloo than when I looked under my own sink for zero dollars per hour and said “yes, there’s an obstruction in the drain pipe that’s connected to the garbage disposal. The power source to the garbage disposal might be faulty and causing connectivity issues.” I say “I reckon” and turn my baseball cap backwards. I start calling everything a son of b. I am reinvigorated.
Make Samin Nosrat’s recipe for Ligurian Focaccia alla genovese or as it’s known in the dialect fügassa. Consider this Ligurian walnut sauce.
You deserve the brightness of gremolata to greet you these wintry days. I made one this week with cilantro and chili.
It's citrus season so learn to make a shrub. A delightful cocktail— I saw alcohol-free champagne at the market and added it to a shrub—grapefruit, tangerine, lemon. For me, the vinegar in shrubs adds such an excellent sting to a mocktail.
Got old rice? Often, when I don't, I have a few packs of instant rice, and its glutinous stickiness suits my schedule. Maybe you prefer a risotto ball or onigiri— choose your adventure and get to it.
Been melting chocolate and sunflower butter into boiling milk with sugar, sea salt, and vanilla. I alternate between tahini and sunflower - both dark but differently bitter. It's cold out.
Listened to Up Popped The Devil on repeat a good bit on Friday evening. Reggie Workman leaves me breathless, but it's a dizzyingly powerful record. I felt restless and sun-starved. Swallowed three orbs of Vitamin D while listening to One Upmanship.
Find myself awake, and it's 5:00 am. Everyone I know is having panic attacks. I’m hyperbolic but what’s new but no, literally, everyone I know says it feels like their heart could stop. Pal texts me after a bad thing and says there’s so much beauty and kindness in the world and then so much cruelty. Never a balance of the two.
6am. Wool socks. Fuzzy jumper. Zip up my big coat closer to sunrise. Begin a walk to greet the sky and watch Dawn's acrylic nails extend and scratch midnight's stubble, palm cupping chin before engulfing it. The weather is a bitterly settled dispute between old friends. I keep thinking they'll come around and makeup. I'm awaiting the yearly mystical Groundhog consultation, and I know things must be bag if I'm trusting New England with my livelihood.
In an annoying and ugly poet way, sometimes it's tight to be up so early and so late and think, "wow, this is the same sun from the days of Homer," and think, "wow, the sun didn't explode into laughter when all those horny men filled a wooden horse like a yahoo chatroom." If I'm honest in my reporting, the night doesn't simply succumb to Day because the weather is confused and weighing its options. It's more like it's swiping up and seeing what's available. I'm blurry-eyed at cockcrow and the sun reminds me of Anna Karina in Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965) reciting lines from Paul Eluard’s Capital of Pain.
Light that fades away, light that comes back.
Everywhere is cement colored—cement, cement everywhere, and not a drop of green.
A cement sky reflects into a puddle of asphalt.
Live and reporting from a sunrise that you'll never believe. Hot gossip from the Sun: everything is made up; I, too, can die.
The sun’s up. Everything is warmer than I expected now. In some ways I wasn’t sure what to expect but I watch birds fly by in the brilliance of morning and it’s all in shadows against a wall.
I’m home again. I see the long stretch of my shadow and it does seem miraculous.
Even the sun is mortal.
What the hell.
Godspeed Loners,
Kx
aloneinmyroom is a weekly dispatch from an emily dickinson with wifi.