Notes from the week of June 10, 2024

This week I'm thinking about: solvitur ambulando, the alienation of labor, and live music.

Last week I was let go from my day job, and rather than dive into "productivity", I took the week (mostly) for myself.

I have read, I have doomscrolled, I have listened to a lot of podcasts. I went to breakfast with a friend. 

I made a double batch of brioche and froze them ahead of an upcoming heatwave. I threw out my last sourdough attempt of this season...

I have also gone for a stupid walk for my stupid mental health every morning. Apparently my walk window is also the local bunny witching hour - I have taken to texting a photo of the "Bun of the Day" to the other members of my household.

I saw two herons, pawpaws the size of a thumb, and roses the color(s) of rainbow sherbet. I took a zillion pictures of my neighbors' gardens, and said good morning to a dozen people and their dogs - a wild amount of socialization, given I have worked mostly alone, mostly in a basement for the past 2.5 years.

It was maybe the best full week I've had since 2021? Because my time was my own, not spent getting mentally ready to look busy and engaged to keep my job, spending most of my day looking busy, and then recovering from looking busy.

No love lost on losing that job, as it was just the job I could get after my initial pandemic layoff and unemployment ended. It was never fulfilling or challenging, and therefore increasingly untenable. But the idea of taking another unsatisfying job just to pay my student loans (because let's be real...) is giving me a case of the thousand-yard stare...

---

The sun's light
fades at eventide;
then, at daybreak,
its color is revived.
But our day,
when once it falls,
remains in the grave,
there to dwell for a long time.

Here then, darling,
here then, let us break from such a fate
which would end our day
even before morning has passed.
Let us go happily,
Let us go upon the greenery,
let us go while our young springtime lasts.

- Gilles Durant de la Bergerie, sixteenth century French lawyer and poet 

I capped off my week Saturday night with a solo date to a chamber music concert, the Lute Song Trio of the Baltimore Consort. The program was a really nice counterpoint between courtly love songs of the sixteenth century, and British Isles ballads preserved by Appalachian communities.

The old English and French odes were very heavy on the "carpe diem" theme - the other side of the coin of the more prescriptive "memento mori". Both of which I'm now connecting to the idea of "I do not dream of labor." It just does not sit right with me, overeducated and underemployed in my forties, that I need to beg some other precarious worker to please hire me so I can send money to Nelnet... We were not born for this.

(check out this video of the full consort since I can’t figure out how to embed a youtube video on substack)

At intermission I briefly chatted with the woman in front of me (more spontaneous socializing!!) who observed that although it was not a 17th century building, the historic and spare interior really amplified the sense of being transported out of the timeline. 

Held in the pink interior of the beautiful Chester Meeting House, it felt like a very intimate salon performance in a (very large) living room, at the end of a day of gobsmacking weather. Much gratitude to the CT Early Music Festival for the venue pairing.

And I just wish all my friends were suitably housed so we could hang out and revive the salon evening.

I'm on an anxious countdown toward what looks to be a really long and brutal heatwave here in Connecticut this coming week. Our governor already pre-emptively declared a heat emergency. But I know, from the summer of 2018, that is not going to help me in my shitty prewar. I am currently designing my grocery list to maximize meals that don't need to be cooked...

The Wall Street Journal just helpfully published a piece on outdoor kitchens starting at $37K. But I'm pretty sure, for the price of a bag of charcoal briquettes, you could set yourself up in a shady spot and cook off some animal proteins if you really had to. Hop onto your social marketplace of choice and see if one of your neighbors has a small grill and a cast iron pan you can help them downsize... Otherwise, they start around $20 at the Walton family shoppe. Repeat for folding chairs and a cooler...

Finally, a very exciting moment (also weirdly in the WSJ): I learned two new words this week. And in the spirit of Esme Weijun Wang, I'd like to share them with you.

First up, antimetabole: a literary device where words, ideas, or a grammatical structure are repeated and reversed. For example, JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

And, irenic: conciliatory or peaceful. After the Greek goddess of peace, Irene.