A few nights ago, under the cover of sunset, I went for a walk. I had marked some magnolia trees that were in peak bloom, and I wanted to see if it felt easy / accessible to pick a few blossoms that were headed for abscission and about to drop.

There were plenty, and so I gathered a several handfuls, and tucked them carefully into a tote. I know people often pickle magnolias, but I decided to make a syrup.

In my experience, herbalism can function as a kind of botanomancy. Divination with plants. What you feel called to work with can be a reading, a lesson that emerges in the holiest of collaborations, between people and the spirit world that we most often encounter through nature.

When I got home, I thoroughly soaked and washed my flowers. (If you decide to do this, make sure the flowers weren’t sprayed with any pesticide, which might mean harvesting them from a friend or neighbor’s yard, or checking mosquito treatment plans with your local city.)

Then, I carefully separated the petals from the hard cone at their center. I saved those fragments to use later in a botanical print. I set the tray of delicate petals in the window to dry a bit, and began researching magnolias to see what I could learn about this plant, which I have been appreciating for years, but never felt moved enough to work with.

It turns out that magnolias have existed for at least 100 million years. They bloomed during the time of the dinosaurs! Read that again. When you see these fragrant, waxy marvels, in white, pink and dark magenta, you are tunneling through deep time, moving simultaneously backwards and forwards, surrounded by something ancient. (For scale, homo sapiens have only been around for some 300,000 years.)

Some scientists call them living fossils because they look almost identical as they did back then: Big as dinner plates, smelling like jasmine, only in the subtropical forests of the Cretaceous era. (How do we know all of this? Traces of pollen in the fossil records, apparently!)

I checked my petals, and they were almost dry, so I put a pot of filtered water on the stove to simmer. When it began to lightly roil, I turned the heat down and added a cup and a half of organic cane sugar. Normally I’d use maple syrup, coconut sugar or honey as a sweetener, but I didn’t want to overpower the delicate, ginger-like essence of the flower.

Before magnolias, there were no flowers; only the greenery of plants like ferns, conifers.

Once the sugar dissolved, I submerged the petals in the water, and gently stirred them around with a wooden spoon.

On my way home from my foraging adventure, I decided to take a detour through the park. I came across an altercation between two people. I didn’t see what happened, but one of the aggrieved parties kept threatening to call ICE on the other one. A few people quickly intervened and helped de-escalate the situation, but it left me rattled and I had to sit down for a few moments to steady my nervous system.

I’ve had this theory for awhile that Americans (and perhaps the entire world) are responding to the increasingly harsh conditions of existence by leaning into selfishness and self-centeredness. Here I’m practicing “observation without judgement,” which I learned to do at Kripalu at the top of the year, meaning it is just noticing, without any moral judgement attached to it. When 47 began his second term, the rallying cry was to stick together, to not let an administration built around cruelty and violence fracture our sense of togetherness, community, humanity. It makes sense that as our realities have gotten harder, more unbearable, more expensive, made more dire by on-going normalized genocides, and escalating interlocking crises, it may be easier to turn inward and focus on what you can control. What you want to feel. What you want to see. After all, how many unfathomable new reports can a person absorb in a day? How many actions can one realistically support? How many fundraising efforts can one realistically give money to?

Amid that fatigue arrived the recent Artemis II journey around the moon. I’ll admit, when I first heard about it, I ignored it. I love space, but it seemed like a waste of resources, given everything else that’s happening right now. And then the crew started sharing their observations, and sending photos back, and we were able to collectively witness new sights, and evolve together, if one chose. We learned that the “dark” side of the moon, a side we will never see from Earth because the moon rotates on its axis at the same rate that it orbits around Earth is actually shot through with colors, including yellow from basalt and turquoise and purple due to titanium deposits. Watching a team of government officials share wonder, emotion, joy, love and speak about the need to see ourselves as a collective front — humanity — rather than divisive factions at the same time as teams of other government officials threatened to annihilate entire civilizations. It was refreshing, for once, to struggle to believe what I was seeing not because it was unbearable or synthetic content but because my brain did not evolve to grapple with the stunning photos of the eclipse and earthset that Artemis sent back.

Artemis’ cooperation, their capacity for awe, their joy and good humor was the complete opposite of the fear and terror that is permeates everything other realm of federal governance right now. Liz Plank described this feeling of collaboration, efficiency and camaraderie as competency porn, and I think that’s exactly right. Plank also pointed to research that shows that awe strengthens our psychological resilience, functions as a reset button and soothes the feeling that everything is about to fall apart.

Once the petals wilted in the hot sugar mixture, I set a timer for thirty minutes.

The magnolias have the power to function within the same logic. Most of us will not get to see the moon, or earth from outer space in our lifetime. But most of us can walk into a park right now, and smell a magnolia, and be reminded that even though our time on this beautiful planet may be a glorious drop in the sea, we are still part of its 3.5 billion year history and what we do with our time matters.

When the timer dinged, I strained the mixture into a large Pyrex measuring cup to let it cool.

The syrup is done. It’s cooling in the fridge. I plan to add some of it to a homemade strawberry sorbet I’ll be serving to friends who are fighting for the living world. The rest I’ll freeze, to use throughout the year when I need reminders of the elasticity of time, both the insignificance of our time on Earth and the magnitude of it.

the juicy bits

Recovery stack The Small Bow is having a spring fundraiser! I’ve been helping them appeal to a broader range of diverse voices in recovery; at the very least, look at their sick new merch, designed by Hairpin alum Edith Zimmerman.

Creative Growth, a non-profit based in Oakland, works with developmentally disabled artists to showcase their work. They have a new show up, and everything in it is for sale. It’s a great way to collect affordable pieces and support a beautiful cause in the process.

These headscarves made by Sarah Musa, who created a kefiyyah inspired line to honor her Palestinian heritage. The multicolored poppy one is my absolute favorite. It’s exquisitely made, and more importantly, all proceeds go to urgent relief efforts in Palestine.

The much contested $37 million renovation of Prospect Park’s Cashmere Vale is officially underway — please tune in to how this development destroys a historic queer cruising site.

You can now order everyone’s favorite fancy jello treat Solid Wiggles online! And they have a new cookbook !

The vinyl records that Cauleen Smith, artist and filmmaker, plays for her class, “Music for Visual Thinking.” Selections include Sylvester, for when “the political climate gets rough.”

Young Muslim women in Nigeria are publishing erotica on WhatsApp to avoid censorship and earn money. We love to see it.

`

Howdy folks,

I’ve arrived back in New York just in time for the exuberant energetic high that comes with surviving the physical and emotional toll of winter. Buds are opening and a sultry air caressing my face as I write this, fueling a feeling of possibility that has yet to ferment into pre-summer mania. I’m slowly dipping my toes back into Substack. We’re starting out easy, with a few things that offered some grounding and much-needed delight.

1. Last weekend, I made it up to the Guggenheim to study Robert Rauschenberg’s collages that prioritize his newspaper rubbings, and had a lovely time meandering through the sculptures of Carol Bove on my way through the museum. I was riveted by her earlier work, which integrated organic materials like driftwood, peacock feathers and shells into ornate and ephemeral feeling collages. On a whim, we walked into an exhibition showcasing the work of Gabriele Münter, a German painter who worked as an avant-garde expressionist in the early twentieth-century. There were dozens of paintings and a handful of her photographs, one of which nearly made me weep. In June of 1900, Münter was traveling through the United States and found herself in Marshall, Texas on the 19th of the month, during Emancipation Day festivities, which we now widely call Juneteenth. She used a box camera to take photographs of Black Americans celebrating, and tucked into a corner of the show sat a lone photograph from her archive of that time, which apparently also includes folks on horseback, floats and parades (!) In it, a small group women make eye contact with the camera, dressed in gorgeous white dresses and hats, holding parasols. They hold their skirts aloft from the ground, backs rigid, as they move through the center of town. On the margins of the frame, white children can be seen watching the procession - but whether they’re gazing at the spectacle of a strange European women photographer, or the phenomenon of these women is hard to discern. In fact, their presence is an afterthought, possibly even a mistake. These women and their regality and dignity are what are meant to fill the frame.

   

2. Nature, the artist. Apparently there’s an initiative that has been recording nature sounds and a) putting them online and b) collaborating with musicians to make tracks using those sounds to raise conservation funds. I’m sure there’s plenty to be skeptical about — this article about the project uses the word royalties and conservation many times with varying degrees of vagueness and zero specificity — but I have to admit, I’m extremely charmed by the ability to listen to rain in Costa Rica or the waterways in the Amazon, or the option of seeing how a vast array of performers chose to incorporate them into their music. It’s heartening to know that over 2 million people a month listen to the earth and their many songs. (I’m sorry about the Spotify links, I couldn’t find it anywhere else!)

3. Local medicinal soup/stew deliveries, courtesy of the lovely Pheobe Tran of Bé Bếp. I got my first week’s delivery and felt so excited to eat something other than the protein shakes I’ve been subsisting on since getting back to town. As I keep vaguely alluding to, I’m dealing with a Major Health Event™ and the logistics of a major city is hard, but especially hard here, even when you have as much chosen family support as I do. As Pheobe handed me the bags of fragrant food, she told me she started this program during the first wave of the pandemic, and driving meals around in the back of her Subaru was oddly nostalgic. I realized something that I’ve been feeling since I got back to New York: I’m also oddly nostalgic for a time that felt less transactional; when there seemed to be a collective agreement — at least, gauging by the posts shared on social media — that people were worth more than they could produce. Yet social currency is one of the main engines of our city, driven by a culture of seeing and being seen. When you’re too ill to regularly participate in event-based networking or relationships, i.e, you aren’t able to see others in the ways that are most convenient for them, you can disappear off the radar of many people who factor your absence as a plummeting stock price. That bleak reality has been one of the hardest elements of this broader life transition; but at least for today, I was reminded of the beauty and bounty of community-led efforts that prioritize people and systems of care in a real way.

4. The Artist’s Way. Listen, I never — NEVER — thought I’d be this person. Every new year, the groups start up, and every year I ignore them. And yet here I am, waking up early to do my morning pages, and taking myself out on art dates. Once I started feeling my way towards an art practice, no less than six people asked me if I’d ever done it. I finally stopped resisting and borrowed a copy. I’m enjoying it more than I expected, even through I’m moving through it extremely slowly. In sobriety, I finally understand what Julia Cameron (also sober and in 12-step programs) is going on about. She’s adapting those principles to walk readers towards a gentler way of being that orients around living a life that revolves around art and beauty. She believes that letting go of negative self-talk, limiting self-beliefs and old habits prevents the flourishing of that creative self, which, in its freest state, is is the same thing as tapping into source, or the universe, which some of us also call a higher power. God talk is not for the weak, but she’s not imagining some kind of white skydaddy overlord — she’s talking about being brave enough to face your fears and see what magic happens (or, what kind of art gets made) when you do.

5. Last but not least — the Black Zine Fair! It’s back for another year, in Brooklyn, on May 9. I’m investing more and more into independent publishing of all kinds, and this year has over 100 exhibitors showing off Black, independent media of all kinds, 10 workshops and a reading room curated by Substack favorite Kameelah Janan Rasheed. I’m proud to say I’ll be debuting my new kitchen table outfit, Marmoris Press, and offering a zine and some photo-based works and prints for purchase. I’ll share more, again, as it approaches, but it’s time to try new things, and this is just one of them for me.

That’s all I got! Thank you for reading. What’s on your plate/heart/mind this week?

the ceremony must be found

When I tell people I’m working on my gut health, they usually take it to mean that I’m cutting out gluten and sugar, taking probiotics. Although I am pulling back from my intense obsession with baked goods, that’s not what I mean. I mean that I’m working on discernment, on my sense-ability, learning how to live with new knowledge systems, primarily of the body, which have historically been deprioritized as the primary locus of information, perception, consciousness (Wynter, 1984 & beyond). When I say “gut health,” I mean intuition. I mean my dreams, and yours too. Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten about a half dozen messages from people whose dreams I’ve visited. In one instance, I began writing a new email and realized the “to” form had auto-populated with the name of someone I’d fallen out of touch with instead of the person I was currently trying to reach. The memory of the first person made me smile and wish them well from afar. A few days later, I received an email from that exact person (!) telling me that they’d recently had a dream where they handed me a jar of water from a sacred well. After I read that note, my eyes drifted over to the shelf where I’ve been storing jars of water collected on my travels, marveling at all of the synchronicities of this life, which are another way of communicating, if you are willing to listen.

something discarded

I’m moving into new mediums, trying to find a visual grammar for some experiences that live beyond language. Art as a conduit for thinking (and processing), as Audre Lorde said. Working with my hands so I’m not on my phone. Recently, I felt well enough to travel between appointments, and accepted an invitation for a generous and impromptu residency. But after settling into my studio, I was immediately caught in the undertow of fear. That old mental soundtrack started up. No one cares. Don’t embarrass yourself. Who do you think you are? Later that evening, I was browsing through a book in the library, and came across an interview with the artist Nick Cave, recalling how he first began making his stunning sound suits in the 1990s. He was sitting in a park in the wake of the Rodney King assault and subsequent uprising, reflecting on his grief and fear. “I looked down and saw a twig on the ground, as something discarded. Then I proceeded to collect the twigs in the park. That became the catalyst for the first Soundsuit.” The reminder: A creative life requires mindfulness. Paying attention. Meanderings for meaning are not aimless; they are essential data-collecting missions, especially if you are trying to reveal a process rather than trying to produce a product. Coming across that excerpt reminded me not to give up before the miracle, to stay the course. I can trust my instincts. I can let my curiosity be my guide.

repair culture

I never really know where my body is in space, which is one of the reasons I’m working on a non-fiction book of essays about dissociation. But my lack of proprioception is often perceived as clumsiness; as my sister would say, I’m hard on things. Since buying my apartment, I’ve had to learn a lot about home repair, and not just to fix the toilet or whatever household thing needs tending. I had to figure out what to do when a piece of incense fell on the gorgeous Scandinavian pine floors and burned a literal hole in them, and how to fix the stains my indigo coasters left on my Solange coffee table. There was a lot of shaming and negative self-talk before I could move into the solution phase, but that process created a pathway for problem-solving that, over time, relied less on blame and more on resourcefulness. It is an unbelievably satisfying new muscle group. All to say, when I was rinsing my cyanotype prints in the bathroom at my residency and got ferric ferrocyanide stains all over the porous sink, I did not panic. I did a little research into breaking down the compound, and applied a healthy layer of lemon juice and chunky salt to the affected areas on the surface, and left for my evening breathwork session. The acid did what it was supposed to do and broke down the extra iron salts, and when I got home, I wiped them away. Repair is the practice of care for inanimate objects; it is a way to extend caretaking beyond each other and into our immediate worlds and environment, too.

blood chronometry

In Chaco Canyon in Colorado, there’s a petroglyph in the shape of a spiral that seemed to function as a sun dial for ancient equinoxes and solstices. A month or so ago, I accidentally closed my right ring finger into a car door. The shock trumped all other sensations; I was only aware of a light-headedness and then waves of disbelief — not unlike how I’ve felt after immediately locking myself out of the house. Regret and dread. The pain came later, a sharp throbbing as my finger swelled to three or four times its size. As the hours, then days and weeks passed, the tip of my finger began to change form. First, the nail deepened into an abstract palette of purples and blues, and began its death process. I found myself compulsively checking my finger several times a day, monitoring the time it was taking to heal as a means to understand more about how this new body works. I’m beginning to understand how crip time works, which Ellen Samuels describes as containing “late nights and unconscious days, of life schedules lived out of sync with the waking, quotidian world.” Regular ways of keeping time no longer make sense to me, but watching my finger does. A tiny blood dial, keeping track of internal systems that I can carry around, wherever I go.

creative divination

Another way to say a crisis of confidence is a crisis of faith. I’ve lost my sense that I am protected and part of a bigger plan. Over the last two years or so, I have felt cursed, abandoned by my guides and ancestors. Deep down, I know that I’m not, but the petulant child inside of me is angry at my illness and wants there to be a why, or even a who, to blame. Turning against my higher power feels bratty and entitled enough to be satisfying, so that’s where I am at. I was describing this over matchas to Tourmaline, who listened sympathetically enough. But then, as we got ready to leave, I noticed that the shop was giving away bags of their used organic coffee grounds for composting (or whatever.) I gasped - I had just decided to do some natural dyeing with tannins, and these would be perfect for that. I looked up at Tourmaline. See, she said, her eyes playful. Even when it doesn’t feel like you are where you’re exactly supposed to be, you are.

~

on my radar right now

My kindred Jacqueline Woodson runs a fantastic residency called Baldwin for the Arts; applications are now open for the 2026-7 season!

Asian Vegetable Club has a great CSA in New York that offers tiers for folks using SNAP.

Ocean Voung on deepening his relationship to photography and other visual mediums.

~

I usually don’t make New Year’s resolutions. They feel like time-delayed resentments, sous vide reminders of unfulfilled promises. In general, I have life goals, and try to live with a moral imperative to be kind, do service, and do my very best to get out of my own way, but those remain steady from year-to-year.

Yet I love the holiday itself. The drama around what to wear and where to be and the thrilling crackle in the air as the day winds down. To me, it always seems like magic that the entire globe unites around this one celebration, a universal desire that is perhaps our only moment of international monoculture, connected by a single idea: Tomorrow, we start anew. Then, on the first of January, I leap out of bed, giddy as a child, excited to cook black-eyed peas, collards and cornbread, and share them with loved ones.

Those rituals feel meaningful to me, but I give myself until the spring equinox to process and reflect on the previous year. There are so many new years, so many moments to reset spread throughout the year that feel more resonant than a single day. Using the first of January to signify the start of the year is relatively new; as is the idea of a calendar year itself. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII began pushing his system of mechanical time observation that anchored the year around Easter always landing on the same day. It spread throughout the world alongside colonization, largely replacing cultural and natural ways of keeping time, including celestial observations, seasons, shadow clocks, livestock grazing habits and lunar cycles. (In general, I’m always interested in more ways to abolish time and resisting the conversion of human behavior into quantifiable labor to benefit capitalist economies, but that’s another newsletter!)

This year, I decided to honor the “end” of the “year” with friends in Miami. After a shared meal, we trooped down to our local beach to camp out near one of the city’s pyrotechnic set-ups. When the clock hit midnight, they went off. And as the first squeals of light hit the sky, a handful of us took off for the calm and shallow water, whooping and peeling off our clothes as we ran. I dove in last, still wearing my sequinned silver top.

As the fireworks show moved towards its finale, a series of white willows were released into the air, turning the sky into a glittering forest over our heads. We fell silent. The booms reverberated in my chest. I was inside the fireworks show, so much so that burning bits of paper clung to my wet hair and back, singeing me briefly before dying out with an audible sizzle. I couldn’t speak, only grin wildly at the sky in silence, struck dumb with astonishment and delight, humbled before the spectacle of lights, thunder and smoke. I was completely plugged into my body, flooded by positive sensory overload, brought on by a moment so profound and breathtaking that it couldn’t fully be captured on film or even adequately put into words. (My brain keeps drawing comparisons to videos and images I’ve seen of Yi Peng and other lantern festivals.)

When it was over, I had to laugh. Despite refusing (loudly, annoyingly) not to make any resolutions, I found myself smack in the middle of a devotional practice that made every cell in my body spin like a magnetized pointer towards awe. Later, someone in the crew pulled a tarot card meditating on the word agape, describing it as “the sacred force that surrounds us and asks for nothing in return.” Aliveness. The card also asked the querent to reassess what they worshipped every day, to “put nature at the center of a spiritual practice.” I told my higher power I didn’t need a purpose, and they laughed; they put it in my face and dared me to look away. I couldn’t. Message received.

We spent the next few days sunning and salting, visiting the Everglades, releasing prayers into the ocean and having heart-to-hearts over meals and sunrises. ( I wanted to make some of these cute TikTok hole punch cards, but prioritized restoration over all.) On the plane ride home, I realized I needed to allow spirit to enter more. For me, that means moving at a different pace, on a non-Gregorian schedule of life and living. Rest has always been challenging for me; probably because so much of my identity is formed by my work and my public self. I’ve been reading more about the ways stillness can feel scary, and can cause anxiety, especially for those who are used to chaos and being perpetually vigilant. Loosening the grip on that, even in the face of extreme illness, has been extremely difficult. The water has a way of bringing me back into myself, and as I flew home, I could finally recognize a natural limit within myself, a fatigue that I hadn’t noticed because I wouldn’t let myself notice it. I spent the last few months of the year moving at a breakneck speed, trying to prove something to myself, something to do with productivity and relevancy, I’m sure. And I think I found it. Now, it’s time for something a little different.

What this means for you and me is that I’m taking a small break from sending out these newsletters. It’s time to honor the dark months with deceleration, degrowth, and listening to the cards. It’s time to offline for a bit. Which isn’t to say that can’t happen on this sweet newsletter app! This space held me down during some rocky and tumultuous months, and I will always be grateful for that. But right now, my body is asking for something new, and I’ve decided to listen without question or hesitation. With any luck, I’ll be back in a few weeks, refreshed and ready to theorize anew.

I’ve paused paid subscriptions for the time being so no one gets unfairly charged in my absence, and unlocked my archive in case you miss my deep dives into TikTok and NYC bakery culture.

A respite requires a leap of faith, a trust in the unknown. Trust that you won’t forget about me, that the energy and love that I bring into this practice will only get stronger if I can be mindful of my relationship to it, and that disappearing is not the same thing as forgetting, or being forgotten.

See you on the other side real soon.

And! In the meantime, consider supporting the Buddhist monks walking across the country for peace. Watching people show up to give them cards, flowers, meals and hugs has been a much-needed antidote to ~everything else~ unfolding right now.

x

Upscale coffee shops paved the way for upscale bakery shops, and similarly, they make for a very good third space to experience food culture without spending a bajillion dollars on a meal of drinks. A new friend recently relayed a story about trucking down to Veniero in the East Village after a play and arriving to a packed house around 11PM. Magnolia/Levain are among the early pioneers who established the precedent for standing in line for trendy desserts, and TikTok, for better or for worse, has zeroed in on sweet treats as destination items for content.

I liked this interview between Mahira Rivers of Sweet City and Anna Gordon of The Good Batch where they talked about the rise of bakeries in New York and what it all means.

We’ve come to expect our pastries to be just as stellar as our cappuccinos. Second, I think as a society we crave comfort food more than ever with the world in such an uncomfortable place. These pastries, baked goods, desserts, etc., are really an affordable luxury, which helps with the mass appeal and popularity.

I’ve been on my own bakery kick for the last few years, so I love being at the center of this new trend. (See also: useless is the new luxury, from Tony Wang). It’s the perfect Venn diagram of all of my interests. I kept notes this year and decided to share my learnings. I went to a few dozen places and kept the best ones in my dream sugarblunt rotation. My tried and trues are listed below. As always, in case I need to say it, none of these treats were sponsored or even encouraged in any way. Just think of me as a big city kitty who needed a lot of special treats this year to wade through the hard parts who decided someone should benefit from all of my market research.

First, some disclaimers. Look, I’ll be the first to admit that there are some gaping holes in my data collection. I haven’t been to Bánh by Lauren, Librae Bakery or The Pastry Box, for example, or managed to get to Torrisi for their affogato. I didn’t make it up to Lloyds this year, and I missed out on many other delicious spots uptown. I left out restaurants because that opens up a whole other category, and this is a passion project, people! 2025 was the year of the cinnamon roll, but none of the ones I tried (and yes, I ran through most of the popular ones) did it for me, and I’m a tad convinced it’s because we aren’t in the South, but you won’t see any of those on this list. Or hot chocolate, though I maintain that L.A. Burdick makes the best drinking chocolate, hands down. On that note, Alison Roman also has a great eggnog recipe should you need. I skipped a lot of Internet trends, though I am curious about Ina’s brownie pudding, if anyone wants to make it for me. I also wasn’t able to do a comprehensive sweep of patties and buns, and I’m not a big pie or doughnut person, so those are also glaring omissions. Again, this is a personal list! Do with it what you will. (DM me if you want to take me out for your favorite dessert; I will not say no.)

Special shout-out to my R&D team, Ciera, Leilani, Collier, Mary & Toshi.

_________________

The Chocolate Brownie at Hani’s Bakery

Hani’s is really that gurl. They have lots of star-worthy treats: Their signature honey cake, their paneer pinwhell and their classic cinnamon roll, to start. I once brought their pistachio halva rice krispy treats to a break fast in their gorgeous packaging and they were gone almost as soon as they left the box. I regularly visit Hani’s for breakfast/lunch with friends, but lately only pick up their house brownie for my go-home treat. It feels like an upscale riff on a Little Debbie’s Cosmic Brownie, right down to the colorful confetti and thick fudge icing on top. A little goes a long way, and always leaves me satisfied.

The Sundried Tomato Croissant at Welcome Home

Sun-dried tomatoes are the new espresso martini in that they were once hugely popular in the 90s, written off as cliché, and now back with a vengeance. Usually, they’re an unremarkable add-on to any baked good; you can barely taste them, and they’re more of a signifier of taste than actually adding any complex savory notes. However. The combination of bright, chewy discs alongside droplets of feta and a nut-free pesto and the buttery crenulated layers of a croissant is heavenly. I know this isn’t technically a dessert, but it honestly feels like one so I included it.

The Pineapple Linzer at Té Company

This is honestly so refreshing and simple, there’s not much else to say. Té Company also has red bean mooncakes with yolk that I really enjoyed — basically, all of their snacks are next level and have a lot to teach us about the fine arts of tea time.

The Banana Fosters Pie at Amanda’s Good Morning Cafe

I came to this New Orleans pop-up in the front of the restaurant Strange Delight for the grits and the morning bun, and was a bit underwhelmed by the latter. On a whim (and on the recommendation of a sweet server), we got a slice of their house pie to go. I snuck a bite in and was immediately blown away. The sea salt graham cracker crust + crumbles went beautifully with the whipped cream and banana chiffon. It had all the best parts of banana pudding without the mealy slices of bananas. Each bite felt like all the parts of my childhood that I loved.

The Churro Whorl at Vato

I know that people go nuts for the yuzu cream concha at the newly opened Park Slope bakery started by the elite team at Corima, but I was totally blown away by their sugary churro whorl. Texture is everything to me, and the crispy edges + moist center of the churro makes for a sensationally crunchy and gooey chew that borders on the consistency of mochi. 10/10 for taste and decadence.

The Ham & Egg Croissant at Saraghina Bakery

It took me a long time to try this because the visual presentation reminded me of the overpriced breakfast items you get out of desperation at JFK that are both somehow dry and soggy at the same time. But when I finally got talked into trying one, I could not believe how creamy and savory it was at the same time. I liked it so much I went back the next morning to try it again. Again, not a dessert! But it qualifies in my heart.

The Pickled PB&J at Red Gate Bakery

I’m tempted to gatekeep here, but I can honestly say, without exaggerating, that this was my favorite dessert for all of 2025. Usually, PB&J-themed anything is a hard no for me because the quality of the ingredients doesn’t match the ambitions of the dessert. Not here. Their version includes a layer of pickled concord grape jam with crunchy peanut butter and miso (yes bitch, miso!) shortbread, and is dense and affluent enough to share with your bestie, which is often what I do. Their midnight banana bread is also bonkers. These desserts don’t photograph well, which is how you know they slap.

The Bolo Pork Sung Bun at Land to Sea

I already adore everything about this Asian woman-run cafe in Bushwick with a lending library, but then I tried their coconut bun and bolo pork sung bun. A terrific combination of pineapple milk bun and pork floss, which an employee described to me as “if jerky were made into cotton candy.” The bun was pillowy and proportionally sweet, and the pork floss offered a richly flavored texture to round it all out. Yum.

The Chocolate Babka at Elbow Bread

A classic done perfectly. No notes. Something you’d want to bring to a dinner party, or a brunch.

Guinness Cake at Vinegar Hill House

I recently had dinner at this day one iconic restaurant for a Wesley’s birthday, and the highlight of the meal (which is saying something!) was their rich, dense, chocolately cake. A perfect wedge with a snowdrift of whipped cream cheese frosting (buttercream is overrated!) that was so good I took an extra piece home and had it the next day for breakfast. Cake is one of my favorite desserts, but I rarely have it in New York because the default icing is always buttercream, which is so off-putting to me? I prefer my butter on a piece of warm bread with some Don Bellino anchovies, like God intended, but that’s just me.

The Sour Mix at Bon Bon

I was admittedly late to the Bon Bon game. I’m not really a candy guy, and it just felt overhyped, overly expensive and the whole TikTok of it all and unnecessary lines made me more than a little nutty. But! I walked into an empty one over the summer and filled a bag on a whim, almost as a joke. But the joke was on me because I got hooked, immediately. There’s apparently less sugar and artificial dyes/flavors and the textures is chewier than American candy. It’s still candy, of course, but it’s wild to eat a piece and not immediately feel ill. One of my favorite treats for myself, and gifts for others.

The Lysée at Lysée

The most decadent dessert on the list, and one of my favorites, because it actually delivered fine dining in the form of a pastry. Listen to this: A Korean toasted brown rice mousse with caramel, Elliot Pecan Sablé, Praliné. Like What??? Are??? Even??? Half??? Those??? Things?? This is honestly never something I would order, but I saw Chef Eunji Lee featured on a YouTube food show and got really intrigued by her style and approach. This was the most expensive place I visited all year, but it was worth it for a post-art crawl splurge with a special friend. The way this pastry looks is at total odds with how it tastes, and that was a delight. The mousse is creamy but still airy, and the praline crust is a god-tier pairing. Bonus points if you order the warm sweet potato latte. YUM.

Soft Serve at L’Industrie

A no-brainer. Thee classic and iconic staple of the year. Yeah, their slices are amazing, but I often went here exclusively for a cup of their house ice cream, which rotates by season, but almost always includes vanilla and pistachio, my personal favorite. No matter what flavor you get, you must must must ask for it with olive oil and sea salt.

~

And that’s all I’ve got! Feel free to tell me your favorites and what should be on my list for 2026. I’m all ears.

If you’ve made it this far down the page, make some commotion for yourself! Thank you for sticking with me this year! Your support, here, in the DMs and on the street when you say hello has meant so much in a year where I have felt less like myself and ever unsure of what I’m doing and if any of this matters. There are now 10,000 (!) Channelers and I am grateful for each and every one of you. Sending you all sweetness and light and the champagnepopemoji for making it through this treacherous year. We really did that! All love and light, always.

Till the next one, J

I speculated that next year, people will move more stealthily online, sharing less on purpose, for a few reasons. (The whole piece is worth reading — the other answers included slop fatigue, mindless scrolling will be seen as gross as mindless vaping, the return of the skinny jean.)

But back to performative offlineness! Dude, it’s such a flex to have an IG account with just a handful of photographs. Add in zero stories? I’m wet. A minimalist grid that looks current AND quiet is god-tier levels of cool. While bopping around during the holiday season, I met several people who weren’t on Instagram at all. (TikTok, another story.) But it sounded so baller to me. It sounded like a kind of freedom.

Maybe we’re finally reaching a cultural point where we recognize the grip these services have on us and the damage that grip has done.

For the last twenty+ years, we’ve been goaded and trained to share every single aspect of our lives, and to what end? I do think the pandemic shifted how many people operated online. There was that moment of public shaming around traveling/partying/socializing despite lockdown, so many people I know pulled back their own disclosures, which seems to have continued. That was the first iteration of going dark full-time, leaning into time-shifting and stealth mode on social. But now, I think some of us are finally really reckoning with the way social media has glitched our ability to look, and the way the gaze got co-opted into always skimming the world for perfect tweets, posts, reels, TikToks, and so on. Tech companies are optimizing for our attention (along with our sleep and our time) as their growth markets, and they’re very good at it.

As a result, we’ve reached the logical endpoint of a dystopic reality that has been coalescing for several years (decades?). Being too honest/real online has severe consequences, including restricting travel and arrest. Trust is eroding overall. The social contract is gone. Infrastructure is deteriorating, if not gone completely. Have you recently tried to reach an actual customer service rep at FedEx? JetBlue? Vanguard? Or been to an emergency room lately? It’s terrifying and all connected. The depersonalizaion of the world feels normal when our intimate lives have become depersonalized, too, which has happened by allowing our avatars to stand in as a proxy for entire personalities and lives.

A few summers ago, my magazine editor asked me to write a piece about the perceived stagnation of culture. A high-profile arts writer wanted to proclaim that it was completely dead; I wanted to counter that often, what seems inert is simply hibernating.

I proposed an essay based on the idea of the cultural moment as groundcover, the filler plants you grow in empty patches of soil. They’re deceptively boring; all the action is happening under wraps, in secret, covertly strengthening the soil while protecting it from erosion. My thesis was that this might be the most fecund and generative epoch in centuries, but it’s too early to see it yet. Even during a time of information overload, it’s entirely possible that all has not yet been revealed.

The piece wasn’t greenlit so I never got the time to delve into my research and theories, but the ideas have stuck with me, and bits bubble out from time to time, including in this prediction that Chris asked me to make. I tapped it out so fast on my Notes app that I didn’t realize it was related until I saw it in print.

I worry that performative offlineness sounds like a cynical dig — like I’m suggesting the impulse to refrain from posting will be as inauthentic as sometimes being compulsively online can be. But I was actually imagining something more conscious and iron-willed than a planned break, something more tactical. Strategic. Refusing to be tracked; refusing to be known, refusing to let our nervous systems get hijacked. Refusing to give all our shit up to AI, and refusing to succumb to the way social media has become a stand-in for reality, even though we all know firsthand how much we manipulate that same reality ourselves.

Truthfully, I was putting a wish out into the world for myself.

My biggest struggle of the past year was with social media — specifically Instagram. Twitter losing its cultural currency was the best thing to ever happen to my thinking and writing career, and my relationship to TikTok is unhealthy in a different way, but Instagram is such a particular beast where the battle between performance and perception is fought daily. As I’ve mentioned in this newsletter before, I’m dealing with a lot of health issues that keep me at home, often isolated for long stretches of time. When I feel well, all I want to do is enjoy life, which often ends up online. When I feel good, I want to share about that good-feeling and reinforce my sensation of aliveness with the dopamine hits of other people witnessing it and affirming it alongside me. When I feel bad, my natural instinct is to put the phone away. For the most part, I happen to look remarkably healthy — glowing, some have said — which creates a cognitive dissonance everywhere between how I look and how I actually am.

Occasionally, I’ll even feel guilty for sharing these partial truths on Instagram, although I suspect that’s what we’re all doing, all the time — image farming a version of ourselves that matches the person we hope to be. As flawed as this practice is, it helps me feel more connected, safe, relevant, less alone. But it has led to the perception, even among those who know what’s happening at a deeper level, that I’m actually fine, so much so that I’ve begun to contemplate revealing more than I’m comfortable with publicly to correct the record.

Thank goodness I haven’t. Lately, I’ve had the clarity that capitulating to the idea that social media is the place where I will be fully witnessed and seen is playing exactly into the same brain scatter that pushes us to overshare, unleash Twitter trigger fingers, and purchase items we don’t even want. That’s not to say I won’t someday talk about what’s going on — in fact, I hope to — but it’ll be on my terms and conditions, with full preparedness for the vulnerability it requires and the kinds of projections that will happen then, too.

For now, I long to be less legible. To live in a world that’s less ableist and easier to navigate, and I don’t have to rely heavily on social media for connection. To be messier, less annoyed by other people’s poor reading comprehension. I long to continue to choose real contact with the world and people, as Shira recently wrote so beautifully about, which also means being willing to get into the muck with myself and others. Which is fucking hard! It’s clumsy and that clumsiness has real consequences. But even to try gives me respair, a word that appears in the title of the new Jesamyn Ward collection out next year. It means the return of hope after a period of despair, and I’m claiming it for 2026.

As always, these are just a constellation of thoughts from my brain to yours. If this resonated with you (or not!), I hope you’ll let me know in the comments below.

some personal service announcements

A dear friend of mine from high school needs a liver transplant, so if you have ever been interested in exploring anonymous organ donation, please consider spending some time at the University Health Transplant Institute site or getting evaluated to see if you’re a match for someone in need.

I am still looking for a studio space in New York to write, make art and give the occasional reiki treatment. If you have any leads, please reply to this email or DM me.

~

Thank you for reading. Till soon

“They’re in my own interpretation, which works as a real stained-glass window….I would say that the most precious thing about this work is the labor that goes into something that is ephemeral. And I love the ephemeral quality.” — RdN, Interview Magazine

“I like to think that the work is doing its own performance. It’s showing you this kind of dance whenever it wants to. So you really have to either just wait around for it or force it, which is really hard to do.” — RdN, Interview Magazine

“I grew up in a household full of death. My father, grandmother and grandfather all died when we were very young, and I really got to see how my mom’s family related to death. There was sadness in us, but it also gave us hope in how it became a celebration of the self. It came to be an acceptance of the courage needed to keep going, and the most beautiful thing is the remembrance of a person.” — RdN, Interview Magazine

“I’m not necessarily a religious person that goes into church and prays to god, but I feel like the god that I’m mostly connected to is the memory of these people.” — RdN, Interview Magazine

“I’m creating a mirage or an illusion. I think that’s something that art does a lot, where it gives the viewer an opportunity to drift off into an idea and really connect to what they’re looking at.” — RdN, Interview Magazine

“We are celebrating the existence of yesterday when we’re living today, but tomorrow will be this aspect of our lives in other people’s lives. It’s beautiful.” — RdN, Interview Magazine

Hello Channelers!

Why are gift guides so fascinating to read? As mentioned, I’m not making one this year, but I’ve been reading them non-stop (and using them to find cute things for myself instead of others, ehehehe). But I do plan on giving out some very thoughtful gifts to the inner circle that has been showing up in particularly beautiful ways during some very challenging months, and I would actually like to pick those out in person, which I hope to do at some of the city’s holiday markets this year.

Will I come to regret this choice? Almost immediately. I can already feel the waves of overheating and overstimulation overloading my body now. But it also feels like another way to be a good neighbor; plus, honoring craftsworkers feels like a rebuttal to the algorithm and A.I. and all of the broader depersonalization that’s been happening in this country. Wish me luck and if you see me red-faced and wild-eyed trying to decide between seven different ceramic mugs, no you didn’t.

Anyway! Here’s what’s delighting me this week.

1. Ages ago, a former girlfriend introduced me to the practice of growing flowers indoors during the winter, specifically, paperwhite bulbs, which have the stamina to endure the colder temperatures. Watching something verdant and green come alive and eventually bloom during these frigid ass days is redemptive, borderline ecstatic. You can find them at most nurseries or online; they should cost about a dollar each, making them perfect seasonal gifts, should you need ideas for others (or yourself!) You could pot them in soil indoors, but I like to put them in a glass container, along with some water and stones, and watch them come stretch towards the weak light, reminding me that life is still possible right now. When they seem to “die” and go dormant, stop watering them, and let them wither down, back to the bulb. You can store them in a cool dark place (like under a sink) until the next season.

2. I’ve gotten yet another honorary graduate degree from TikTok University, this time in semi-domesticated wild animals. Did you know humans are bringing skunks, big tortoises, otters, capybaras, raccoons and ducks inside to live alongside them? I know I shouldn’t be surprised by it all, but I am. I’m … not into it, but I’m also not not into it, maybe because I saw a lot of very intense movies over the holiday break, including KStew’s “The Chronology of Water,” “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You,” “Eyes Wide Shut,” “After the Hunt” and “It Was Just An Accident” and needed some hearty doses of silliness to recover. It is wild to see people wrapping these creatures up in bonnets, drawing them baths and giving them snacks but rinses my brain in that disturbing way that TikTok does really well — showing me some slice of life that I don’t understand and feel slightly concerned about but compulsively need to monitor.

3. OSulloc Tea has quickly become a household favorite around these parts. A few weeks ago, a friend threw in a bunch of extra packets along with a care package (this is not sponcon, I promise) and I decided to finally try them out after learning that almost every fake healthy tea brand I like might have pesticides in it (???). These teas are made on Jeju Island, which is fancy enough to convince on that fact alone. But they are absolutely mind-blowing, especially the one with tangerine and cedar that is fragrant without being overpowering and surprisingly balanced on the palate. I famously feel the same way about Earl Grey as I do T*yl*r Sw*ft — I can take it or leave it — but the Osulloc version converted me (to the tea, anyway.)

4. Speaking of social media, my meals are rarely influenced by whatever new weird thing people are eating on those platforms, but both Courtney Cook and Ally Wong have got me into purple sweet potatoes with cheese and tinned fish, sometimes all at the same time. It’s oddly satisfying and ideal for a winter lunch when you don’t have enough juice to make a whole thing, but you need something savory and umami that’s not too heavy and takes very little effort. Highly recommend.

5. I recently visited the Jennifer Packer show at Sikkema Jenkins and felt the bubble that encases me most of the time gently deflate, leaving me porous enough to absorb some of her curiosities about the liminal void between life and the afterlife. Even though I’m on leave, I felt moved enough to write about it. It’s just that good. If you live in New York and wanted to get cracked open by art, you’ve still got a few weeks to head over there and take a look for yourself.

That’s all I got! Thank you for reading. What’s on your plate/heart/mind this week?

Another holiday party season is upon us, and as I’m quickly finding out, the hellscape of 2025 is really fucking with the festive mood, bruh. The default icebreaker for these things is “hey, how are you?” which is totally respectable and chill under normal circumstances. But nothing is normal in 2025. Either way, right now, that question can only reasonably be answered with a haunted grimace, a dissociated shrug or a borderline demonic eyeroll.

Last week, I stopped by a holiday party in a very sexy venue with a real wintry mix of hot and interesting people, and everyone — truly everyone that I talked to — kept saying how badly they needed to go to bed. Listen, I get it: That’s how I always feel, but I would never bring it up at a fête! It’s a total buzz killer. But the buzz has already been killed, my friends. There were TWO open bars there, and no one wanted to stay late and party. My chronically ill ass always toodles out early, and by the time I was ready to go, things had cleared out substantially. Eeeeeeeyuck! It’s bleak all around, folks.

When I got home, I started brainstorming a starter pack of topics for holiday gatherings, which is such a neurospicegirl thing to do, but it feels extremely useful for These Times™. (I should also say that I’ve never been someone who liked small talk, or felt good at it. Years ago, I met someone at an after afters who walked me through their most recent break-up and their 9/11 story all within the first hour of meeting them — does it really need to be said we were both extremely lit and smoking cigarettes outside — which I thought was legendary, even admirable, at the time. Gimmie subterranean or nothing at all. Years later, sober, while living in Los Angeles, I began learning how to make atomized chitchat, eventually finding extreme pleasure in it. I stopped craving deep revelations from every interaction and began looking at it all like improv.)

I’ve ranked these icebreakers by difficulty level, from easy to a warmed up, final boss level. My recommendation is to skip the “you good” altogether and jump into one of these questions instead. And remember to riff and be spontaneous! That’s one of the keys, I’m told.

I’m sharing this instead of a gift guide, because who has extra money for gifts right now?! And if you do, you probably should consider getting a grocery buddy and helping out your neighbors in need.

Feel free to add your icebreakers in the comments. Lord knows I’ll need ‘em.

2025 holiday party small talk suggestions

“Got any good holiday plans?”1

See also: “Planning any warm-weather escapes?”

“Are you still in [insert local city here]?!” (A slam dunk even if you already know the answer. Just fake it!)

“Did you see that first episode of ‘Pluribus’? Crazy, right?”

“Any plans to get back on cow’s milk? That’s a thing now, you know.”

See also: “Are you going to try the dyeless Doritos?”

“Favorite new Rosalía song?”2

“Have you seen the new Ruth Asawa/Faith Ringgold/Calder/ show?” (Big art shows in your city = no-brainer.)

“Are you following the ‘All’s Fair’ press tour at all?” (If yes, safe to bring up “jacket potatoes” — if not, abort, abort! It’s not interesting enough to explain at a loud party, but honestly … hilarious if you’ve seen it.)

Alternative topic: Bring up ‘Wicked 2’ and speculate about why THAT press tour seems so muted, if not cursed.

“What do you think Britney Spears and the Kardashians talked about at their slumber party?” (Keep this one queued up on your phone; it’s worth showing if your conversation partner hasn’t seen it yet.)

“How stoked are you for Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl?”

“Is ENM still a thing?”

“Are you doing gluten? What’s your favorite fancy bakery in the city?”

“Did you see Tom Cruise dancing at that pre-Oscars Oscars party?” (With this one you cannot pull up the video; you must re-create it.)

“Do you think Emma Stone and Yorgos should retire their collaboration after “Bugonia” (a perfect movie, imo) or push their partnership to its logical end, which feels like it’ll be either marriage, a sex tape and/or a death pact?”

“Did you ever end up watching ‘The Materialists’? Did you hate it or were you secretly into it?” (I am.)

“Are there any fun conspiracy theories left?” (Genuine question — I miss the days of the Avril Lavigne replacement theory and people speculating that Stevie Wonder could actually see.)

1. “Do you know who Uncle Bob is? 2. Do you care? 3. Did you see the supercut of his heavy breathing?”3

“Is fiber the new protein?”

“It’s been a bad year for biracials — agree/disagree?” (There’s only one answer to this, so choose your conversation companion carefully!)4

“Do you think we’ve already had a queer President and just didn’t know it?”

You don’t have to use my suggestions, but I beg you to come up with your own. It’s bad enough out there without letting These Times™ ruin the holiday season, too.

Till next time!

The other night, while leaving the fantastic Faith Ringgold show at Jack Shainman in TriBeCa, feeling energized and moved by the work, her legacy, and the fullness of seeing it on a brisk, celebratory night, I decided to treat myself to a taxi to dinner.

I stepped out into the street and raised my hand to signal to an available cab, which began pulling over. Almost immediately, a ridiculously handsome man dashed across the street and started to get in. Normally, something like this would’ve been my thirteenth reason. But I was rich with Faith’s genius, seeing old friends and the promise of a crisp night out on the town. I laughed, amused, and started making my way towards the subway. The man noticed me, and pulled out his earbuds. “Was this yours?” he called to me. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. He beckoned towards me and held the door open so I could climb in. “This is how it should be, you know?”

I did know.

This man was being a good neighbor to me. He was practicing good neighboring, which is the term that I’m using to describe a personal code of conduct. He’s not the only example, or even the best one — I just loved how cinematic and rom-commy the encounter felt, and how much it seemed to me to be indicative of the giddy goodwill blanketed parts of the city in the wake of Mamdani’s triumphant win. Good neighboring also looked like a recent text that I received from my friend and neighbor Ru who wondered if she could drop off some turkey chili. She’d made too much and her family was sick of it, and she had a feeling that I might need a hearty meal that I didn’t have to prepare myself, which is almost always true these days. It looked like rearranging my Sunday afternoon so I could spend some time tending to my local community fridge, which had fallen into disrepair, and then attending an orientation meeting about an issue that feels extremely urgent. It has meant taking classes on urban composting, and not just tossing all of my food scraps into the curbside brown bins to be processed in Staten Island, but also taking them to community gardens that may use them quicker to replenish local soil. It means making sure the leftover clothes from a recent clothing swap amongst friends either go to Jamaica or folks in need in New York.

Good neighboring feels like an active term, and clearer to me than the vagaries of community, a noun that gets tossed around with such abandon that it has become semantically satiated and bleached of all intention and meaning. Good neighboring feels like tapping into the actual network of people and place that make up a shared ecology. The term came into my vocabulary from my dear Tamara, who is one of the most impressive community members I know. They constantly inspire me with their abolitionist and anarchist strategies, and they always remind me that each person gets to define community for themselves and how to support it. Good neighboring means actually interacting with your neighbors — not just your peers — and tapping into existing knowledge systems. It means humility and kindness. Awareness of one’s positionality. It feels essential and powerful, when harnessed. The potential of collective desire around shared goals is tangible, especially right now— we’re seeing it with the way people moved the needle for Mamdani, and how quickly people are galvanizing around the government’s selfish and short-sighted removal of the country’s largest anti-hunger programs.

Approximately fifteen years ago (!), when I first landed in New York, I wasn’t able to be a good neighbor to the city. I could barely manage my day-to-day needs and survival, so I wasn’t able to meet the needs of others. The demands on my time felt overwhelming. There were escalating obligations to different communities, the steep learning curve of working as a journalist with zero experience, navigating my budding queerness and everything else that comes with being a human. For a while, community felt like the people I saw at the queer parties and media events that I frequented, and that was the best I could do. And truly, some of those gatherings and friendships saved my life, and buoyed my career. But I barely had time for more than that, and for years, it didn’t allow me to engage with the city as more than a backdrop.

One of the most exhilarating — and exhausting — things about New York City is that you can’t inoculate yourself from it. The city and its inhabitants push up against you relentlessly, every time you leave your house, and often times, even while you’re in your house. As I write this, I’m listening to the band and choir that sings during Sunday service at the church next door. It’s beautiful, because I let it be beautiful, but the constant influx of noise and stimulation can be maddening.

It feels important to note that I grew up in a household where we relied on government assistance and all kinds of support, and my parents regularly volunteered and taught us how meaningful it was to give back. Of course, as a kid, I hated it. My parents were very anti-fast food, but I could finesse a sack of fries if I accompanied my father on his regular runs to McDonalds where he bought himself a black coffee and breakfast for all the fellow veterans who tended to hang out there in the mornings. I never wanted to sit around during those conversations, but it wasn’t until I got older that I understood that my father was likely bribing me with the promise of junk. Perhaps he hoped I might learn about his life and his past by listening to others tell stories he would never share with me himself. My mother was involved with my elementary school’s PTA, and organized the school’s free clothing closet and baskets for families in need during the holiday. Every Christmas, my father would buy bulk toiletries, socks, bottles of water, dried food, protein bars and ribbon candy. We’d pack them into individual bags and keep them in the car. Whenever we saw someone in need, he’d asked them if they wanted a little care package and it was our job to hand it through the backseat windows. As a friend said to me recently: We’ve always had to figure this shit out without governments. We know what to do.

I didn’t spend the first handful of years in New York being completely self-absorbed. There were holiday food drives, warm coat collections, beach cleanups, Sandy recovery, money redistribution and fundraisers (especially TransSanta, which I cannot advocate for enough) and those still occupy a significant part of my life. But for years, I’m embarrassed to say, I saw that as secondary, tertiary, even, to my relationship to the city. New York was the place that I was living and not the place that I lived. I never expected to be able to afford it here long-term — and tbh, that still remains to be seen — but after years spending the majority of my time in the same city, give or take a few sabbaticals / sojourns, it’s clear that this is, at the very least, one of my homes. My needs are more stable, and secure, and I have more capacity to donate time/energy, not just money. (Though don’t get me wrong - money is always needed and good.) I’ve also been craving the feeling of connection, in my circles and in my daily life, around all aspects of my life. Rather than it be a one-off occasion, or seasonal obligation, it has become a core tenent of my moral orientation in the city. Investing in the city is different from investing in your social life or your career. It means beginning to see New York as a place we can responsibly participate in and shape. (I particularly appreciated this episode of “Vibe Check” where adrienne maree brown talks to the crew about navigating the difference between what you can do and what you will do.)

I have spent an unhealthy amount of time thinking about a viral video that talks about the cost of community being inconvenience. The idea that service and connection requires a sacrifice isn’t inaccurate, but maybe it’s the syntax of the idea that rubs me the wrong way. I believe people need boundaries, and balance and that we’re all being asked to do more than we feasibly can, especially right now. But I also believe, as an organizer recently said in meeting that I attended, we may be better off when we choose the problems of connection over the problems of isolation. Perhaps putting service, and community into the transactional framework of currency and capitalism is what bothers me.

Part of my recovery as a sober person requires me to turn to service every time I feel compelled to devolve into self-pity, to stare at my own navel, whine about the status of my life and myself as an entitled victim who deserves to eat obscene amounts of candy, spend excessive amounts of money or whatever other unhealthy thing that’s calling me instead of regulating my emotions and right-sizing my problems. Put another way, service keeps me sober. It never feels like an act equivalent to slaughter. It always feels exhilarating, like a miraculous gift that I can give to myself. There’s no numerical or monetary comparison. Often times, I find that being in service is the only curative for the despair loops of the broader hellfire that we find ourselves living through. And truth be told, if you only spend your time reading the news and doomscrolling, it’s easy to sink into powerlessness, and feel like everything is going to shit (true) and no one’s doing anything about it (not true). The goal, someone once told me, is for there to be a million decentralized creative interventions.

The morning that I started working on this post, I was in the middle of decluttering my bedroom. I picked up a stack of books and papers that had accumulated on the little pink Togo near the window. That tarot deck that Naima gave me ages ago slipped out of the pile and fell to the ground, leaving a single card wedged in my stack. It was the nine of coins. Curious, I flipped to the description in its book. It read: “this card is all about the love you feel for your fellow human beings, animals and plans, for things, events and anything else. Love is not just the right measure in a partnership; love is a way of encountering the world. If you encounter the world with respect and love, you add to it.”

Truly, what else is there?

Here’s a list of some of the ways I’m supporting my neighbors in our city right now. I’m holding doors when I can and asking people how their days are and listening for the answer. I’m smiling at strangers, and complimenting them when I like their ‘fits. I also donated reiki treatments help immigrants deal with unlawful arrests; getting caught up on local abortion rights, working on community fridges. I’m sending water to Palestine, donating to jail support, redistributing warm clothes: St Mary’s (they do pickups!), Astoria Food Pantry, Washington Square Park’s mutual aid efforts, Another World and Bushwick Ayuda Mutual. Paying attention to the reckless development of landmark sites in Bed-Stuy. Yesterday, I went to three unrelated organizing orientations in the same day and it was emotional to think about all these little concentric circles of people working towards a more equal and just future. And there’s so much more. There’s always more than I will ever share — I’ve never been one to reveal all of my moves in public, and we’re at the cusp of truly understanding how deeply and irrevocably we are being surveilled right now. (This might be a good moment to think about whether or not you want Google’s Gemini AI to read all of your emails and documents.)

It goes against instinct to not perform for social media, to constantly show evidence of a well-rounded life, especially if you feel called to show your political orientation online as a means to assert your morality and individual character. But I’m also learning to be OK with people not needing to know, or even trust, which side of history I’m on. The stakes are so much bigger than worrying about what other people think. I tell myself constantly that Instagram is not who you are, it’s just where you are sometimes.

All that said, I’d love to know what being a good neighbor means to you, and how you’re implementing it in your life, to the degree that it feels safe and makes sense to share. Holler at me in the comments below!

personal plug

I recently wrote about a new art show in Los Angeles that is probing the edges of re-contextualizing Confederate monuments as a way to reflect on the last ten years of agitation and social justice in America. It’s my last piece for a bit for the Magazine, and I’m quite proud of it, so if you manage to read it, do let me know what you think!

the juicy bits

On repeat on the Sonos: Devotion & The Black Divine.

In the shopping cart: NYC realtime subway clock.

After seven long, parched years, the Studio Museum in Harlem has re-opened to the public, and it is a glorious homecoming.

Mary is my favorite snack daddy; she has a delicate palate and a surgeon’s grasp on what treatment by way of texture and salt/sugar/acid/fat/heat combo needs to be administered in nearly every situation. Recently, she brought me this peanut butter caramel popcorn from Trader Joe’s and they were festive without being aggressive on the palate or pocket.

Ramen by Ra is back!

till so very soon <3

Here’s a quick hit roundup of what’s on my plate, mind and spirit right now.

1. My taste buds have been a bit off lately and all I want are cold things. Cold water, cold fruit, cold sweet treats. My lovely mother sent me an ice cream maker so I can indulge my cravings and also have a little more control over what I’m putting into my body. I’m grateful - it’s not something I would ever buy on my own. Ice cream makers fall into a category of appliances that feel like the equivalent of New Years resolutions — ambitious but hopelessly impractical. (Also on that list: Pasta makers and bread makers. Prove me wrong. I beg you.) I’m determined not to waste the storage space, so when I noticed that concord grapes were in season via my CSA, I ordered a bunch and used this basic recipe, simmering them down with maple syrup instead of white sugar. I cooled the mixture and put it in the machine — it was unbelievably easy and beyond satisfying. How do they just taste like the color purple?! Perfection. I added a little olive oil and flaky salt to my scoop, L’industrie-style, and it was phenom. You don’t need to buy anything to make your own: Here are a few versions that don’t need major equipment.

2. I’ve mostly resisted a lot of the mid-2010s nostalgia, but the new Tame Impala has got me in its vise, mostly because it’s familiar without being too different. (I know that’s kinda sad, but it’s where I’m at. There’s only so much new my brain can absorb right now.) I like being transported back into a synth-y, electropop era that feels simpler through the lens of sentimentality. It’s short, uncomplicated and interesting. Ease does not always mean giving up, especially right now.

3. Soft Services’ buffing bar. I came across a mention of this exfoliating brick on The Strategist (where else), made the purchase on an impulse, and haven’t looked back since. I really, really despise the fade of the summer glow and the demelanation / dehydration that happens as the weather gets colder and drier, and using this bar semi-regularly has helped my skin feel as smooth as it does when I get out of the ocean and air dry in the sun. I went with the Affogato L’Orange, which is formulated to smell like “freshly poured espresso, smooth vanilla-coconut cream, and a twist of Italian citrus.” Yes. Yes. Yes.

4. Sarah’s timely article on the desolate landscape for job hunters — or as she put it “why shit sucks so bad, how it feels, and what it means.” I’m not (currently) looking for a job, but many people I know are, and even though I have salary stability, I’m not immune to the feeling of precarity, imminent collapse and shit just not working anymore. And there’s something sinister about how difficult it is to reach actual people when you need help with something, the broader fraying infrastructure and the dissonance between how hard it feels to be alive juxtaposed against the constant displays of success theater, everywhere, from social media to Dimes Square.

5. I love watching shorts — biased, obviously, as I’m working on one myself — but I saw ‘Seek No Favor’ as part of NewFest37 shorts showcase and found myself absolutely delighted by this neo noir film about a young woman who becomes fixated on a cartel of weave thieves. Equal parts gay panic romcom and queer Blaxploitation, the film plays with genre and feels invigorating in a way that features often can’t. Also highly recommend Geena Rocero’s “Dolls,” about a self-help workshop for trans women that may be a cover for a cult. Just so much fun to be had in the format.

some personal plugs

Attn all my New Yorkers who vote : Soft Power has all the information you need to make a plan for our upcoming city election on Nov 4. Early voting starts this weekend.

A very good pal is fundraising for South Brooklyn Sanctuary which trains people to support folks dealing with aggressive ICE enforcement in courts and on our streets. She’s looking for donations for a silent auction. I’ll be offering a reiki session, but if you are an author, ceramicist, photographer, vintner with goods/services/lessons/workshops to donate to help them raise money, send me a message by replying to this email or sending a DM and I’ll connect you two. We all we got, now and forever.

Sasha Wortzel’s River of Grass opens this week; a must-see for anyone concerned with ecological preservation and re-thinking how we talk about the environment and bodies of water like the Everglades. We worked together on her last project, so she’s generously offered a 20 percent discount off the DCTV screenings for Channeling readers; use code florida20 to cash in.

I work with young writers as much as I can (apply for Periplus 2026!) and was pleased to recently work with Cue Arts to support Alliyah Allen, a young curator who wrote an essay on the artist Jairo Sosa around his recent solo exhibition. You can read the essay online or buy the catalogue in its entirety, should you be so inclined!

And! The iridescent astrologer Isa Nakazawa had me on her podcast to talk about my water placements and embracing cringe.

🌞

That’s it for today my babes! As always, thank you for reading, and drop your own recommendations and wins below if you want! I’d love to hear ‘em.

A portion of this month’s paid subscriptions will go to One Love Community Fridge, which is truly an angelic organization that helps combat food insecurity in New York. Bed-Stuy Strong is also raising money to buy our neighbor’s holiday provisions, should you want to donate directly.

This morning (or at least, the morning I started writing this) I got a voice note from a friend of mine asking me to “come on in, while the water’s hot” with regards to the new Paul Thomas Anderson film, “One Battle After Another.” I’ve recently come into some wellness — I credit lots of rest and a weekend of satisfying art-making — and had the time and energy to share some thoughts below.

Just FYI: There are (probably) spoilers below, if you care about that kind of thing!

A few days before that message, I was uptown at a break fast, sitting on a couch filled with some of the smartest cultural thinkers I know, mostly Black women, btw, when the film came up — as it tends to do these days. We’d all seen it. We all had the same critiques of it. And most of us still loved it. It seemed like everyone in the group had been starved for actual filmmaking that hews closer to art than chaos, and this was particularly well shot and directed. It felt like a capital M movie, which is rarer and rarer these days.

It’s funny, I made a wholeass career out of analyzing culture and movies like this, but I can’t seem to muster the juice to talk about this one for more than a few minutes. Maybe I’m too weathered. (Per Christina Sharpe: “The weather is the total climate; and that climate is antiblackness.”) Maybe I’ve stopped expecting the old institutions to save us. It’s also possible that my expectations have become too low. Or that I’m just conserving my energy right now.

It’s not like I don’t agree with the commentary. I respect Zeba’s indecision. Mary is right that it makes fascism and the pursuit of power look as ridiculous as it is, which she speculates should be an actual political strategy and tactic for the left to consider. And so is Brooke’s observation that PTA turns Perfidia into a harmful fetish, and Pat/Bob’s fumbling ineptitude is made possible by the array of non-white characters around him. I, too, was deeply uncomfortable with Perfidia’s hypersexualization, and the way “we” watch through the leering gaze of the (imo) dangerously cartoonish portrayal of a military general who is obsessed with her. I can believe that PTA and the movie knew what it was doing in that moment, but I don’t trust the majority of audiences to know, or even care about the centuries of harm that lascivious eye has done to us. Context matters, more and more these days. For example, I was delighted by a note left by Perfidia a key moment in the film that reads “this pussy don’t pop for you,” which is the sign that the rapper Junglepussy (she is also in the movie, and shares her stage name with her character) would hold up at her early shows. I loved it so much we put it in our book “Black Futures.” But this isn’t a concert, it’s a film, and most people will only see it one of the few insights we get into who Perfidia is.

I would have loved to see more on the curdling of Black idealism, how disillusionment and the toll of being a radical wears on women differently. That’s its own movie, and one I’d pay good money to see, but probably written and directed by someone else entirely. I recognize a lot of the consternation — which is also a genre of grief — comes from this exact dynamic. There’s a rich movie to be made about a woman like Perfidia, but it’s unlikely to ever happen. Black women and other sidelined folks rarely get to tell their stories and histories — or even participate in them on their own terms.

OBAA corrodes the vision of possibility it serves up about a Black woman-run radical movement by insisting its magnetic leader is a horndog. It undermines the bits of the movie that are so tonally spot-on, but I’m more likely to re-watch “Eyes of the Rainbow” or re-read “Assata” than take my cues or notes on liberation from Hollywood. But there’s no denying that the timing of Ms. Shakur’s passing made the film’s weaker elements feel especially bittersweet.

To me, it tracks that Charlene/Willa, the daughter of Pat/Bob and Perfidia, is the most cohesive Black character in the film. PTA, after all, is the middle-aged father of a mixed teenaged girl, coming into her own social and political consciousnesses during an extremely fucked up time. Donovan points out brilliantly that she represents the faulty inheritance we are handing down to our children — chaos, fatigue, failed utopias and unsustainable practices, esp our political ones. The parts of the movie that resonated deepest for me were the ones that took place in her world. The school dance, esp her exchanges with Deandra. Electric.

The chilling mundanity of children playing in cages and the casual references to the “Latino Underground Railroad,” shepherded by Sergio, played by Benicio del Toro. That moment of him dancing in front of the police officers, holding his own personal rebellion. Charlene/Willa’s friends, and their righteous insolence. The scene with Perfida’s matriarchs (who I would love to know more about — but again, that’s another movie) watching as Pat/Bob packed the baby into a laundry basket and rushed out into the night — effectively losing their connection to two future generations of their lineage in a single moment.

🌞

It feels relevant that the week before I saw the movie, I spent some time in Los Angeles. LA has always been a city that will replenish me if I’m smart about how I engage with it, but also tends to be revealing, too, usually about how we currently live in a chaotic dystopian reality, and how bleak and irrepereable it all feels.

When we landed at LAX, I realized the car rental spot had automatically assigned me a Tesla. Intrigued, we gave it a shot — and it was a total disaster. We couldn’t figure out how to do anything — and I do mean anything — without watching a YouTube instructional video. That’s just not the energy you want for a car you’re only using for a few days. We ended up taking it back and the counter person was completely unsurprised. He said it happens all the time, and congratulated us on making a good decision, ha.

Then, midway through the trip, I decided I needed new shoes for a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and went to a number of big retailers to shop. I rarely browse in-person anymore and it felt exhilarating, at first, until I realized that no one…had anything. Stores weren’t just devoid of shoppers and employees — they didn’t have anything in stock, either. One place in particular — a big, beautiful, glassy store — kept telling me that I could find what I needed online and showing me a phone with their website loaded on it. The sidewalks were clogged with Coco delivery robots, driven around by unseen people, in who knows what parts of the world, and we saw countless Waymo driverless taxis (did you know they’re Jags?!) zipping around with no one in them. It all felt so vivid, so present, so obscene. The costs of convenience are many, but most damaging, perhaps, includes our ability to organize and strategize across geographies, because of the fast creep of invasive technology that dissociates people from their environments. The Etymology Nerd recently wrote about the disappearance of the hashtag, which, as corny as they were, allowed people to find each other, organize around shared ideas, collate information online and occasionally hold the powers that be accountable.

“One Battle After Another,” at least, did seem to understand that, and how so much of our total lack of resistance to technology has led to addiction and the totalitarian levels of surveillance that now troubles our lives, leading to many of the horrors that compress our world. Yes, it’s rare to see a well-made movie these days, but even rarer to see one at this scale that attempts to quantify the times we’re struggling through, and get a lot of it right.

I’ll stop there for now, but OBAA raised more questions than outrage for me, and that feels like a ratio I can live with, for now.

some housekeeping

The lovely Tembe had me on her stack for an interview. We talked grocery store lit and how “Beloved” is a book that grows up with you - you read it over and over again as you mature, finding new meaning and depth each time.

And! I gave The Pleasure Lists the rundown on my personal favorite delights, which includes lingering in bed, good group chats, perfect bites of food.

The good folks at the Rabkin Prize interviewed me about my writing process (lots of spiraling and sweet treats), my fascination with the land art movement and trying to become a funnier/goofier/freer/freakier writer.

some personal plugs

Two of my brilliant filmmaker colleagues from my Doc X film program earlier this year have major news: First! Emily Mkrtichian’s poetic film “There Was, There Was Not,” a tribute to a country that no longer exists, is opening a limited theatrical run starting Oct 10, and is an absolute must-see in-person, while you can. Second! Arielle Knight is raising money for “And Counting…” about her sweet cousin and the aftermath of incarceration. Both of these women astound me with their keen eyes and observations of the world. Supporting them means supporting independent art and its makers, those who process the world through film and help us understand the fragile ecosystems that knit our lives together.

I’ve been supporting QNCC (pronounced kink), a new community center dedicated to New York City’s nightlife scene. I may not be out and about like I used to be, but serving queer, trans creative life is close to my heart. They’ve started hosting events — keep your eyes on this space for updates!

I’m also on the board for PowrPlnt, which offers free and low-cost digital arts workshops for young people and artists. They’re hosting a small fundraiser in Herbert Von King Park in Bed-Stuy on Oct 11 to try and replenish their coffers to replace what they lost when their federal funding was pulled. Pull up if you can!

And I’m so proud to have contributed to ‘We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities” — their NYC book party is soon, October 20 — and not to be missed!

Here’s a quick hit roundup of what’s nourishing my mind, body and spirit.

1. There’s a new bakery bombshell in the villa and her name is Welcome Home. We initially went to the spot to try their cinnamon roll, but I really wanted something toothsome, something with a good, chewy density, a proportional ration of creamy / buttery base to texture and crunch. And I found it in their sun dried tomato-feta croissant and their potato-ranch danish. I preferred their non-sweet pastries, though they did have a great chocolate chip cookie — not a surprise, given that the two owners/bakers came from L'Appartement 4F — and you know I’m always looking for new contenders to rank. (Speaking of our city’s baked goods renaissance: I am **very** excited about the Little Moon Bakehouse pop-up coming to NYC later this month just in time for the mid-autumn festival. I’ve got my eye on the black sesame mooncakes and pineapple cakes. If you can’t make it, they also ship a lot of their goodies nationwide!)

2. Recently, I was having a fair amount of anxiety while at a doctor’s appointment, and a kind friend suggested I listen to some green noise. I often use the ‘rain on tent’ setting in the White Noise app to fall asleep, and have largely ignored the existence of pink and brown noise for the sake of simplicity. I trust this person deeply and I was desperate. The decrease in cortisol and my heart rate felt immediate. Apparently, the frequencies in green noise mimic sounds in nature, like trickling water or the ocean and it surprised me with how soothing it was during a desperate moment. Highly recommend to balance out the external stress of living in our fair city.

3. I recently came across the pencil sketches of Temitayo Ogunbiyi, an artist based in Lagos, and found myself enchanted by her minimalist watercolors, paintings and drawings which she likes to pair with cheeky spiritual koans. She often displays her work inside antique furniture, like a rich, wooden chest of drawers or side table. These installations, sometimes grouped under the title you will find new framing in crafts of old, reminded me that work doesn’t have to be serious to matter. Presentation can inspire. And the opportunity to play is always, always welcome.

4. Have I ever talked about my gratitude practice on here? It feels impossible to imagine that I haven’t, but I can’t find any record of it! But I often tweet, ‘gram and talk about it, so let’s just consider it in the ether. Most days, I write down three things that I’m grateful for. Today, for example, I wrote that I’m grateful for warm sunshine, the delicious ass dumplings that Mira dropped off (and the kindness of my care circle), and my health insurance. But I’m also starting up a grace practice where I think of areas I can expand with forgiveness, to myself and others, or lean into compassion instead of blame and be soft around my perceived short-comings / failures. So today, I wrote that I’m offering myself grace for moving slowly on my book project, falling behind on e-mails and texts and using it to help find ease around some interpersonal challenges that have been getting under my skin. It’s much easier to find things each day to want to celebrate and lift up than it is to call to mind areas that need soothing and repair, but I’m finding it to be cathartic.

5. I’m very (very) late to the game on Stüssy x Nike shoe collaborations, but a sneaker head in my life recently found an irresistible pair of their neon green mesh low cut kicks. They ordered them for themselves, but they were too small, so I (next-of-impulse-purchase-kin) inherited them. Super comfortable and eye catching. Perfect for fall fit flexes — the kind of accessory that makes you excited to step out into the day.

personal plug

I spent the last (official) week of summer by the beach, making cyanotypes, and the work resonated with me in a way that I feel called to feed, so I’m looking for a studio space to share / rent this fall and winter. Please keep me in mind if you hear of anything interesting!

And! I was recently awarded a Rabkin Prize, which came at a time when I was feeling particularly existential about the denaturing of every creative industry I care about, and feeling unsure about the value of my work and the time I invest in it. The recognition re-kindled something precious in me. I am rarely recognized beyond my group chats so this meant the world to me! So honored and humbled.

That’s it for today babes! As always, thank you for reading, and drop your own recommendations and wins below if you want! I’d love to hear ‘em.

I’ve been reflecting on the whiplash nature of this summer and the pockets of time that held me down the most. Unsurprisingly, the moments I felt the happiest and most grounded were the times I spent alongside bodies of water. I used to only worship the ocean; these days, I’m waterway agnostic. Ponds, rivers, lakes, pools, bays — I’ll take them all. This season, I only visited a handful, but I was able to spend signifigant time at each of them, learning their language.

I wrote them down — maybe you’ll take a look and tell me what yours were, too?

Early this year, I was thrilled to spend a month in Durham for a film fellowship. It was already summer there, with temperatures in the high 80s, and the acupuncturist I was working with there told me to visit the Eno River on a full moon. Tbh, I’ve never really been a river person — something about the frigid temperatures, slippery rocks and the current — but my time by this channel shifted something inside of me. I brought along a jar of honey for an offering, and I’m so glad I did. It is a spiritual place, and thrummed with so much aliveness that I understoond why people advocate for rivers to have legal personhood, included the right to be free from pollution and to sue violators (!).

My beloved Riis Beach in Queens, NY. Less of a staple in my summer routines these days, but I spent more time out there this year while working on the short film I started in Durham, which is about the queer histories and ecologies that make the place. To kick off the official season, I joined the Riis Bloc Association crew to install the blue accessibility mat and it was a raucous, festive time. Even though it was May, people were already sunbathing with their buns out. We celebrated Queen Victoria, saw the banjo guy, had a run-in with NPS — that place will never not feel like one of my homes.

A few years ago, I realized that I could only stay in New York City if I changed my proximity to nature. Living closer to Prospect Park felt like the best approximation for my physical need to regularly lay my eyes on light and water. Organizing my life around bird watching in the mornings and the sunsets at night has extended my warranty in the city by a few more years, at least.

In July, I traveled to Sicily to celebrate my good friend Collier’s 40th birthday. I arrived feeling a little bodysick and heartsick. I found the Italian island to be an incredibly potent island, full of eroticism and mysticism, and loved my time there so much I’ve been talking to a local real estate agent about making it official. The trip started with a gorgeous party on a farm in the middle of the country, and wound its way towards the north-western coast. (I’ll always hold a soft spot in my heart for the boat trip from Palermo and our captain Davide!) I ended my stay at a small village called Scopello which had some of the most sweetest water I’ve ever swum in. Crystal-clear, turquoise blue waters, sun-warmed, low salinity. I experience all water as a homecoming, but there was something about the Mediterranean on this trip that was particularly healing.

One day, while walking around Scopello, I met a ceramicist and knitter named Giovanna, who has a small shop in town where she sells her handmade ceramics and sexy crochet bikinis. She told me about Terme Segestane, the hydrothermal springs just a bit outside of town, in Castellammare del Golfo, and insisted I go one evening, if for no other reason than that local lore has it that Hercules frequented the baths and found refreshment there. I brought it to the group I was traveling with — everyone wanted to go. We drove there one afternoon to soak in the sulphurous waters, which could be experienced bubbling from the ground, or in a more formal outdoor bath facility. My favorite part were all the older Italian men puffing on cigarettes next to the “no smoking” signs.

In late August, my dear friend Cat invited me to celebrate her 60th birthday in Martha’s Vineyard. We both love a morning dip, so we slipped away from the group and drove out to Philbin Beach, near where we were staying. It was the most refreshing plunge, both in temperature and in visual beauty. It was low tide, which revealed a really long and beautiful expanse of sea-soaked sand each time a wave trailed out, and the intertidal zone reflected the clouds in the sky. Stunning. While basking in the divinity of that view, I noticed some weird, faint white structures dotting the horizon. Later, Cat’s good friend Juli Vanderhoop, a Wampanoag island elder (who owns the fantastic Orange Peel Bakery in Aquinnah and makes her own honey and killerrrr gluten-free brownies) told me that they were part of an off-shore windfarm that the tribe was fighting. The Wampanoag are native to southern New England, and their name translates to "People of the First Light.” Juli shared that the obstruction to the horizon felt like a blow to the body, an interference with the connection between the people and Creator. At night, it’s even worse. They are illuminated with an eerie red glow, interrupting the glory of the sunset. Devastating.

On our last night in the Vineyard, we had an easy meal of baked salmon, watermelon/sungold tomato/corn salad and greens, and over dinner, we talked about our current obsessions. (Mine included cyanotyping, which I can’t get enough of, and Juli’s biscuits.) But it also came up that we’re all obsessed with figuring out how to sustain each other during this time, and care about each others griefs and lives and needs.

I’m grateful for yet another season of living and learning how to do that.

Like most people I know, I’ve been moving through a bit of a filmy haze. I don’t know about you, but personally, I’m in a persistent mode of what-the-fuck-dudeeeee. 47 is going after homeless people in D.C and Chicago, Microsoft Word is scraping all of our data, New York City continues to fall apart, plus the ongoing genocides and manufactured famines in Sudan, Congo and Palestine are clawing at my heart, particularly in how little we know about what’s happening on the ground in some places. (I’m grateful for the work of my friend and colleague Yousra Elbagir, who is doing incredible reporting from the continent for Sky News.)

I’ve been lucky enough to attend BlackStar a few times, both as an attendee and guest/moderator and it has always been such a balm. This year was my first time as a filmmaker (!) and that held its own special charm. I arrived in Philadelphia a few days into the festival, just in time to catch a conversation with Kahlil Joseph about his film BLKNWS and fighting the disintegration of Black independent journalism, and then I went to see Gazan Tales, a vérité documentary following a small group of men in the Gazan Strip, raising children, training horses, making music and tending to their everyday lives.

This year seemed much bigger, but still intimate, somehow, while still following the same flow by choosing to center Philadelphia and maintain its firm pro-Palestinian, pro-Black, pro-Indigenous rights, pro-disability rights and pro-queer stance. All of this was reflected in the programming, land acknowledgements, accessibility practices (masks indoors, ASL interpreters, subtitles on all movies, not just the non-English speaking ones, and tailored restaurant guides to the city).

Lately, I’ve been having more and more conversations with people about why it feels like nothing seems to be working. There are no answers, only musings. There are triumphant wins, like a federal judge in Miami ordering the Everglades detention facility known as "Alligator Alcatraz” to be shut down, largely in response to a lawsuit filed by the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. Others, like the law banning broker fees in New York, seem to have backfired — landlords raised their rents in retaliation, and according to friends apartment-hunting right now, brokers still tack the fees (though they might call them something different) on with no oversight or regulation. By no means am I suggesting we have permission to do nothing. There are an untold number of actions across many causes that need to be addressed on a daily basis. Tamara, Ayana and many others detail them regularly, and I’ve included a few that I’m taking this week at the bottom of this email.

This was the funk in which I landed in Philadelphia. Mind you, I was excited to be there. Anytime BlackStar asks me to do anything, literally, anything, I say yes. They’re building something — and scaling it, no less — that feels like the rare example of the worlds and institutions we actually want to see exist. It reminded me of something Brittany Packnett Cunningham said on Threads recently about investing in Black institutions that care about freedom — and being there feels like a real physical investment with my body, something that is orienting towards change.

There’s something about the physicality of being in space with other people that is lingering with me. I recently listened to a great clip of Mariame Kaba talking about how the “concierge-ification” of American society — on demand everything — has warped the way we think about human relations. (Elisa Granata also did a good deep dive into the optimization of community via the tech world.) It’s all another variation of the meme that’s been going around about the cost of community being inconvenience, which always strikes me as a bit short-sighted for framing prioritizing other people’s needs as labor or trouble, when the truth is that acts of service can be so pleasurable, but whatever works, I suppose!

I’ve also been re-reading “The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity” by Sarah Schulman who theorizes that recognizing that other people are real and their experiences matter, and joining forces around that fact simply isn’t enough. “The machinery of dominance can make it impossible for the afflicted to win justice on their own steam,” she writes. “At that point, the collaboration and fellowship of people at other levels of power becomes necessary to create more justice for all.”

And as she notes — which I fully and firmly believe — that participating in the kind of change that creates paradigm shifts that birth “the necessity of new beginnings,” is one of the most meaningful uses of our one and only life. I thought I knew how to do this — and that I was doing this with my life — but that’s rapidly changing, and I’m eager to see what emerges in the wake.

Part of what felt so good about BlackStar was being off social media, and active in a way beyond attending an action/protest, an event or a fundraiser at a bar/club. Chris Gayomali perfectly encapsulates the linkrot in our brains fueled by Instagram, which we can’t ignore as toxic infrastructure to our modern lives. I like the way Aiden Walker suggests we look to the pro-Palestinian online movement for architecture on organizing people through social media, which, while hostile and manipulative, is currently one of the most effective tools we have. And a lot of his learnings apply to BlackStar — understanding this movement is global, making moral arguments, building with history and the future in mind.

I’ve known for a long time that the answer to building, for me, isn’t purely on social media, but I also choose (for now!) to live in an extremely difficult, expensive and ableist city, which also means agreeing to build a life in a place where community is often confused with event calendars and you may only see your dearest friends once (or twice!) a month, despite living less than a mile apart. Personal worth and value can get conflated with the number of invites in your inbox. Yet it is also a place where community is spontaneous, and random anonymous exchanges can fill your heart with belonging and a crystallized determination that this is it and all it ever needs to be. (Case in point: A recent exchange about naps with a Metro-North conductor, giving a grandmother and her grandchild directions and a group effort in an MTA elevator to pull the doors out of their sticky casing to get them to close so we could ascend.)

It’s not just democracy that’s crumbling — its decency — and personally, that erosion is the part that my brain cannot adjust to. I’m not hopeful. But I’m less despairing than I was before, and that’s something.

candy report

I’ve been on a bender with Swedish candy. It’s gotten … bad. Unfortunately I also just realized that you can order BonBon on DoorDash, which should actually be illegal. Anyway, I’ve started experimenting and making my own gummy candies, which is just as fun and exasperating as you might think.

some housekeeping

The National Association of Black Journalists recognized my piece on Brittney Griner with an excellence award!

The Strategist (my favorite publication these days) interviewed me about wellness destination trips, and I talked about the time I went to Portugal to study with the legendary body scholar Aimee Meredith Cox.

Me (and a bunch of other brilliant people) contributed to an anthology about The Awl, which I can’t wait to read! It might end up being a bit of an oral history of media in the aughts, if that’s your kind of thing.

And! I was very delighted to be in conversation with my beloved retired dom and sex worker rights advocate, YinQuan, for a new anthology called “We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities.”

for your consideration

The very talented Tatyana Fazlalizadeh — perhaps best known for her “Stop Telling Women to Smile” wheatpastes — is looking to interview women and gender-diverse folks in/around Oklahoma about how they experience gender-based oppression in the state.

Have you gone to see the incredible “Can I be Frank” by Morgan Bassichis yet?

When The World Broke Open: A stunning film program devoted to Hurricane Katrina at MoMa curated by the exquisite Maya Cade and K. Austin Collins, exploring the before and afterlives of the devastation that became a blueprint for organized abandonment and unnatural disasters.

Someone at Pride yelled near me about how weather apps aren’t working on our phone anymore. I didn’t doubt them, but now, here’s more evidence.

Worth a read: How to Turn Off Automatic Instagram Location Sharing

New! Hayley! Williams!

Are protein cherries a thing? I’m half-kidding, but TikTok tells me that if I soak my farmer’s market cherries in a little water and white vinegar, I’ll see the spawn of cherry fruit flies living on my fruit. I will not be linking and ruining your only source of pleasure, too. But may I just say: No one was ever meant to have this much knowledge.

money is never enough but

Here’s how you can support community kitchens in Sudan, which is facing starvation and famine.

Sarah is facilitating fundraising for a well-established collective doing immigration detention support in NYC.

The Palestinian-led Sameer Project continues to supply aid to families in Gaza.

As always, thanks for reading. Till soon <3

A few weeks ago, a friend sent me a link to an interview with Heidi Smith, therapist and herbalist, about her latest project, called “The Uncommon Book of Prayer.” The text came through at a moment when I was feeling particularly unanchored by the state of the world, and it stopped me in my tracks. (Literally - I was walking home from getting a matcha and did that very lame and un-New York thing where you abruptly change your movement pattern and throw the whole rhythm of the sidewalk off. Embarrassing.)

I’ve always been an admirer of Heidi’s work. I first learned about her practices with plant medicine in 2020, when I came across her work with flower essences. I started reading her new book, on prayer, and was struck by how much I cringe at the word prayer, even though I engage with the divine almost every single day. For me, the divine is seeing my local park blanketed with lightning bugs at dusk, getting a cheaper-than-expected Uber ride on my way home from the doctor’s office, waking up in time to see the sky turn rose-gold through my bedroom window, getting a text about exploding the idea of prayer when I’m stuck in a thought loop. And other devotional acts, too — one of my favorite posters is this gem that reminds us that “Prayer is whatever you say on your knees.”

Read more

Some quick housekeeping: I dumped all of my “Queer Ultimatum: 2” thoughts into a TikTok, god help me. And Chris was kind enough to ask me to interview THEE Robin Givhan about her new biography of Virgil Abloh, which I really enjoyed as a simultaneous oral history of streetware and fashion in the early aughts.

I’m still spinning out about the news. As someone who clearly remembers the way WIC supported my family during some tenuous years, this news is not abstract for some of us. If your trauma response is fight, or you’re gung-ho and ready to make an action plan, the GOAT Ayana has some great and motivating suggestions. If you’re still in freeze/fawn like me, read on.

1. After reading about the ramifications of the cruel, cruel megabill that just passed, the lives that will be lost, the suffering that will be multiplied beyond comprehension, on top of the bone-chilling prison camp in the Everglades and the outcome of the D*ddy trial, I walked out of my office and sat down on my couch to try and process some of the news. I don’t even remember falling asleep. Even with notifications off and whittling down the stressors in my life, my nervous system is a wreck. I’m trying to learn new ways of being and coping so that I can stay energized and show up for the fights ahead. This lovely breathing meditation was sent to me by the equally lovely Zarah, and I’ve been using it most mornings, to gather up the threads of thoughts that are racing through my mind as I come into consciousness. It’s based on Nadi Shodhana, alternate nostril breathing, but instead of physically blocking the nostrils, you rely on awareness and a visual practice. My max for a guided meditation is usually about five minutes, but this one goes by in a snap. Hope there’s something in there for you, too.

2. Early morning swims. The water has always been my best technology for combatting numbness and getting back into my body. A friend and I like to drive out early on these hotass mornings — like 7AM — and swim for a few hours before returning home to write and do life admin. One of the perks of going that early is the heightened likelihood of seeing dolphins (!). Knowing I’ve started my day in water soothes something primordial in my spirit. Lizard brain tamed, energy points boosted. The will to live increases. The filmmaker Agnes Varda once said if we opened people up, we’d find landscapes. If you cut me open, you’d find the ocean.

3. Cherry season has arrived at the farmers markets here, and I can’t get enough. I’ve been bringing them with me everywhere — for steamy patio aperitivos, trips to the movies, rooftop hangs and setting them out for guests. I’ve gotten both sour cherries and black cherries, and neither disappoints. They’re rich and tangy, juicy enough to drip down your hands while you eat. I bought way too many this week so I ended up using my cherry pitter to freeze the extras to make slushies to hydrate and sustain the folks in my life while we walk through the park and plot our next moves.

4. I recently completed Chani’s 28-day breakthrough course about getting unstuck, and moving stagnant energy in your life. I live and breathe healing work, but I’ve never done things like make a vision board, somatic shaking (dancing) exercises, mirror work or paid much attention to the hygiene of my evening routine. If you know anything about Chani’s work, then you know she’s all about orienting towards community and social justice, and the course helped me strengthen my sense of self while unearthing clarity around my relationships and life purpose. Some of those miraculous shifts reminded me that most feelings are temporary, and replenished some of the hopelessness I’ve been nursing over the last few weeks.

5. Kids dancing on the bows of boats racing during Pacu Jalur, a traditional Indonesian competition that has history going back to the 17th century. There’s not much joy right now, but this has been one pure and uncut source.

The other night while walking home from a friend’s place, I ran into a man on the corner standing over a telescope. He beckoned me close, and asked if I wanted to see the moon. I bent over and looked through the scope and there she was, shimmering. It was the most magical thing. the moon understands dark places. the moon has secrets of her own. she holds what light she can, like Lucille wrote.

It was balmy and not raining for once, and one of the first indications that NYC summer magic is upon us. It feels sacrilegious to say this out loud, but I’ve been enjoying the cooler weather, and not resisting the rain. It’s suiting my still-healing body and my need to move slower, a near-impossible feat in this city, a place that requires “living at such high speeds that your inner life can never quite catch up to you,” a line from Lena Dunham’s essay on leaving the city that I really identify with.

✨

Glimmers

Last week, I wrote a bit about the (not so) little glimmers of light amid so much fucked up news. There’s enough going on to send me on a grippy sock vacation. In case you need a boost, here’s a few more, for the feed.

“We don’t get to give up just because our federal government is giving up.” — I’m still thinking about the brilliant words of wisdom from my dear friend Dr. Ayana E Johnson, delivered as part of her acceptance speech at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden gala a few weeks ago. She also said “Mars is for quitters,” which ha, and correct!

I struck up a conversation with two older Jewish women at a cocktail party on the Upper East and they shared that they’ve been participating in a 40-day hunger strike started by the Veterans for Peace in solidarity with the folks starving in Gaza, and they meet at the UN each day in silent protest. Incredible.

Michelle Lhooq and Emily Witt wow’d me with their presentation at DEMO ‘25 on how the rave creates necessary counterlogic to social media, AI and algorithms. Yes!

wfh news

I … have a thing for sandwiches. I don’t talk about it too much in public because I also have a thing with gluten, and people love to throw your own contradictions back in your face. But yeah, sometimes, a good sandwich is worth a little brain fog and eczema — especially if they’re from Salty Lunch Lady, one of my faves. Anyway, here’s the one I made recently. I used ciabatta from Sixteen Mills (which is somehow, miraculously, gf), marinated feta from Murray’s and homemade nettle pesto gifted by fellow witch Dori Midnight, one perfectly runny egg and some thick bacon.

HEAVEN. I won’t embarrass myself by telling you how many times I’ve made this since then, but it is holding me DOWN.

in other unmedicated ADHD’ness

I didn’t realize how overstimulating braids are! Holy fuck. I keep turning my head to get away from the sensation of … braids on my head. How have I never noticed this before?! At the same time, I love not thinking about my hair for awhile. It’s still a win-win.

the juicy bits

New Yorkers: Do you have your voting plan? Election day is next week, on June 24th! Softpower Vote has made a handy voting guide in case you need one.

You don’t need more stuff, but in case you’re wondering: I’ve finally found the perfect white t-shirt.

‘Can I Be Frank” Morgan’s increeeeeeeedible one-person show about the life of the queer performance artist Frank Maya is coming to the SOHO Playhouse this summer. Run, don’t walk!

I busted out my Vitamix for its annual ritual: Making turmeric and ginger shots. I used this basic recipe and it turned out great. Spicy, but great.

A federal judge ruled that many of 47’s cuts to NIH funding are rooted in racism and homophobia and therefore illegal, demanding they be reinstated

Turns out over reliance on ChatGPT and other LLMs lead to “cognitive debt,” meaning it impairs the neural and linguistic skills. I mean, duh, but good to have it in writing, I guess!

Is protein diet coke about to be a thing?

Are you looking for ways to get involved? Consider signing up to be a virtual court watcher and make sure nothing shady goes down during local arraignments.

The lovely Holly Whitaker chatted me up for her new podcast called “co-regulation.” We talked about survivalism and creative ambitions.

I reviewed Elle Perez’s fabulous show at the Academy of Arts and Letters. A must-see.

✨

My new Saturday routine involves walking to the farmer’s market and buying flowers from Moonshot Farm. I usually get their lillies, which were my dad’s favorite. They are bright pink and fragrant, and they fill my house with their honey.

In solidarity and shimmer, always,

J

A portion this month’s paid subscriptions will go to the GoFundMe supporting the family of Adriana Smith. May she finally rest in dignity and power.

A big goal of mine has always been to join a New York City run club. To be clear — I am the opposite of an actual runner. Sometimes I can do an awkward half jogging, half walking thing, but it is deeply uncomfortable for me (and anyone who has the unfortunate luck of seeing me). I have no stamina, I’m extremely flat-footed, and I start to overthink about what my arms are doing in relationship to my body. (Where are they supposed to go in space?! Someone please tell me.) But still: That has not deterred me from wanting to join one. They seem so joyful, and I’m always looking for social gatherings that don’t orient around drinking.

A few weeks ago, I realized there was a run club that meets regularly near my new house. I RSVP’D and invited a friend. The morning of the run, I woke up like a little kid on Christmas — so excited. A few minutes before we were supposed to meet, my friend texted me that she’d overslept, followed by a cryface emoji. Sounds like you needed it, I replied, with a kissface emoji. I decided to go anyway.

When I pulled up, the organizers were handing out colored wristbands to signal the types of interactions participant were open to — genius. They organized us into runners and fast walkers — heaven. I joined the second group, obvs. As we set off, I tried a few times to strike up conversations, but it seemed that most people were fairly settled in their own pods or just along for the ride. That was fine by me. It was one of those moody early summer mornings we’ve been having, where the sky can’t quite tell what it wants to do, and the temperature was perfectly crisp and not too humid. I relaxed into the deep and sheer pleasure of being in a large crowd of Black people, moving together in relative silence, embodied and breathing deeply.

As we got deeper into Prospect Park, I began to notice the effect we were having. Some people were annoyed (mostly bikers — you know the type — irritated that we were too numerous to stay contained to the skimpy lanes the city has assigned for non-bikers.) Black and brown people cheered on us, cranked up their speakers so we could dance as we passed, sometimes jogging alongside to flirt or chat with people they recognized. All of the white people we passed looked stunned. Some of them smiled. A few of them tried to ask what we were doing, but I didn’t hear anyone reply.

Five years ago, in June 2020, I traveled to Minneapolis to learn more about the organizers at the heart of the abolitionist movement there. I wanted to write about a local collective that had received $30 million in donations, sparking questions and tensions about fund distribution and explore whether money (and white guilt) was truly a reparative act for lasting, liberatory change. (To my knowledge, it was the first time the New York Times Magazine published a photo of an openly Black queer trans person on the cover.)

It was a surreal trip. I was the only person on my plane; They let me ride in first class. In Minneapolis, I had an intense fear of driving (and potentially having to engage with the police) so I took Ubers everywhere, but each time I got into a car, masked up and Purell’d down, I felt myself putting myself (and the driver) at another kind of risk. The hotel I stayed in was empty, with very few employees working. I got my own fresh towels from a closet on my floor. Panic attacks about coronavirus aside, it felt exhilarating to be there. The third police precedent was still smoldering after the initial demonstrations, and the George Floyd Square was in the midst of being erected. I sat in on charged community meetings where people spoke in heated tones about this crack in the status quo, this moment when the entire world seemed to be listening. At that time, it seemed like it go on last forever.

During one interview with an organizer, I asked them to reflect on the question that always comes up in conversations about abolition. What would it mean to change our relationship to the police? Who would “protect” us? As part of their response, they invited me to a freedom ride, a community bike tour of the city. On the appointed day, I showed up at the meeting point and we set off, flanked by dozens of guides in fluorescent vests with speakers, making sure we stayed on track and that no one got left behind.

There were hundreds of Black people, of all ages, including elders and small children in trailers. It was late afternoon, and the angle of the sun to the earth drenched everything in that molten golden hour glimmer. We rode through fragrant trees, alongside marshy bodies of water, alongside railroad tracks, past crowded wine bars. I had no idea the city was so lush.

We sailed past homes that had built mini storefronts, stocked with clothing, toiletries, cleaning supplies and food that anyone could take for free as needed. Full wardrobes of clothing and toys outside, also for free. Signs everywhere mourning Mr. Floyd’s life and declaring that justice would be served. The ride felt like a glimpse of that. There were a few moments the ride got held up, but at the time I was told we were just making sure the group didn’t get too spread out, that no one was lost or left behind. I noticed a few cars pulling up alongside us, but I thought they were curious passerbys. Later, I learned that they contained white men shouting epithets and threatening to disrupt the ride with violence, but in the moment, the bumping music and bodies of the ride guides completely blocked them out. It was idyllic and blissful.

Afterwards, some of us gathered for a potluck in a backyard where most of the food served had been grown nearby. The organizer that invited me to the ride told me that the exercise is a practice in self-policing, in showing people what it feels like to keep each other safe. That they knew they needed many solutions, and this was one of them. (This anecdote didn’t make it into the final story, btw.)

I’m reminded of that ride when I open my phone and see a solidarity march of thousands of people from Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and more heading for Gaza. When I see people dancing during the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. Unexpected solidarity from designers delighted to see their work used against the police. Queen Doechii’s acceptance speech at the BET Awards. The way I felt seeing the Madleen streaming through international waters, before they got intercepted. When I see that an upstart mayoral candidate is polling higher than an incumbent candidate in New York. That landlords here now have to cover broker fees. Being at the Liberty game when Coco Gauff got a standing ovation after winning the French Open (and her opponent making fucked up remarks trying to downplay her victory.) That perhaps some of the untenable chaos of this administration and the world, which we have endured for so long, is finally tipping a bit in our favor. And naturally, the stars are supporting this alignment — “either we say everyone is our family, or we are out here alone.” And as the poet Saretta Morgan reminds us in “Feeling Upon Arrival,” “we thought our strength was in numbers, as opposed to geography. distribution of feeling.” (Thank you Jah for sending me that!)

Earlier this week, I was sharing my exuberance over these accumulations with an artist friend over lunch, and then I got embarrassed, like I was somehow erasing the very real horrors of this world by allowing myself a little joy about these collective refusals that are gathering steam. He gently put his hand on mine and reminded me that it is not a political act to live in despair. This is maybe the most hopeful I’ve felt in the last few years.

Onward.

Dear readers! Is anything bringing you hope these days? No victory too small to triumph! Please share in the comments below and keep me from going back into my depression spiral!