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49: Mindfulness Soup

When lockdown started, I learned so much about my mental health from Instagram. Memes about trauma and PTSD appeared more often — maybe because of friends engaging with them, maybe because I was interacting with similar memes for the first time. Some were really helpful. One encouraged me to reach out to my family.

Being shut in made me less cynical of text-art affirmations. I was liking things I’d never be seen dead liking in the past. Strangers telling me to “stay lucky” and “be kind to yourself”. Bubble writing, flowers and steaming mugs of tea. I was agitated and had an attention span of zero, and they were helping me to see that I wasn’t the only one. That I needed to give myself a break. (I can easily give myself a hard time for not working while I’m actually working.) Recently though, the affirmations have changed, and I’m noticing a sinister tone. It’s fine not to move all day, if that’s what I want. I can sleep for as long as I like, because I am nourishing my body with rest (and plus, lucky me I guess, I don’t have a job to go to.) I can say whatever I want to people, because I’m growing as a person and only the good ones will stick around.

In a particularly bad bleak hole last week, memes told me it was the norm to feel this way. That there was no use fighting it. Luckily I’m experienced enough in depression and intrusive/suicidal thoughts to realise (eventually) that this is total crap. However, some people aren’t as bored of the cycle’s bullshit as I am. For some people, it’s as fresh and searing and painful as ever.

I wanted to use my newsletter this week to ask you to check in with anyone you haven’t heard from in a little while. To report any memes you see online that could give people dangerous ideas — or that just seem plain irresponsible. To promise to look after yourselves as the uncertainty of the moment rolls on, and remember that as much as I want you to take care of yourselves, it is so you do something good for you. Do what soothes you, but also take care of your body and your mind too. Self-care, as far as I understand it, doesn’t mean making yourself comfortable all the time. It means doing things like taking your medications, or continuing with therapy, or returning to CBT techniques (that’s what I’ve been doing), or taking a deep breath and calling or messaging a friend when you feel like you can’t or that they might be struggling with something you don’t quite understand. It can mean admitting to yourself that even though you’re “generally fine” something is the matter and you need to take some time to deal with it, or just remembering to drink water, eat vegetables, or doing some exercise. It can mean not slipping into duvet-soft bleak thoughts and doing uncomfortable things instead. Even the most mentally fortified people are struggling at the moment. You matter. I hope you know that.

Other Stuff

  • I’ve never been to the Free Trade Inn, but it sounds like my sort of place. A grand mix of people, decent beers, welcoming to all. I’m glad Martin Flynn chose to write about it.

  • The other week I shared a great article on the fake beer brand invented by a prop company that pops up in all the TV shows I watch. Graphic designer Annie Atkins who worked on, among many other TV shows and movies,The Grand Budapest Hotel has written a book about designing props and graphics that suit the look, feel and atmosphere of the work they appear in. How amazingly cool is that?

  • Speaking about books (when am I not tbh), this one called The New Traditional really taps into an itchy part of my brain that wants to think deeply about modern trends returning to “heritage crafts”, and how these things become co-opted by wealthier people as lifestyle choices. Keeping traditions alive is, imo, a grand endeavour, but even grander is recognising the people who continued to do so when newer processes took their place over the 20th century, and not being congratulatory towards people who “rediscovered” these arts and crafts. I don’t own this book but I’ve been considering buying it, so if you’ve read it I’d love to know what you thought!

  • I’ve been enjoying Jia Tolentino’s writing this week. I’ve also been enjoying reading about what other writers think about Jia Tolentino’s writing. Andrea Marks interviewed her for Rolling Stone and it’s a great, balanced-on-the-complimentary-side read. The Paris Review can’t get enough of her in this gushing interview by Brian Ransom. Lauren Oyler at the London Review Of Books has a complex relationship with her writing, but ultimately thinks, in Tolentino’s book at least, she’s self-obsessed and lacking in depth and conviction. I like this. It tells me: “make your own mind up.”

  • Browse the entire National Gallery collection via their site. I’m going to be doing this tomorrow, rosé in hand.

  • Speaking of rosé, a new wine newsletter called J’Adore le Plonk by Rachel Hendry began this week and this week’s topic — why rosé is her favourite — made me want to revisit pink wine. (I’m usually a white wine guy)

  • Helen Rosner spoke to activist-artist Tunde Wey about his assertions that the restaurant industry should be allowed to die. It’s a brilliant read.

  • The virus has taken so much from us, but as James Greig writes in this heartbreaking piece, it’s also taken away our rituals of grief. I do recommend this read, but it’s very sad. Just a warning.

  • A huge and important essay on radical body positivity, moving easily between diet culture, EDs, fatphobia, race and feminism.

  • I revisited some old demons this week related to being managed badly in the past. This article on the Productivity Myth really highlights some of the terrible working practices we may not even realise we’ve been labouring under.

My Stuff

  • I’m a short story comp this week, so all good vibes over the ether are appreciated

  • Find a copy of Ferment Magazine to read my latest published pieces

  • I’m still looking for cool things to share in The Gulp’s birthday edition! Send things you like to katiematherwrites@gmail.com

  • If you enjoy this newsletter and you feel like contributing towards it’s continued success (?), tips sent via my ko-fi page are always hugely appreciated. Thank you!

Annie Atkins’ “Mendl’s” prop from The Grand Budapest Hotel

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48: Housebound Work

In the past few weeks, I’ve really gotten into baking.

There’s an internal struggle within me every time I start enjoying what are known as traditional women’s chores. This time last year I got really into cleaning, and while I do still enjoy a good washing machine deep clean even now that particular fever is over, the guilt remains. Am I wasting my time with these tasks? Who am I doing them for? Am I enjoying the process of cleaning, or am I procrastinating, or having an obsessive episode, or feeling duty-bound? Shouldn’t I be doing something more worthwhile?

There is guilt for baking and cooking and cleaning, and there is guilt when I do none of these things. I see dust on the TV and feel guilty for reading and writing all afternoon. I see an unread book, and feel guilty for spending the morning making buns and mopping the floors.

I bake biscuits mostly, and sometimes bread or cakes. Things we generally eat. Filling the biscuit tin with coffee and chocolate cookies (Ruby Tandoh’s recipe from Flavour is brilliant, please give it a go) makes me feel prepared and settled. Like I’ve done something that wasn’t work, and created something delicious that I can enjoy. Right now I’m thinking about how good I’ll feel once the lemon drizzle cake I plan to make this afternoon is cooling on the wire rack. Once I’ve written 1000 more words, obviously.

HELP ME!

Soon it’ll be a whole year since The Gulp began. I was thinking about putting something together using my favourite editions, but to be honest, they were never meant to be anything but quick, disposable blog posts.

I’d like to share things you like in the 1st Birthday edition in a month’s time to celebrate the milestone. Show me stuff you’ve found online that you love and that you think others will love too.

Send links to katiematherwrites@gmail.com

Thanks!

Other Stuff

My Stuff

  • I’ve got a fair few pieces in this month’s Ferment magazine. Something on mild which I’m really pleased with, something about travelling around the world using the internet (something I do a lot, particularly when I’m anxious and distracted) and an interview with Jaega Wise. None are up on the site yet but you’ll find them in the print mag which has been going out already.

  • I’m working on a lot of short stories. If you or someone you know runs a mag or zine and is accepting short story submissions, please let me know! I might not have them on my list!

  • I’m running a Zoom coffee morning via my bookstagram account next Wednesday at 10am to talk about books and writing and lockdown. If you’d like to join in, find out how here.

PO – 30, Janvier – Février 2006 © Jean-Luc Mylayne

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47: Trade-Off

If this newsletter is my “good” notebook, Twitter has always been my scrap paper — torn envelopes and kitchen roll left all over the place that lay out terrifyingly truthful recollections of my life experiences and reveal more about me than I ever expected them to.

Social media helps me to generate ideas, but it whisks them away from me too soon. I can visit them, but when they are out, they aren’t mine to mould anymore. These instant, unstudied, still-forming thoughts belong to the commenters, who frame them with their own points of views and experiences, and draw meanings that I had not thought of, and add quips or edits I had chosen not to include in the first place. This is writing — I understand that. Words are taken in by readers in their own personal ways. That’s how it works. But Twitter has taught me, over time, that I have no control over what I create there. I have been feeding it with my raw, uncompromised self for over a decade, and it has given me career and comfort in return. It’s also taken thousands of ideas from me. It has been a part of my life for so long that I have trained my thoughts to form in attention-grabbing sentences, like a pointed foot used to uncomfortable shoes. Hundreds of stories are unwritten because I didn’t have the patience to do more than outline a base synopsis of them and send it out into my small corner of the world for instant gratification. That gratification makes me lazy. Why spend energy nurturing a crop when I could just eat the seeds?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I say I use Twitter for (jobs, friendship) and what I am increasingly using it for instead (vanity, distraction, comparing myself to others). It has been a constant in my life for so long that I find it hard to imagine living without it. What I have worked out though, is that I can’t use it the way I have been and do the work I want to do at the same time. So I’ve chosen the work. I’m not quitting Twitter altogether, but I’m using it less. I’m weaning myself off it. Twitter was the creative outlet I needed when I had nothing else. But you have to know when something good has become bad for you. I don’t know if the trade-off is in my favour anymore.

Other Stuff

  • The Washington Post begin this piece on the names of all the streets in every state of America with a two-pronged pre-empting of the critiques they expect people to have about the article. The article itself is pretty cool and has a great map infographic, but I found that aspect just as interesting.

  • Out of nowhere I remembered that the first long feature I can ever remember thinking “wow, I didn’t even care about the topic but that was super interesting” about was a Kings Of Leon article in Rolling Stone. I found the piece after some Googling (it’s from 2005.) I still really enjoyed it!

  • The New York Public Library has released an album of ambient sounds called “Missing Sounds Of New York”. You can take a cab to 110th and 3rd, go to a busy bar, hang out in a park with real New Yorkers, or sit on a stoop and people watch as skaters fly past in front of an impromptu parade. It feels like an important document of our time and I’m expecting some great sampling to be taken from it. (Find it on Spotify. — and please listen out for the guy in the library that says “patience and fortitude” because that’s my favourite bit.)

  • Rebecca Solnit talks about how fairytales have given her context to live in during this weird, unrealistic time.

  • This BBC documentary on colours in art is some excellent brain-burnout salve.

  • Lots to share from Pellicle this week: A great playlist from cidermaker Tom Oliver who seems to be the coolest man in the world, Lily Waite’s wonderful profile on Ross On Wye and Eoghan Walsh’s story on Antidoot, all of which are perfect for a touch of escapism. Even though Eoghan’s reminded me that we were meant to have drank some of that Antidoot together by now. That virus has a lot to answer for.

  • It was meant to be Eurovision this weekend. I love Eurovision. There will be a weird celebration stand-in show on Saturday instead that is meant to include, among other things, “crowdsourced karaoke” which I can’t wait for because I can’t imagine it’s going to be anything other than terrible. Here’s a run-down of what this years’ artists are doing instead of performing in Rotterdam via The Guardian.

  • I bought Rutger Bregman’s Humankind last week and in it is the story of a “real life Lord Of The Flies” — only in this version the boys worked together and survived. One of the boys, Mano, is now 73 and sharing his story with more people than he ever expected to.

  • Big thanks to Rachel for introducing me to Alicia Kennedy’s insightful, excellent, excellent, excellent newsletter on food, food politics, the food industry, eating, and everything else that overlaps the complex world which we either work in or are in some part exposed to at all times.

  • This new track by Booka Shade has repeatedly destroyed me this week. If you’re allergic to earnest people saying positive things over prog house music, please don’t bother listening to it because you’ll hate it and feel compelled to tell me about it and I couldn’t care less.

  • Look at these Big, big waves by ocean photographer and super positive guy Ray Collins.

Oil by Ray Collins

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46: Sky Ferry

I can fool myself that the white-painted wall of the back of my house is the sunbaked stone of an unfamiliar place, for a moment, when I wake up in the garden. Dredged resisting like ocean mud from groggy sleep, I squint confused at the chalk-white tower rising on my right, and the box of clear blue above, and feel the buzz of high UV, pollution-free sun, and momentarily I am elsewhere.

At this new perspective, wispy clouds drift across the blank blue sky like the exhaust fumes of an island ferry and I remember I am trapped here.

Other Stuff

  • The Hay Festival is cancelled, but sometimes good things happen to bad times. It’s heading online for Hay Festival Digital from the 18 – 21 May. This actually makes it more accessible to me, and I assume, for many other people too. You can register for any of the online events here.

  • I have become a huge fan of Elizabeth Taylor’s writing (the novelist, not the actress) and this biographical piece from the New Yorker archive is particularly interesting because it speaks about her apparent conflict and refusal to choose between home and creative burdens.

  • I love sitcoms, and I love detail, so when I noticed that the pigs in Brooklyn 99 (sorry Amy) were drinking the same beer as Ultimate Man Nick Miller from New Girl, I had to investigate. It turns out that Heisler is a totally invented beer brand, designed by a prop company. This article on TV’s favourite fake beer by TV writer Shannon Carlin is fantastic and full of great quotes and I urge you to read it. “You can do anything with Heisler, and that’s part of the joy of it.”

  • Starting an article in this current climate with a quote from Day Of The Triffids, is it? Describing swallows as “dark scythes”, are we? Okay I’m into it. “Finally, as if a veil has been lifted, people are noticing that – even in the heart of the so-called urban jungle – nature has found a place to live.”

  • Lian van Leeuwen at Bikepacker.com writes about the eerie, empty streets of Amsterdam, and thinks about what positives could be gleaned from the epidemic. Her photos are incredibly resonant, but rather than empty, they seem to turn the silent streets into her private playground.

  • Sarah Perry, being more honest and wise than any of us put together. “What I felt when I looked at my shelves was not consolation, but contempt. What good were books, in the end?”

  • I read “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud” by Carson McCullers this week, and I was stunned by it. It seemed so perfectly timed in that moment. And I wasn’t even drunk at the time.

  • Mayukh Sen has written furiously and eloquently about the tragic death of chef and restauranteur Garima Kothari for Eater. In the process he asks why the industry focuses on polishing halos rather than seeking out and championing new and undervalued talent. (I found this article really interesting for many reasons, but the parallel between some of his points and what has been said about the beer industry over the years stood out. Adding media and PR skills to your armoury may get you further than talent and graft alone, but should they? It’s a tough one, and as a marketing and journo hypocrite, I don’t have any easy answers.)

  • Sports writers, including my fave Jonathan Liew, talk about how they’re writing about sport when there is no sport to write about.

  • There are some gorgeous exhibits to scroll around at the BALTIC. Abel Rodríguez’s botanical illustrations come from his role in the Muinade community as “el nombrador de plantas” in the Colombian Amazon. 

  • I spent my Sunday morning reading The Wish For A Good Young Country Doctor by Allan Gurganus and I haven’t stopped thinking about it ever since. Midwestern Gothic meets folk horror in a dark tale of human nature, betrayal, mass hysteria, fate and shadows falling on the long, slow passage of time. Oh and for relevance’s sake, it’s also about a cholera epidemic. I’m gonna read it again just now, just quickly.

  • Once you’ve read that, you might like to read why Allan Gurganus finds epidemics so fascinating, and what drove him to write it in the first place. “…if history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, it sometimes stutters. We all think it’s happening solely to us. It never is.”

  • Let’s round off with a snowskating cat. Why not.

My Stuff

  • Remember when I used to write stuff?

  • That was alright wasn’t it

  • Don’t worry there is stuff on the way in the next issue of Ferment. 

  • Also I’m working on a couple of things for Pellicle.

  • I’ve been working on fiction a lot this week too, I have a new schedule and it’s working well for me. It’s based roughly on Ursula K. Le Guin’s.

Abel Rodríguez — Photo taken by Rob Harris for BALTIC

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The Gulp Beltane & Pellicle Special!

It’s Beltane today! Happy Beltane!

*Pagan BS incoming, if you’re not predisposed to Pagan BS, please skip to the next bolded section*

Usually this is a celebration of putting the worst of the darker seasons behind us but… let’s try something else this year.

I have yet another upheaval coming my way next week, so I drew some cards last night and turned up the two of cups (useful, supportive), the tower (okay, everything is fucked and I need to “use this opportunity to” build something new out of the rubble, got it) and the Knight Of Wands. This guy gets shit done. So I was pretty happy to burst into Beltane with a combined attitude of “you know what? Fuck it. Nothing is good out there. I need to make things good in here instead for now, and for the future.”

So today that’s what I’m doing. Instead of celebrating the end of winter, I’m rebuilding and setting hopes for the future, and focusing on what I’m grateful for — my health, my family, my friends, butter, full cream milk… I’m planning to head outside and take notice of spring happening, despite every other poisonous thing raging on in the world. I’m also going to light the fire in the garden because even though I can’t jump over it, it’s always cathartic to burn stuff. (I found this article on celebrating Beltane during lockdown if you’re struggling for inspiration.)

By the way, if you’re not feeling it at all and you’re angry and sad and couldn’t care less that spring is here and you found all of the above incredibly infuriating and childish, don’t worry. I found the perfect poem just for you. I’ll be reading it a lot in the coming weeks when I’m too mad to leave the house.

*Pagan BS section over, regular service resuming*

Thanks for staying with me.

I wanted to take some time today to say Happy First Birthday to the wonderful Pellicle Magazine.

A few years ago, when I first locked on to the idea of writing for a living, I didn’t dare imagine that I’d be welcomed onto a platform like Pellicle to share my odd stories. Pellicle — Jonny and Matthew — are supportive editors and have pushed me to continually hone my skills to a level I never thought I’d manage. On top of that, they’ve become good friends, which is all I ever want, if I’m being honest.

I believe in their magazine with all my heart. The stories, photography and illustrations they publish are pushing UK food and drink writing forwards, and I am perpetually honoured to be part of their crew.

Here’s to you, Pellicle. Happy birthday.

My Pellicle articles… so far

Sam Jary in his shop, Black Hand Wine by James Pinder