Recs & Links

mid-winter gems & our first Do Nothing accountability thread

Thank you to everyone who reached out to offer love and prayers for my daughter, Lulu, with her recent medical issues (from In-Between Days). Her symptoms have not returned and the rheumatologist visit was reassuring. It’s been a rough few weeks with this, and I’m truly grateful for your care and generosity.

Today, I’ve got a gathering of recs & links that have been helping me to be where I am. I hope you find something good here for you. And, at the end, our first Do Nothing accountability thread. I’d love to hear about your “nothings”! 💛

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LISTEN 

• a Hibernation Songs playlist for you as a mid-winter balm

• Padriag O’Tuama on the Omega Institute podcast is a thought-provoking and beautiful window into O’Tuama’s story and poetics

• Naomi Klein interview on Ten Percent Happier about her new book, Doppelganger: I’ve had three people proselytize about this book to me; need to read it next.

• I loved this metta (lovingkindness) meditation by Tara Brach (11 mins)

READ

• Jeff Oaks, a formidable poet, essayist, artist, teacher, and force for good in the Pittsburgh literary world and beyond, died recently—and too young. I admired him hugely, mostly from afar, and in second-degree ways; he helped a few writer/teacher friends I love in countless unseen ways. I taught his essay, “4 for Easter,” last year to my high school students and it unlocked a new level of writing for a number of my students. I’m grateful for all the good words and teachings he left with us. Here is a piece of Jeff’s, “Having Given Up,” that takes my breath (thank you, Jane McCafferty for sharing this). How he packs so much deep, unassuming wisdom in this small a space, I have no idea. (Here, too is a beautiful remembrance of Jeff in the Post-Gazette).

• If you want a truly excellent book on writing craft and life, you must read Millions of Suns by Sharon Fagan McDermott and M.C. Benner Dixon. Nancy Reddy just published an excerpt & prompt from the book at Write More & I have an interview to share with both authors coming up soon!

• I couldn’t love this Lyz Lenz essay more: “Dingus of the Week: New Year, New You people: “I am pretty sure that the FBI uses carbless diets to force confessions. But also, McKaseigh your favorite fitness influencer on Instagram also recommends going carbless in the New Year so you can have abs and absolutely no joy at all during the winter’s darkest months.”

• This Liana Finck cartoon: if you, too, are feeling overwhelmed by how every single thing seems to have ramped up in the first week of January:

  

  Liana Finck is a genius.

• & this stunning Lucille Clifton poem below that we sent out in our email holiday “card” this year b/c wow:

  

  — The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, BOA Editions, 2012.

WATCH

• Everything Everywhere All at Once: I feel deeply ashamed it took me so long to watch this film (trailer here if you’re even later than me in watching it). I can’t stop thinking about it. If you’re still willing to talk with me about it, please please do.

• Mike Birbiglia’s The Old Man and The Pool (trailer here): I loved this and we then immediately watched The New One and loved that, too.

GO

• Nancy Reddy at Write More has TWO zoom parties coming up to kick start your writing in this new year: one today, Sun, Jan 7th and another on Tues, Jan 9th!

• Sun, Jan 7th, the Free Association Reading Series (in-person & streaming) hosted by City of Asylum has a stellar lineup: Inga Lea Schmidt, Romella Kitchens, Derek Maiolo, and Chauna Craig.

• Just want to highlight City Books here, a Pittsburgh bookstore run by the wonderful Arlan Hess with a fantastic selection of used and collectible books. Arlan also runs a great Writer-in-Residence program here for emerging & marginalized writers.

DO NOTHING THREAD

This is the inaugural, weekly “Do Nothing” thread! This is inspired by Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, a book I’ve just been re-reading over the holiday break. As a Sabbath practice, I’ve been trying to do less work and to disengage from my phone (as much as possible) on Sundays as a way to do more “nothing” and to have that ground my week instead of my usual "I have to catch up on all the things so I can finally relax.”

What do I mean by “doing nothing” if you haven’t read the book? Odell writes: “Nothing is harder to do than nothing. In a world where our value is determined by our productivity, many of us find our every last minute capture, optimized, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily…much of what gives one’s life meaning stems from accidents, interruptions, and serendipitous encounters: the ‘off-time’ that a mechanistic view of experience seeks to eliminate.”

“The first half of ‘doing nothing’ is about disengaging from the attention economy; the other half is about reengaging with something else. That ‘something else’ is nothing less than time and space…”

In the book, Odell defines the attention economy with a lot of nuance, which I can’t boil down in a few lines. But, it’s key to know that “resisting the attention economy” goes beyond deleting Instagram or Facebook to include resisting any force that profits off our attention or our discontent. One of the key parts of her argument connects to “placefulness” as an antidote to the place-less attention economy, meaning, actually looking around us in the real world and being where we are.

So as an accountability thread for stepping out of the productivity-obsessed frenzy, if even for a few minutes…What “nothing” did you do? What have you done or will you do today or this week in order to open up time and space and connect with yourself, your actual physical environment, and/or others in real life?

In the comments, please share a brief report from the field…