I have dabbled in reading the Tarot for the last 8 years or so. I was attracted to the images long before someone first gave me a reading, but I was afraid that my very practical community would ridicule me for believing in the unseen. It took a couple bad relationships for me to get to know myself and accept my witchy tendencies. It took a growing emptiness inside of me to realize that I needed to go deeper than "face value" with the cards.
As I process these internet orders for you, I miss the interactions that might have been. I miss my coworkers, all of them. I understand how privileged I am to be working from home at this juncture. And it's hard to grapple with the guilt of being one of the lucky ones, when we are on different sides of the same coin and nothing is perfect.
April is National Poetry Month, and it fell this year on a historic moment both for having time to read and a need for the consolation and guidance of politically engaged verse. We live in interesting times: with a pandemic threatening and taking the lives of people all across the world, when our leaders and institutions have never seemed less adequate or less legitimate, the future of society itself seems to be in doubt. Now is not the time for light, or gentle, or confessional poetry of individual feelings, but for witnesses to history.
I thought there were few things as isolating as the the first days of recovery. And then I found myself living alone during a pandemic lockdown.
The anxiety, fear, and boredom of early recovery feels a lot like what we're all dealing with today.
It's getting tough out there, or in there. While being stuck at home, it seems like we're busier than ever. Working. Baking bread. Watching all of Ozark. Zoom happy hours. Training our dogs to jump over stacked rows of toliet paper.
And then there are those of you with bored kids and cats on your hands. Kids can't go to school. Cats can't go outside. And you don't want to overload them on screen time. Plus cats don't really use phones.
These days have begun to feel elastic: even the most banal social practice upended, oceans of time in front of us that feel by and large destined to be filled by anxiety. Oh, the new normal. The importance of maintaining routine are stressed upon us, the vague semblance of normality holding us together with tape and string. I myself never thought I could abide shoes in the house but am now cheered by the simple act of lacing them each morning, even if only to tread the same exact square footage as yesterday.
If social media is right, and it always is (at least in some fashion), people are now discovering that their apartment has a kitchen. I'm seeing daily "what I cooked" posts from celebrities, I'm seeing influencers making bread for the first time in their lives and being amazed by dough. But it's not just celebrities and influencers!
The championship game of the NCAA tournament would have been played on April 6th. Alas. So Kalani put his blank March Madness bracket to use and created the Third Place Books Basketball Book Championship instead! It was a competitive group of 16 basketball books that he recently read (mostly). Here’s a recap of how the imaginary tournament all went down.
The doctor is in!
We all have that book we turn to when we need a break from the stressors of the real world. The real world is offering an abundance of stressors lately, so I thought I'd compile a list of books that offer some respite from the uncertainty, fear, and boredom we're all dealing with right now. Most likely you've read a lot of the books on this list; these are old favorites, books that radiate warmth and comfort to help us get through this pandemic together -- from a safe distance.
