On three humans chirping, building muscles for working incrementally, and more about-ness
September 4, 2020
Dear Eva,
It is the happy hour time of day as we head into this long holiday weekend, and I am sitting in the passenger seat en route to Michigan, feeling less happy and more antsy as we start in on our eighth hour on the road. You mentioned in last week’s letter this feeling of wanting a more spacious time to reflect before writing your letter, and I am definitely feeling that right about now. As I try to tune out the other three humans chirping in this cramped car, I am practicing my hand at believing the best time is now, resisting any lingering temptation to put it off until a quiet moment later tonight after the kids are sleeping. I think you were right to call this desire to wait for more time a pre-letter mindset. I have this sense that I used this pre-letter mindset in many, many areas of my life in past years, under this conscious or unconscious belief that it (whatever “it” may be) wasn’t worth doing until I could put my full attention to it. Slowly but surely, I am working to build my muscle for working incrementally, especially when it comes to thinking and writing. That might be one of the greatest gifts of these letters, though there are so many gifts that it is hard to weigh them.
You and I spoke this week about our shared anticipation of our upcoming road trips, the first since the pandemic began. As much as I have appreciated the serenity of spending so much time at home, it is refreshing to imagine sitting (literally!) in a new context this weekend when we visit our Michigan family. The kids have been exuberant since we announced last weekend that we were going. Simon packed his small suitcase full of stuffies and other toys within minutes of finding out. (Sidebar: Simon just called out “whore?” We are listening to the Hamilton soundtrack in the car, which may lead to some interesting questions.) I am looking forward to sitting around a bonfire, eating delicious vegetables from my mother in law’s massive garden, and, I hope, seeing you in the flesh! It was only about nine months ago, but your delightful snowed-in visit to Iowa last January feels like it might have been years ago. I have such fond memories of that long weekend, bundling up and stomping through the snow, playing charades, and watching movies under blankets.
I am guessing you are preparing today for your own road trip to Michigan. Another great wonder of life, how we both happened to marry people from the same small town. It is a gift that keeps giving when it results in us being in the same parts of the country at the same time like it will this weekend!
Your letter last week described your plans to join a CSA and let the seasonal mix of produce each week dictate your menus. The telling of time in fruits and vegetables, as you so wonderfully put it. I love this! We have been doing more of this lately, too. I discovered a lovely urban farm nearby, and I have begun a weekly ritual of placing a big order of as many of our groceries as we can possibly get from them. (In addition to their own fruits and vegetables, they also source a huge variety of local vendors of things like homemade tamales, butter, and more.) This has made my weekend menu-planning even more elaborate. I have to plan two weeks ahead, ordering items from the local farm for the meals we will have one week later, and then supplementing from Whole Foods for anything we need for the immediate week. It takes some planning, but I am thrilled to be drawing more on the local economy and, as a result, building our meals around the food that is grown nearby. Coupled with our tendency recently to eat dinners outside as a family, this new practice makes me feel more closely connected to the land beneath our feet. I suppose this is, in some ways, a byproduct of spending so much time at home during the pandemic. I have wanted to be better about integrating a farmer’s market into our consumption, but it never bubbled up to the top of my list until the pandemic.
Thinking about pandemic life, you are very right to point out that social media allows us to export social pressures into our private homes. We don’t need to see other human beings in person to compare ourselves and determine where we stack up, social pressure has now been digitized. What an innovation! I think I somehow forgot about social media because I am so rarely even dabbling in it these days. This letter writing is the only kind of social media I need.
We are officially in Eaton County, so the end is near. It is now a far happier hour in this vehicle! I wish you a pleasant and safe travel day tomorrow. I am very much looking forward to seeing your face! Until then, I look forward to reading your words.
Yours,
Sarah
Friday September 4 2020
Dear Sarah,
My mind was quiet this week as I started to think about what I might put in my letter to you. Whether because we just came off number 100 or because we’ve transitioned into meteorological fall (with a shift in the weather to match), this feels like a bit of a reset moment.
We’re here in Week 101, which I can’t help but think of as a back to basics letter. An introduction to the letters? I’m not sure that’s necessary, but someone could pop in for the first time this week, pop into the cavernous yet intimate lecture hall of RogShinch 101, and where would they find themselves? Perhaps even we might pop into our own lives in a new way for the first time this week!
I liked reading about the dermatologist asking you what the letters are about. In your letter and in our texts thereafter, I think you and we got at the nugget of the thing — you said, describing what the letters are about seems almost like trying to explain what a friendship is about, which is to say, it is impossible. The general focus on aboutness that bubbles up when the letters come up with others is interesting — it feels to me a bit like a knee-jerk response, like a little bit of capitalism talking: what is it about is a little bit like why are you doing it which is a little bit like why do it if you don’t know exactly what you’ll get out of it? This is a critical view of a casual question, of course; sometimes what is it about? is simply a phrase to move a conversation along while you are cutting skin cancer out of someone’s face! (Ouch! And I’m glad it wasn’t as bad as you thought it might have been! Phew.) And also, I’ll repeat your question (and the dermatologist’s) back to you: what are the letters about? If you tell me you’re reading a new book you’re loving or hating, I’ll say, Huh, what’s it about? We know the things we like and don’t like, but sometimes there are things we like or don’t like that are hard to articulate, easier to know it when we see it. I, too, feel the urge to flip through a bound book full of the letters — let’s make it happen! Perhaps distilling some nugget of aboutness will help us do it in whatever way we like best.
I brought another piece to the frame shop today, a free newsprint takeaway from last year’s NY Art Book Fair of a collage by Yto Barrada, morphed into a one-color neon-y orangey print of variously shaped objects (something like this work, in another form), shapes representing the Ornament repertoire of all the Moroccan terra cotta tilework pieces that were a part of her show How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself (the show was in 2018 but the title happens to be a little on the nose for this moment!). I did not see the show, only the takeaway, the ephemeral newsprint representation of the thing. I transported it diligently back from New York last fall in a tube and have been keeping it in a flat-file drawer in my office, where I could see it in my mind’s eye, waiting. Now I want to see it outside of my mind, with my two eyes! I am hooked (and hung up?) on framing; it feels like a nice thing to do for myself since there are so many things I’m not doing these days (and not spending money on). It’s transformative to take a thing that is paper, was in a drawer, and put it up and behind glass, there in a frame. At the risk of inviting Captain Obvious back to the conversation, a frame is the original framing device!
I think of these letters as a framing device, too, or, I think of this public place as such: the pages where the letters live, the headers and the subheaders and the typeface of this particular web shape we’re using that I think suits our words very nicely, framing up what is happening here, whatever it might be about. This space for the letters is a way of seeing our friendship, our conversations, our thought patterns, and ourselves anew, holding them out at arm’s length so we can get a good look at them.
It is fascinating to me how our friendship and this writing project work! It really is a bit of magic, the fitting together of two puzzle pieces just so. I am flattered that you think I am the best kind of writing partner for this project! It’s an interesting thing to hear you say (in my mind’s ear), because I can’t imagine this project emerging in quite this way out of any other of my friendships. It is a project borne of our particular way of fitting together as friends. I was fascinated as well to see you write, Unlike many in relationships, you always leave space. I found myself musing on how leaving space can be read in different ways in different situations; space is distance by another name. There are relationships in my life in which I sometimes view the face of the coin as leaving space and at other times I regard its flip side as being distant. It is difficult, nearly impossible, to reconcile in entirety one’s picture of oneself with the image of how one exists in the world to other people. Every person holds a different picture of every other person based on the snippets or volumes they know of that person and their life. It is maddeningly intriguing! The ideas and stories I carry in my head about myself are different than the ideas and stories you carry in your head about me, and vice versa. This is (a part of) what friendship is about, and what the letters are about, too.
I like the thought of there existing, someday, a RogShinch Letters 101, but I’m not sure this letter is it! As always, that’s all right; another week is right around the corner. The Organ Symphony by Camille Saint-Saëns is booming from the other room and it is time to kick off this long weekend! Will we in fact cross paths? I hope so! Until then (and thereafter!), enjoy your weekend!
Your friend,
Eva