On apprentices and Advil, seemingly substance-less interactions, and a brief ode to green sauces
April 8, 2021
Dear Eva,
First, some news. The splendid week for my bland bush was more like a semi-splendid 24 hours. I snapped a photograph and sent it to you just after most of the blossoms popped, but almost immediately after that, the petals started dropping and the flowers drooping. Boo!
I am sitting down to write to you on a Thursday night, Hazy Pale Ale by side, trying to emerge from a slightly frenetic day that left me feeling generally annoyed about all the people and tasks vying for my attention. Leave me alone, world! I think I also feel slightly off-kilter because I got word today that someone I know (but don’t know well) has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Just the knowledge that they were going through an adjustment to that new reality this past year, and that their life and the life of their family is forever changed, it feels destabilizing, reminds me how fragile our current state of beings ever are.
This is a good segue to replying to your interesting thoughts about emerging from the pandemic into a potentially post-small talk world, and how you feel a simmering anxiety about leaving your wolf den into the world of other human beings (wolves). This was all a good reminder to me that my particular pandemic experience has been the opposite of a universal one. I guess it says something about my social life, but I don’t think the quarantine really ended up making much of a difference in how often I see my nearby friends and family. There were more walks and bike rides, and fewer indoor meals for sure, but overall, I have felt adequately nourished by human contact. If anything, I feel the tiniest bit of anxiety about the future day when the other three members of my family all start leaving again for several hours per day, and I return to days full of solitude. (And yes, I realize this may seem inconsistent with the start of this letter, but my crankiness was not a result of my family today and anyway, don’t we always yearn for what we don’t have?)
I don’t want to let this letter slip away without turning to the subject of taking angles in our advice. I think I expressed my viewpoint in a way that made it sound more literal than I meant it. It is not that, when I start writing in response to one of our advice questions, I decide on a stance and write through it until I am done. It is more like the difference between a conversation and a monologue. When we write in that format, we have no opportunity to see how something is hitting and perhaps take a different tact, or try a different angle. That is in part because it is a reply to an anonymous someone for whom we have little context and in part because we are aiming for such a short little snippet! So if I decide to explore one line of thinking, I don’t really have space to explore another. As you wrote, you are still taking an angle in your approach; even if it is a multi-layered angle, there are infinite ideas and questions you did not include! Maybe another way of saying what I wrote that sparked this topic, is that I find the editorial decisions required in that format a bit of an extra challenge. I can’t wander to and fro like I tend to in these letters.
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It is now Friday, and I am feeling like a different version of me today. I considered starting this letter anew, trying out alternate frames for the things I wrote above, which today feel slightly off. But nah, there is no need to scrub this letter until it glistens, for there is always next week!
A couple of additional layers I do want to fold in today—on death and small talk. First, I was thinking more about yesterday’s mild crankiness and realizing I think it was a product of feeling like there was subtext of the aforementioned Parkinson’s news. It was the universe saying, Sarah, are you remembering what matters in how you spend your time and where you put your attention? And the answer, yesterday at least, was no, I haven’t been doing a good job lately of ensuring I am focusing on the things that matter most to me. (I’ll note that this realization came when dipping into a new book today, a book which you will be receiving shortly, so I will keep the suspense on the title and description until you open your mailbox on your birthday, if not before!) Second, on small talk: when was small talk ever truly appropriate, I wonder? I haven’t read the article you linked to on this topic, but I saw that Austin Kleon wrote about this in today’s newsletter, supplying a list of possible conversational alternatives to our standard “how are you” reflexes. It strikes me as slightly odd to think that we (the collective we, that is) needed a global pandemic to realize that people we interact with may be going through some shit, and that our flippant greetings might brush right over those realities. I have always hated true small talk, the kind that is really a bit of a performance of caring and kindness. On the other hand, I love my tiny interactions with people I know but don’t know, like the one today when a neighbor I have never really met smiled and called out, Where’s Marlowe? as I walked by sans dog. Like your morning ladies (strangers), these kinds of seemingly substance-less interactions have meaning. They do not feel small, even though they do not feel deep. Am I defending small talk or describing something different? I do not know!
Random sidenote: I am having the disturbing experience of realizing that the keyboard feels slightly sticky as I type this letter. Not ideal.
Have you enjoyed your pre-birthday Me Day? I sure hope so! It sounded delightful. I hope the long birthday weekend is full of all your favorite foods, TNG episodes, cocktails, and more.
Wishing you all the birthday best!
Your friend,
Sarah
Friday April 9 2021
Dear Sarah,
Today I have been enjoying a “me” day, as you know, in celebration of my impending 39th birthday. I went for a haircut after we chatted and the woman who was going to cut my hair was quite pregnant, so an apprentice stylist washed my hair and gave me the customary head massage. First: he scrubbed my head incredibly vigorously. Second: he massaged my head harder than I can imagine any human wanting their head to be massaged. My error: I did not tell him to use a lighter touch, and I have been living with the resulting headache for the rest of this day. I have had problems with this kind of experience before — have gotten at least one massage that was too much, that left me aching — and instead of simply telling the masseuse, in this case the apprentice, to take it easy, I steel myself, tell myself it will be over soon, tough it out. The scalp massage is one of the best parts of getting a haircut! Having someone else massage my scalp in that particular way is a pleasure that I enjoy but once a year, even in non-pandemic times. This makes it sound like he ruined my day, and I wouldn’t go that far, but I would say I should have told him to lighten up. It’s a bad habit not to use my words in that way. He palpated my temples with his fingertips like he was aiming to drill into my head, then proceeded to massage the crown of my scalp in an upward motion as though he hoped to re-form my head in the shape of a cone. I told myself that he had intuited my impending birthday and was recreating the experience of the birth canal — it was that firm! My adult-sized skull pressing onward. Perhaps he had heard how strenuous birth can be (hearsay on my part as well, of course) and was recreating the experience as best as he could. On this near-eve of my birthday I reemerged into the world through this apprentice’s steely cone-grip! I will give myself the benefit of the doubt and say that he caught me off-guard with such a firm scalp massage, which is why I did not tell him to stop or to lighten up; in any case, it will not happen again. I am a reasonably good masseuse myself and I think part of what makes anyone good at delivering a pleasant experience like that for another person is simply starting from what feels good on one’s own body. A massage must be empathetic. I wonder if this man presses into his own temples like he is drilling for the brain’s molten core, or scrubs his own scalp as if it is his last chance to restart the blood flow in a near-dead body. Anyway, I took two Advil, I am getting ready to eat Indian food for dinner, and I will have a drink and sleep off that man’s too-vigorous scalp massage. Hopefully the cone shape will fade with time.
I checked in with you over this past week about your mention in last week’s letter regarding your funk, but I think I still don’t know what the dismissive if unintentional slight rendered your way was made of! This I do know: no one likes to be dismissed!
In unrelated news, lately I have been thinking about how much I love green sauces: tomatillo salsa, green chutney, zhoug, chimichurri, green curry, guacamole. I went digging and reminded myself of gremolata. You could probably even add pesto to the list. I hope and am sure that there are more green sauces out there for me to learn of and to love. Herbal, tangy, spicy! Sign me up!
I thought tonight that I might revisit the structure of the list letter I wrote to you a few weeks ago, but it is a certain kind of week and a certain kind of mood that calls for that kind of letter! I shall remain open to it and perhaps another will come down the pike for you when the moment is right.
Now, my brain-pulp is ready to get horizontal on the couch and to work on restoring its peak cellular functionality! In sum, never let someone over-massage your noggin! Happy weekend, and when I write you next week I shall have officially aged by one year!
Until then!
Yours,
Eva