Nobody puts Baby in a corner!
Looking forward to eating breakfast and getting cool stuff for free.
Writing fiction requires confidence in a way that I wasn’t expecting. In journalism, I know that the material I’m working with is factual, so believability is already built in. In fiction, I have to be confident enough in what I’m saying that I can convince everyone else to believe in the story. I have to be very precise in every decision. “Committing in fiction is sometimes as hard as committing in romantic relationships,” my professor told me in class the other day. Too true indeed, Jeffrey!
All this to say, that’s where I’ve been while this newsletter has been on the back burner. I’ve been fluctuating between writing fiction and thinking about writing fiction. No room for existential musings at the moment, though I’m sure a few will weasel their way in somehow. Things are so dreadful at the moment that I would much rather just make lists of all of the wonderful things that are still happening to me.
Here is what I want to do this year:
Weekly catch-ups with Maddy
Wear barrettes in my hair
Try oysters
Spend more time at The Met
Memorize that one Matthew Olzmann poem about Mountain Dew
Read
Graduate college (!!!)
BUILD SELF CONFIDENCE (ESSENTIAL)
Write something good
Casually work on my French again
Go to more concerts (currently at 91—make it to 100 by May)
Do a fun haircut again, finally
Enjoy making a habit of grocery shopping
Be 22 and don’t freak out about it
Dance more
Nobody puts Baby in a corner!
I used to dance all the time, and not just in my dance classes. I used to dance in the kitchen while I did my homework. I used to dance after school. In Paris, I would wake up in the mornings and dance in my room. It is an instant cure to so many things! I’ve been working on this by listening to a lot of The Cars before bed.
December and January were the months of feasts. I drank Earl Grey tea and cortados. I decorated so many sugar cookies. I ate a lot of penne vodka that Matthew cooked. I made cinnamon buns for our family friends’ annual Christmas breakfast. I made a lemon tart with the abundance of lemons that grew on my mom’s tree this year.
I never managed to go to the tailor. Still, the same dress hangs in my closet. I also forgot to ask the cobbler to punch another hole in my belt. But that’s alright because my life cannot always be tidy; a few threads must always remain out of place to bug me.
Music sounds good these days, which is a wonderful thing. I played Simon & Garfunkel in the car a lot with Maddy because one night she looked at the cover of Bookends and said “I can never remember which one is Hall and which one is Oates,” and I will never forgive her for it. Some nights in late December, I would listen to “Voices of Old People” on a loop while driving home in the dark.
Listening to Paul Simon’s voice reminds me of being a freshman in high school with very, very short hair. I got a Sonos speaker for Christmas. I would spend afternoons during pandemic-era online classes sitting in my bedroom and playing through albums that I felt like I should know about—stuff that I had heard was cool but didn’t grow up listening to. Like Graceland and Rubber Soul, Peter Gabriel, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush.
In all of the Bob Dylan mania of the last month, I got into Joan Baez. I listened to “Farewell, Angelina” while thinking about the importance of being an audience member and the difference between artists who do and don’t value the opinions of their audience. Anyone who tells you that a famous musician “wasn’t in it for the fame” is lying. Misinformed, at best. Maybe they weren’t in it for the paparazzi, but they were most definitely in it for the fame.
In that same vein, I’ve been listening to old, old Johnny Cash. The Sun Studios, super sparse stuff. I spent a lot of January trying to fall in love with folk music only to remember that my heart truly belongs to blues and rock n’ roll. And sometimes, begrudgingly, traditional country music.
When Lindsey was visiting me at home in the last few days of break, we went to Princeton Record Exchange. I bought a cheap copy of Band on the Run and as I was walking out, the guy behind the counter said, “Want something cool for free?” I said yes, I absolutely do! He gave me a magical record case full of 45s and said it was called a Tune Tote. The Tune Tote holds a young girl’s personal collection of 45s, all carefully logged in cursive. Bobby Darin, the Breakfast at Tiffany’s theme, other juke box classics. I will treasure it forever. When he gave it to me, I said, “You don’t want this?” and he said, “Nope, it’s pretty ‘easy listening’ stuff,” which made me laugh. Now I have a beautiful little 45 of “Moon River” and he doesn’t.
For most of winter break, I was bouncing between sleep, Lambertville, and Princeton. Princeton’s Christmas lights were dreamy, and the hot chocolate from the Bent Spoon kept my fingers from falling off. There were also the usual evening drives to Wawa and Starbucks. Christmas was very quiet at home. The day after, we drove to the beach and spent a brisk morning in Cape May eating at Blue Pig Tavern. I wore my new wax trench coat.
I spent New Year’s at Caroline’s new apartment in Philadelphia. I was overdressed, but we had a blast and I successfully ate twelve green grapes under her vanity at midnight. On New Year’s Day, we caught the tail end of the Mummers Parade on Broad Street and did a rapid fire tour of Old City before grabbing cheesesteaks and ice cream and driving back home. I also spent a few days in Florida visiting my Grandparents. I lost at Scrabble, but the sun felt so nice, even though the Florida natives thought it was freezing.
I bought myself red socks, blue socks, sparkly silver socks, purple socks, brown socks. Having a great time pairing them with my flats. I also got new running sneakers with all the proper support. I can walk for miles and not feel a thing! Luxury!
At a consignment shop in Princeton, I found an adorable vermillion Longchamp backpack, which I was persuaded into buying by my best friend and her mom (“Think of Europe! Imagine wearing it on the subway!”). I also found a nice leather wallet for $7. In one of the pockets, my friend pulled out a note that the previous owner had been carrying around that said: “I am honored to be able to experience this phenomenal dance of manifestation!” Never felt so good about a wallet in my life.
I really enjoyed Christmas shopping this year because I tried to do it very locally, so I made a whole event of wandering through my favorite boutiques and antique shops. I went to The People’s Store so many times that I stopped finding new things; I became entirely too familiar with the current selection of stuff. I would just wander in every week and retrace my steps, staring at the fish necklace I couldn’t afford, trying on the same five colorful bangles, weighing the pros and cons of a plaid Coach scarf.
I spent most of January treating myself like an injured athlete in recovery. Everything I did was either remedy or training: trying to get my sleep schedule back on track, trying to eat real food, trying to have a healthy amount of fun.
I started falling asleep to ocean waves on my white noise machine. I slept a lot, like twelve hours a night, which was great until I came back to New York and promptly obliterated all of my progress. I took very hot baths. I ate dark chocolate sea salt caramels—I bought four every time I went to Lambertville and ate them while I wandered around. I started going to the movies a lot.
The Princeton Garden Theater is a magical, magical place. It has the cheapest ticket prices, and it’s an adorable theater. I loved walking up to the box office in the evenings after buying Pocky at the convenience store to get my ticket printed out. They sell watered down hot chocolate at the concessions stand, which I am ethically opposed to, but I found it charming. They only show 5 minute of trailers, and the theater is almost always very empty.
I saw Wicked twice and A Complete Unknown twice, too. Both were good. I also saw Babygirl (didn’t like it) and Nosferatu (loved it). When I saw A Complete Unknown the second time, Lindsey and I went to hear a Princeton professor talk about Bob Dylan and America. Absolutely every seat in the theater was full, and we were the only ones there under the age of 50.
When I wasn’t at the Garden, I was having movie nights with my friends at home. I went through a spell of late 80s/ early 90s romcoms: Pretty Woman, Dirty Dancing (twice), Moonstruck. I also convinced my friends and family to finally watch The Godfather with me, a serious personal victory.
I made late breakfasts for myself: scrambled eggs with goat cheese and dill, a slice of toast, and some blueberries. Sometimes I would make an espresso, but usually I didn’t. I played lots of card games. With my family, we played my Grandfather’s favorite game: What The Heck. I’ve spent over a decade trying to become an acceptable What The Heck player, and I’m proud to report that I seem to be reliably mediocre these days. On New Year’s, I accidentally started a very heated, very long Uno game with ten players. Alayna said she had never seen me so angry before, which is a horrifying statement to hear about oneself in the context of Uno.
Much of my free time is spent between bodies of water, traversing across rivers (“We call everything a river here. We’re that kind of people.”). The Delaware or the Hudson. This has been true for most of my life. On the east side of the Hudson, I see a woman on the subway with eight strands of gray in her hair. I catch myself trying to approximate her age and subtract it from my own to see how much time I have left. I have strange dreams about fish between the hours of 5 and 8am. I came home between classes the other day to try and take a nap, only to remember that I’ve never taken a nap in my life. I stumbled back out of my apartment into the slanted lights of Midtown, still exhausted and still disoriented.
I Googled: “what happens to your brain at night that makes you feel especially insane” and “new jersey seafood calendar” and “johnny cash fishing boots”
I read advice columns: “Your anxiety is generated in part by your addictive, escapist mindset.”
I texted my friends: “Am I old” “Probably” “Goodnight” “Goodnight”
I read the news: “It is unclear if the move will work,” and “It is unclear if he is authorized to do that.”
Still, Isean and I went on a pilgrimage to Henry Miller’s house in Williamsburg. I spent a Sunday afternoon with Maddy in Hoboken. When it snowed, I walked through Central Park while the sun was setting and slid across the frozen pond in my new boots. The whole city was out on the ice with me. Lindsey came over to help me clean out my closet and watch the Eagles game. We’re going to the Super Bowl. I’ll be in Scotland by May. It’s gonna be fine!
Flash mobs.
Read the latest from The Weasel below! Submissions for the next issue are opening very, very soon.
See above! But also:
“Winter Baby/ New Jersey Blues,” 070 Shake
“How to Get out of Love,” Alice Phoebe Lou
“Cry to Me,” Solomon Burke
“Winterlude,” Bob Dylan
“Where Could I Go but to the Lord,” Elvis Presley
“Army Dreamers,” Kate Bush
“Let’s Go,” The Cars
Reading:
I joke about not having time for existentialism, but I am reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity at the moment, so I guess I can never truly avoid it. Every novel I read has been reducing me to tears these days, whether or not it’s good. I just find life excruciatingly painful when it is presented to me in the form of a novel.
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
It took me about a week to emotionally leave Vermont.
“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
In Watermelon Sugar, Richard Brautigan
I learned a lot about how to make sparse prose effective in this book, though on the whole I found it far too Californian for my taste.
“I know a river that is half-an-inch wide. I know because I measured it and sat beside it for a whole day. It started raining in the middle of the afternoon. We call everything a river here. We’re that kind of people.”
Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Coco Mellors
Everyone was interesting. Even though I don’t think I truly believed in the story, I wanted to.
“He smiles and begins to retreat, then turns back to me one more time. ‘You want to know one of my personal favorite prayers?’
‘What?’
‘Wow,’ he says.”
"Bring me the big knife!”—Ronny Cammareri
“If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place.”—Rilke
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Ellie I love your writing so much!!!