FEEL GOOD FRIDAY ♡ Choose life
To quote Solange Knowles, "There's a lot to be mad about."
As we embark on another year where a culture of death prevails, I have one simple request for you. Choose life.
And I don’t mean it in a satirical Trainspotting type of way. I’m for real.
Our main act of resistance is drinking an iced coffee with friends. Closing our laptops early. Sticking our feet in the grass. Sticking our feet in the river. Shooting cans in the woods. Watching a “chick flick” from the 90s or 2000s with stunning style and subversive female protagonists. Chopping fruit. Feeding it to your lover, or your baby, or your dog.
Eating a little chocolate — and please leave your dog out of that one. Going on Pinterest, where everything is pretty and no one’s really talking. Calling a friend. Texting another outside the group chat to see what’s really going on. Opening your heart to new people when you want to do nothing but cut-and-run. Listening to a song that meant a lot to you when you were an angsty teen and letting relief wash over you: You are no longer as powerless as you were when you were a teen.
Taking time to write — for strangers and friends on the internet — because you owe it to yourself to carve out a creative writing practice. Even when work and corporate career ambitions threaten to squeeze the very life from you.
❂ VIBE CHECK ✪ MOODBOARD ❂ PRO-TIP ✪ RAGE ❂ IN ROTATION ✪
The Vibe Check: A dog-eared musing of scathing reality
I’m reading another non-fiction book that’s going to change my life the way How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell did — right after finishing a fiction book that disturbed me as acutely as My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh did.
I can share that my current read, whose spine I cracked in June, has seen both the gritty streets and honey-stained café tables of New York City, as well as the worn wooden counter of Washington, D.C. gay club and the greenhouse of my transparent Dickie’s backpack.
I think it — the book, my physical copy, not the text itself! — feels like I do: dizzied by the whirlwind of the past jetsetting weeks, but still beautiful nonetheless. And still eager, strangely, because there’s so much left to give, and teach, and ponder.
5 Moments for the Moodboard: Worshipping the Sun
Sustainability Protip: Clean with care
A quick tip is to give your thrifted clothes, who have survived in this fast fashion world despite incredible odds, some extra TLC.
… Stick with hand-washing or put it on the gentlest cycle with cold or warm water instead of hot. To disinfect thrift store clothes entirely, you can also add some vinegar to your washing process with a natural and safe laundry detergent.
— How To Properly Clean And Care For Secondhand Clothing, Audrey Stanton for The Good Trade
But this ethos can apply more broadly, particularly to your home, its appliances, its decor, its structural framework.
Listening to Jadeofalljades and Dr. Tykeia Robinson talk about the “lost recipes” of personal housekeeping on this week’s episode of Gettin’ Grown made me simultaneously proud and motivated to do more. On one hand, I’m glad that my very African-American upbringing makes me a Gen Zer who radically cleans baseboards, radically washes their sheets at least once a week (even when there’s no company!) and radically cleans their produce.
I could also still stand to clean my meat and my clothes with vinegar, as well as not lay down on my bare mattress.
IDK, I still got ADHD at the end of the day.
Sometimes, a man needs a moment before he takes on the emotional labor of washing and drying his sheets, and then re-making his bed from scratch — no Nara Aziza.
Fodder for the Rage Room: The West’s appetite for veritable destruction
To quote Cancer queen Solange, there’s a lot to be mad about. Inflation and the cost-of-living — and material conditions across the board not improving for the 99%—have driven me to personal rage. I join in the collective rage about an entire nation of people being physically, psychologically, culturally and economically scarred by a violent uptick in settler colonialism. I tremble thinking about 495,000 Palestinians facing extreme food security, as even White Americans get killed trying to deliver them food. Because White-on-White violence tells me you truly don’t give a damn.
It’s the same numbness I feel when I think about the Sandy Hook shooting and people being harmed at country music festival, and those instances leading to gun control. Fine, kill the descendants of slaves. Our bodies are political chips anyway, right? The Black body is capital alone, right? But killing White people is a different kind of chilling. It’s like seeing your dad cry — terrifying in the narrow confines of the patriarchy and imperialism you’ve shoved down BIPOC’s throats.
Killing children, whether directly or indirectly, is also a different kind of brutal. Fine, let the adults tear themselves apart. But not the children, right?
When it comes to divestment or abstaining from Israel’s appetite for destruction, I don’t have faith in the American government.
They’re letting White children die en masse: from starvation, neglect, mental health challenges exacerbated by violent upbringings, violent upbringings primed by economic depression, economic depression fostered by elitism and emotional apathy.
If they’re letting White children die, it will take a monumental effort to not let Palestinian kids die. And the math is not matching.
Also, American religious groups are stoking the flames of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda — as if there’s not enough to be mad about.
In Rotation: Metaphorical sunsets, bee-stung sentiments, and the human condition
1. “Love to Love You” by Donna Summer: The breezy, frisky summer anthem
Do it to me again and again
You put me in such an awful spin…
Oh, love to love you, baby
2. “Twilight” by Adi Oasis: The meditative bass bumper that helped me finish this post
Started like a summer day
Walking in sunshine
But something left me cold inside
Always so complicated
You and what's her name
3. “Honey” by Halsey: For any survivors of their first sapphic heartbreak
She was sweet like honey
And all I can taste is the blood in my mouth
And the bitterness in goodbye
4. “big feelings” by WILLOW: The banner carried for auDHD + neurodivergent baddies
I have such big feelings
Can't shut 'em down or let 'em out
And if you’re in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area on Saturday, June 29, 2024, you can dance your b i g f e e l i n g s away at DC9 Nightclub’s Donna Summer-themed party.
If not, watch Love to Love You, Donna Summer on MAX, and do Studio54 in your living room, for free.