Ever since I got chronically online despite my (laughably wrong) belief in myself as some alt-weird girl who doesn’t “do” social media, one thing I’ve noticed again & again & god-fucking-damn-it yet again, is that…people crave rituals.
And guess what?
The Gods of Capitalism know this. They see you pouring your espresso with a swirl of oat milk sprinkling it with cinnamon. They knowww you drool for the cozy oversized sweaters that make you feel like it’s Fall even when the sun will fuck you up if you dare one step outside. They want you to love ritual. Rituals mean they have a systematic catalogue of things to sell you in a precise way, every day, for every occasion, forever & ever & ever.
Honestly, I feel for us internet-addicts (I say this part in jest and part in infinite jest). We just want to experience collective social culture as one cog in the giant wheel of glorious and horrifying humanity. Some things to make our lives a little lighter, even as we hurtle towards our inevitable demise.
So, in deciding the very first thing to post here on this new newsletter (my little precocious infant, you!) I thought, let me try to pay an homage to weird rituals, things that maybe, hopefully can’t be as easily commodified, repackaged and sold to us?
Okay, well, maybe the joke’s on me and all of these things can be henchmen in the Capitalist God’s agenda, but fuck you I tried Mammon!
Alright, let’s go.
1) Reorganizing my bookshelf by pure whimsy
not by genre, not alphabetically, not by color (k sometimes by color)
by which books look like they'd be great friends (Hello 100 Years of Solitude meet Piranesi)
moving books around like I'm a librarian of my own tiny universe
2) Bluejay vigil
sitting still enough outside to actually watch the bluejays
trying to break my previous record of stillness
the bluejays don't care about your productivity, they’re busy being magnificently blue
3) Dollhouse tea parties with my daughter
playing with the handcrafted fairies & woodland creatures my daughter has all over the house
sometimes the tea is imaginary & sometimes it’s mermaid potion (blue and pink food color with crushed up mud cakes, old earrings and glitter glue, yum)
discussing the weather with stuffed bears who have strong opinions about biscuit etiquette
entering a world where the stakes are: will Bunny like the lavender clay cookies?
4) Book cover roulette
beginning books purely because their covers sing to me & stopping whenever the hell I want
no guilt about the bookmark at page 237, no pushing through because I “should finish.”
just following the thread of curiosity until it naturally unravels & dissipates, ends
5) Making my bed like I'm preparing it for a very important guest
even though the very important guest is just Future Me
(who’ll be too tired in 16 hours to worry about rumpled vs hotel-stretched sheets)
6) Blessing my instant coffee like it's holy water
something that transforms me from zombie to human deserves reverence
even if it’s basic & non-fancy
sometimes I blow on it three times, inhale deeply, and whisper “thank you” before the first sip
7) Spray-painting thrifted furniture with in-your-face colors
taking that old splintery nightstand from someone's curb and turning it electric green on my balcony like I'm performing furniture resurrection
rescuing something ugly and making it aggressively beautiful
8) Swimming under the afternoon sun as I think about poems and stories without the immediate access to write them down
floating on my back, letting half-formed sentences dissolve
feels revolutionary to have thoughts and just...letting them exist without immediately turning them into something
It's like having a secret creative life that only exists in chlorinated moments
9) Driving to different neighbourhoods to go for a walk
Loading myself (& K) into the car like I'm going on an expedition
beautifully absurd driving fifteen minutes to walk for twenty minutes in a place where I know absolutely no one
becoming a tourist in my own city, studying the architecture of lives I'll never live — the houses with perfect gardens, the ones with broken fences & beautiful chaos
10) Collecting overheard fragments of strangers’ conversations
“...so then I told the cat...”
“...but the thing about Tuesday is...”
keeping these half-stories in a Field Notes journal like tiny mysteries
11) Saving particularly satisfying words to say out loud
Persimmon
Lugubrious
Archipelago
Rolling them around in my mouth like high-quality fairy wine when no one's listening (okay, K’s always listening, sorry love xo)
I do love showering last thing before bed by candlelight, medievally, in a 21st-century, highly convenient way.
Deliciously'kooky!' I'm 93 and I still smile as I replace my tiny china pig (in secretary mode, sitting with a pad and pencil) on my bedside unit, 'interviewing' the Corgi dog a dear lady gave me as an evacuee over eighty-three years ago!! It's the simple things. . . Cheers. Joy Lennick