five photos, a recipe, and a foray into spring
hiii,
Not much to report over here but I suppose something on the blog is always better than nothing on the blog.
Things lately: I've somehow read eight books already this year, which is unprecedented progress towards my goal of reading 25 books in all of 2026. I'm finally tackling reading all of the people that I'd been semi-avoiding for years, not for negative reasons, but just because I didn't really feel like it was the right time for me to be engaging with them. A few I've already gotten to this year: Torrey Peters, Michelle Tea, Dennis Cooper, with Eileen Myles and Maggie Nelson on order from the library. It will be a weird year-in-review for books I think! Open to book recs at the moment, especially if you're the type of person who has read any of these authors and liked them (…. i know what you are….). You should email me.
Tessa came to visit last week and so it was lovely to have her around but then also I've been wondrously unproductive. No blogging, just puttering around town and talking about a billion things. Two sort of big feelings came up for me - one being that since moving across the country I forget how significant and comfortable it feels to be in the physical presence of very best friends. This is not to say that I don't have wonderful friends here (because I really really do), but there's something special about the people who have known me very closely for a long stretch of time. Also, Tessa is perceptive and often sees me clearer than I can see myself, which is a testament to her strength as a friend but also the sheer amount of time we have spent in proximity. Given how much everything in my life has shifted in the last three months it's nice to have someone to check me on my bullshit, or to at least tell me when my thinking patterns are unproductive or self-destructive. After a very silly and giggly week, she has flown the coop back to her house and I miss her presence already.
I share with you five photos:
Tessa and I spent a sunny day on the beach together, talking about the things that have happened to us recently, most of them sad or stressful, but a good handful of them were promising. The sky was blue and lovely and a nice lady was flying her monarch butterfly kite near us. An older gentleman asked if he could take it for a spin and was promptly given the string to toss the kite into the sky. A nice reminder that no one ever really outgrows the joy of a kite on a beautiful day.
The gang all went up for a walk on the outskirts of town. A little candid shot of GD poking around in the stream. She plays a delightful outdoor educator role very naturally, and she taught me how to identify a certain type of pine cone. The quality of the light through the trees was so beautiful that day, I closed my eyes and really tried to make sure I would be able to hold on to the image in my memory.
From the same day, I include a photo of the Nett Hier sticker we found. These Nett Hier stickers have followed me around since 2023, when I first spotted them in Belgium. Laura, my roommate at the time, first introduced them to me and we slowly developed a running game of how many we could find in any given afternoon. Life is really just playing games with your friends for all of eternity, isn't it? Anyway, Laura, (because I know you will eventually read this), I am still thinking of you and our lovely friendship from half the world away. I've still got a whole crop of these stickers from when Lydia (my favourite resident of Baden-Wuttemburg) sent them to me, so it's a good reminder that I need to put them up around town.
Been meandering around the city (as always) (i love going on walks). I usually don't have my phone on me during longer walks in order to prevent digital distraction, but on occasion it's nice to be able to capture something. I'm always on the hunt for discarded paper. I'm taking this yoga challenge as an anonymous suggestion from the universe. I agree with the author, I think the camel pose makes more sense at the end.
Look I'm not a food blogger but this salmon recipe is so good it deserves a permanent place on the blog. This is half because I feel obliged to share it with you but also because I keep losing the recipe somewhere in mine and Tessa's text history. It's good. I stole it from her and she stole it from her favourite cookbook growing up.
grilled masala salmon recipe
ingredients
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon ground coriander
¼ teaspoon ground tumeric
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¾ lb. skinned salmon fillet
2 tbsp. dijon mustard
1 tbsp olive oil
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
Rub salt, cumin, coriander, tumeric, and cayenne on fish. Cover and refrigerate 1-4 hrs.
Heat broiler. Mix mustard, oil, lemon juice in bowl. Add cilantro. Rub all over fish and place under broiler (5 inches from heat source). When top has browned lightly (4 minutes~), turn oven to bake, set temp to 350F. Bake 10 minutes or until fish is cooked through.
Other thoughts from the past few weeks - it's basically spring and there are cherry blossoms. Spring is usually a tough season for me. Historically it's been a time of major life changes and cycles of deaths/breakups/bad news, so I think my brain just gets a bit afraid. So many people tend to be most affected by the switch from Fall into Winter, so it always feels funny to me to be so out of sync at a time when people are usually optimistic about the warmer weather. Something about the impending heat makes me feel paranoid, anxious, like I'm running out of time. Scrambling to get it all together before the summer hits. Switching over into a different wardrobe is weirdly a bit tough too. I'm looking for clothes but yet I'm finding it hard to percieve how I look lately. I don't mean this in a negative sort of oh-its-hard-to-look-at-myself type way (I don't have a negative self-image, really at all), but it's more of an aversion to the physical form generally that's been hitting me lately. I'm thinking a lot about performance of the self and how my identity shifts depending on what my life circumstances look like. I should stop thinking about bodies. This is a gorgeous thing about the internet. On my website I don't have a body. I am just zeros and ones conveying my thoughts to you. This is a comfort to me.
from a set of zeroes and ones to another,
s
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___Thank you to BearBlog legend Robert Birming for the quick photo gallery tutorial I used here :)