The Opposite of Evil is Doughnuts

This Morning, No 87

Oysters for our anniversary last night. <3

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The glaze was powdered sugar and lemon juice. The tea cake itself tasted tangy, probably yogurt in the batter. I ate it all on the brief walk from café to car door. This coffee shop doesn’t know it, but it’s become a sanctuary of mine this past week and a half, where approximately every other day we are touring Bed-Stuy for an apartment. I stop in for a comforting beverage, but mostly for the bathroom. They never have toilet paper at an open house. There was apartment we were excited about. Applied. Felt confident. Just got an email that feels like this first text of a breakup from a potential landlord. That future, gone. Moving on.

This country, this capitalism, this healthcare system, discourages a person from having a life that doesn’t fit into the average cultural framework of working a steady, corporate job. To have a life centered around anything other than money disadvantages you when competing for resources. In the process of applying to rent a new home, I attempt to make myself appear infallible, which is hard to do having chosen a vaguely left of center life. As a self-employed person without pay stubs, I apply with bank statements, proof of income, savings, any evidence of responsible personhood. I vomit up all my bureaucratic contents then look up at my potential landlords with watery eyes, hoping they’ll accept me - us. I tend in dynamics like these, meaning change that necessitates endless forms, to existentially freak out (can you tell?). I was never good at following directions in school, always moving a bit too fast to read the fine print. It is a pattern that I lose my shit, you could say, when big change is afoot. Famously not graceful during transitions. It appears as though I am aging out of this dynamic - one can hope. It’s becoming clear that it’s not a particularly interesting or helpful approach to change, especially since the circumstances will persist indefinitely. It’s part of the reality of being here – forms, change, movement - this physical realm, which on the whole I tend to enjoy.

So I take refuge in sour lemon cakes, briny oysters, jelly filled doughnuts and coffee, to return me to where I actually am. In my body, in this moment. The future in some real way, unknowable. This puckering of my cheeks, salt water clarity, and perfect combination (coffee and doughnuts), I can be certain of. Everything else, who knows.

When so much change is afoot, moving home and potentially job, I tend to perceive it as a threat, because transformation is challenging. But challenge and hard work is an inevitability. It is not something to fear, but rather something to get comfortable with if one is interested in participating fully in their life. This destructive and fear fueled administration that has taken this country hostage, is permeating our culture with an overwhelming sense of uncertainty and instability. By watching this dynamic play out at scale, it’s evident that they are using fear as a tool to make us feel inconsequential and helpless. The obviousness of this tactic has helped me to clarify that the majority of fear in my own life is self-inflicted, and is making a similar attempt to keep me small and disconnected from my sense of vitality and life force.

Listening to Elise Loehnen’s podcast episode with Phil Stutz yesterday, I was struck by this phrase because I know it to be true. Stutz, a psychiatrist and author, said: “the opposite of evil is not good. The opposite of evil is creativity.” Creativity as a posture, an approach to life, a connection to and belief in your own agency.

The fear that has permeated this moment in my life has to do with the feeling like I can’t handle the change coming my way. In recent meditations I’ve discovered that this fear roots back to a belief that I am defective in some subtle way. What that does is make me feel that fear is a stop sign, like I don’t have what it takes to meet the moment. Rather than an energy of encouragement, a trail marker alerting me that I’m going in the right direction of evolution and growth. I have wanted change because I want more from my life. Or I want more of me in my life. I want to understand the scope of my potential, to feel it grounded in reality more than in theory. The fear is, am I really going to commit to be in the process of creative participation in each day and the deluge of decision making that necessitates? If it’s a counter to evil, I’m not sure there is any other choice.

Something I have heard myself advising other people recently, is to “get over themselves.” I think what I mean when I say that, is to get out of their own way, so that they can be a conduit for whatever needs to come through them. I am in a moment of getting over myself, getting over my fears, and knowing that it doesn’t mean they are gone, just that they are not required in this moment. What is, is the cohabitation with uncertainty, the openness to the mystery of a life unfolding. The willingness to participate in the perpetual creative act of living life.

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The Current Stack

The Tears of Things

Richard Rohr

Rohr explores the wisdom of the Hebrew prophets and how they can inform our current moment in history. I read this book almost like poetry, taking in a handful of pages in the mornings to set the tone for the day.

Care and Feeding

Laurie Woolever

I’m just at the beginning of this book. I have a bit of a distaste for kitchen trauma porn, as I think it is a bit on trend and dated (and dare I say personally triggering), but the writing has got me hooked. A small sliver of my psyche is residing at the dining room table in Babbo beside Woolever, who does an incredible job at painting the frenetic quality of day in the life of a restaurant.

Be Ready When The Luck Happens

Ina Garten

Ina was one of my first culinary idols. I would watch Barefoot Contessa after school, eating butter and salami sandwiches on sourdough bread from E.A.T. Her recipes were some of the first I ever tried my hand at. Her Beatty’s chocolate cake, gruyere heavy mac n’ cheese and cranberry orange scones still deliver. Ina has this feminine authority in the kitchen that I recognized in myself, rather than the domineering and bombastic Batali’s and Lagasse’s of the same era.

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A note to say, April and May have the potential to be a bit full on in my life, so it’s possible This Morning is going to take a back seat. I just wanted to give you a heads up and not leave you guessing in case this corner of the internet goes quiet. I’m sure I’ll pop back on here and there, just at an irregular cadence.

Thank you so much, as always, for reading along.

Coffee and doughnuts as I write to you this morning.