nice things lately

mochi, ceramics, and pilates for fall? groundbreaking.

ube mochi ice cream
Fie upon you, Trader Joe’s. Mochi ice cream is already very good. Ube mochi ice cream is even better. I don’t know why this stuff is so good. The ice cream itself has this beautiful light consistency that might remind my fellow fat kids of what it tasted like to eat a frozen tub of Cool Whip. And it’s purple.

“In Your Head,” Nilüfer Yanya

As I’ve said: I’m a pop simpleton. I want hooks. I don’t want breathy sad stuff. I don’t want whispers at dawn. My brain is already 85% whispers at dawn and fairies covered in dew. I need the right guitar sound and I need something bouncy and I need a nice, low voice. I need something wistful that doesn’t sound wistful, because that’s kind of what the world seems like to me: yeah, OK, maybe it’s a slow song, but we’re in a roller rink. You know?

beginner wheel throwing class at Green & Bisque Clayhouse
One complaint I have about writing is that it doesn’t look like you’re doing anything. You could have done a hard day’s work—legitimately, figured out many things about a novel’s structure or finally realized why a character does what they do—and have nothing but a word document that is 368 characters longer than it was yesterday. Can you tell the difference between a writer who is productively hunched over a laptop vs. a writer who is reading r/burningman in a schadenfreude way? No, you cannot.

But taking a ceramics class on the other hand—you have nothing but proof that you’ve been doing something. There are tools and aprons. Tangible artifacts. Clay on your hands. Glaze on the toe of your shoe. As I wrote about here recently, it was lucky for me to be taking a wheel throwing class while I was also feeling the sting of rejection. It gave me a venue in which to appreciate myself being messy and trying.