I have questions - Austin Kleon

21 good books I read in 2021

Saturday, January 1, 2022

Here are my favorite reads of 2021, presented in the order I read them. (Spoiler alert: A few of these will be picks for our Read Like an Artist book club in 2022.) I’ve put [***] next to my three favorites.

The Poetics of Space
Gaston Bachelard

“It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.” One of those infuriating books that lose you for a few pages and you start skimming and the very second you’re about to put it down and read something else, a sparkling gem of a sentence appears that you double-underline and scribble in your commonplace book, and gets you to start reading again.

One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder
Brian Doyle

A posthumous collection of an author I wish I’d read when he was alive. Maybe my favorite thing I read all winter. I savored a handful of essays each night in bed. If you’re new to his work, try his ode to the heart, “Joyas Voladoras,” or “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever.” There’s a big archive of his at The American Scholar. (Recommended to me by a newsletter reader. Thanks, Cate!)

No One Is Talking About This
Patricia Lockwood

“You’ll be nostalgic for this, too, if you make it.” Think about how hard this is to pull off: a poet writes a bestselling memoir and then follows it up with a novel. (Priestdaddy was on my favorites of 2018.) One of the most original writers of our generation. I will be instantly reading whatever she writes next.

Too Loud a Solitude
Bohumil Hrabal

The Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal once worked as a trash compactor, and, according to the critic James Wood, he “rescued books from the compacting machine and built a library of them in the garage of his country cottage outside Prague.” He based his wild, short novel on his experiences, giving them to the fictional narrator, Hanta, who says he “can’t quite tell which of my thoughts come from me and which from my books.” (Same.)

Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties
Ian MacDonald

Have you heard of the Beatles? They were pretty good. This is probably the best book about the band I’ve ever read. I love how saucy MacDonald gets: of “A Day in the Life,” arguably the high point of their achievement, he writes, “More nonsense has been written about this recording than anything else The Beatles produced.” Of Paul’s granny music: “If any single recording shows why The Beatles broke up, it is MAXWELL’S SILVER HAMMER.” A highlight for me is when MacDonald points out that how many of the big British bands of the sixties were made up of kids who went to art school. (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Who, etc.) You could blow up the chronology stuffed in the back and make another book out of it.

The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands
edited by Huw Lewis-Jones

A downright gorgeous book. I’ve always been a bit obsessed with maps and even started my own collection of imaginary maps way back in 2008. If I’d have owned this book when I was doing my undergrad thesis, who knows, maybe I’d be a novelist? The Writer’s Map would pair well with Peter Turchi’s book, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer.

The Order of Time
Carlo Rovelli
(translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell)

Beautifully written and beautifully translated from the Italian by husband/wife team Simon Carnell and Erica Segre. Sadly, I found out that Segre died unexpectedly this year. Rovelli said, “They not only captured perfectly my meaning but they could completely render the feeling and sound of my Italian — and improve it, because their English language is remarkably beautiful and rich.” (I read several of the couple’s translations of Rovelli’s books, including Seven Brief Lessons on Physics.)

Emerson: The Mind on Fire
Robert D. Richardson

The great reading project of my spring was reading Richardson’s trilogy of biographies: Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (which was so good Annie Dillard wrote him a fan letter and they wound up getting married), Emerson: The Mind on Fire (which I swear reads in spots like he was showing off for his new partner), and William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. (I also read his short biography of his mentor, the biographer Walter Jackson Bate.) Emerson is my favorite of the three and set me on a path of rethinking my indexing and filing systems. (If you’re new to Richardson’s work, I might start with First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process.)

Conversations of Goethe
Johann Peter Eckermann

This was a favorite book of Emerson and some of the other transcendentalists. Eckermann was 31 when he met the 74-year-old Goethe, and this book is a record of their conversations over nine years. Like many old books, it’s a great reminder that human beings have always been hilarious — I love how Eckermann will ask a question and Goethe goes into these long monologues that read almost stand-up routines. “The truth must be repeated over and over,” Goethe said. “My merit is, that I have found it also, that I have said it again, and that I have striven to bring the truth once more into a confused world.”

In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas
Larry McMurtry

“Let those who are free of Texas enjoy their freedom.” McMurtry’s first book of essays, published in 1968, after his novel, The Last Picture Show. Belongs on the shelf next to Wright’s God Save Texas and other great books about this insane state I happen to live in. (Related reading: The Pirate Gardener.)

Smile: The Story of a Face
Sarah Ruhl

“Imperfection is a portal. Whereas perfection and symmetry create distance… imperfection and the messy particular had the power to open the heart.” I loved Ruhl’s 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write, so I was delighted to read an advance copy of her memoir. A playwright, McArthur “Genius,” and mother of 3, she writes beautifully about the intertwining of her art and everyday life.

Several Short Sentences About Writing***
Verlyn Klinkenborg

“Being a writer is an act of perpetual self-authorization,” Klinkenborg writes. “Who’s going to give you the authority to feel that what you notice is important? It will have to be you.” This is simply one of the best books about writing I’ve ever read. Up there with Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and other classics. (Related reading: “The most important thing you do.”)

Prince and the Parade and Sign O’ The Times Era Studio Sessions: 1985 and 1986
Duane Tudahl

I am a recording nerd who grew up obsessing over books about The Beatles’ recording sessions, so I tore through the official the Prince archivist’s second volume chronicling the Purple One’s unbelievable output at what was arguably the height of his powers. (Read along with this Spotify playlist!) Tudahl’s volume about the Purple Rain sessions inspired another playlist and made my favorite reads of 2018. I will read as many of these as he puts together.

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness
Kristen Radtke

These can be lonely times, and this was the right book at the right time for me. Somewhat unclassifiable — my favorite kind of book! — it’s not a traditional comic in panels, but more a kind of illustrated nonfiction essay. Made me want to re-read Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City and pick up Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together. I’m now a big fan of Radtke’s work, and I also enjoyed her first book, Imagine Wanting Only This.

Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light
Leonard Shlain

Alain de Botton once said that the least interesting thing about religion is whether it’s true or not, and I feel that way about Shlain’s thesis that great artists anticipated leaps in physics — sometimes by several centuries. What is thrilling to me as a reader is to watch a sharp mind work through the history of these two fields and juxtapose their developments. (There’s a nice afterword in new editions about how the surgeon came to be a writer.) I also enjoyed his book, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Robin Wall Kimmerer

The fall started off with the Delta spike in Texas and my kids home from school, so I took a lot more solo walks and listened to audiobooks, which is something I rarely do. (For a taste of whether you’ll enjoy Kimmerer’s voice, check out her On Being episode.) A major theme of my reading this year was the tragic divorce between the arts and sciences and how much they need each other and how much real scientists and artists have in common. (At one point in school, Kimmerer is told by a botany advisor, “If you want to study beauty, you should go to art school.”) This was published in 2016, but re-published last year and has spent 87+ weeks on the bestseller list, for good reason.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Oliver Burkeman

As he did with The Antidote, one of my favorite reads of 2013, Burkeman is able to pull off this great magic trick of writing a self-help book that not only transcends its genre, it also pokes fun at it. (This trick was a big influence on my book, Show Your Work!, which is the first time I consciously wrote a book knowing it’d be shelved in self-help.) It’s very hard to pull off. I’d also like to point out that Burkeman takes time in between his books, and works through a lot of ideas in his column and great newsletter, which I think leads to much richer work. (For a taste of the book, see my post, “The Principles of Patience.”)

Matrix***
Lauren Groff

“All souls are limited in the circles of their own understanding.” This was my book of the year. Just a stunning read. A historical fiction that manages to illuminate contemporary issues. (Telling the truth but telling it slant, as Emily Dickinson would put it.) I started the book around when Daylight Savings began and my clock and schedule got all messed up. It’s the perfect book to read when you’re up at weird hours, like a sleepy nun. (I drew a fantastic lecture about how Groff put the book together.) Can’t wait to read her other books, and her new one, which will be set in Jamestown.

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World***
Iain McGilchrist

I have been meaning to read this book for over a decade. I first purchased it in 2010 after hearing Lynda Barry sing its praises. I balked at its heft and its length and its Bible-thin pages and sold the hardcover at some point before one of our moves. Then I bought the paperback one day at Bookpeople after reading Leonard Shlain’s work. It took me two months to finish because I found it hard to read more than 10 pages in a day. It’s one of those books that has a cult following, because once you read it, it’s hard not to see the world through its lens.

The Sentence
Louise Erdrich

My first Erdrich book, but definitely not my last. I picked it up knowing nothing about it, and for maybe half the book had no idea where it was going. I just liked being on the ride. It’s a novel about ghosts and bookstores and the pandemic. I didn’t plan it, but it seems right that the fall started with a book about indigenous wisdom and ended with a book about indigenous wisdom.

When We Cease To Understand The World
Benjamin Labatut
(translated by Adrian Nathan West)

This book, finished in the early morning on Dec. 31st, is a prime example of why I don’t make my year end list until the very end of the year. A book that somehow ties my love of reading about physics in with my love of gardening as a metaphor. (The original title was Un Verdor Terrible, which translates to something like, A Terrible Greening.) “This is a work of fiction based on real events,” Labatut writes in the acknowledgements. “The quantity of fiction grows throughout the book.” So, the first essay has only one fictional paragraph, and by the end, it’s all made up, “while still trying to remain faithful to the scientific concepts discussed.” A wonderful way to end the reading year.

* * *

10 great ideas from books that didn’t crack my top 21

I read a lot of books every year, and while making this list, I thought about how Errol Morris says he doesn’t think there’s such a thing as a great movie or a great book, there are just good scenes, good paragraphs, etc.

So here’s a list of 10 ideas from good books that didn’t crack my top 21, for whatever reason. In some ways, I think this list is more interesting than my top 21, and all these books are worth reading:

1. The harmony of tensions from Heraclitus’s Fragments.

2. “Compare and despair!” from Beth Pickens’ Your Art Will Save Your Life.

3. The importance of taking a day off, from Abraham Heschel’s The Sabbath, by way of Beth Pickens’ Make Your Art No Matter What. (Both of Beth’s books are very much worth reading.)

4. Narratives built on cooperation and networking, from Gail Carriger’s The Heroine’s Journey.

5. Narratives based on shapes found in nature, from Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode.

6. Writing as you read, from Sönke Ahrens’ How to Take Smart Notes.

7. “Disgust is a survival trait” and the idea that a good video game keeps you playing until it has taught you everything it knows (substitute “book” for “video game” and “reading” for “playing”) from Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun.

8. Giving the household a way to be alone while they’re together, from Sarah Susanka’s The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live, borrowed from A Pattern Language.

9. The history of burnout in our boomer parents in Anne Helen Petersen’s Can’t Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation.

10. Erik Seidel’s line, “Less certainty, more inquiry,” from Maria Konnikova’s The Biggest Bluff. (A great book from a writer I admire that I read in the no man’s land of 2020/2021 turnover. It should be on one of my lists!!)

* * *

If you liked this list, you will enjoy my newsletter, where I share what I’m reading every week, and you might also enjoy the Read Like An Artist book club, where I pick a favorite book every month.

I’ve been doing this list since 2006. You can read them all here.

I hope you read widely and adventurously, but more importantly, I hope you read what you want to read! Life is short and time is precious, and any book that doesn’t have you turning the pages is not the book for you right now.

Having trouble reading? Here’s what works for me.

Happy reading!

100 things that made my year (2021)

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Getting the whole household vaccinated.
Putting in a pool! Swimming in the pool! Reading big fat paperbacks while floating in the pool! Drawing comix and doodling and writing poems in the pool! Talking on the phone while cleaning the pool! Nightswimming with booze in a plastic cup. Damselflies mating on my shoulder. The way the sunlight reflecting off the pool casts weird light all over the house. Waking up on my pizza raft in late October with a mild sunburn. Discovering that you can still float in the pool even when it’s too cold to swim. (Can you tell I’m a Pisces rising?)
Walking. (Especially in the morning.) The Shoal Creek greenbelt.
The continuing adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Coconut the Owl(s). Having a house built for them. Seeing them mate on a tree branch at dusk. Making pictures and posters of them whenever they went missing. Feeling like Tony Soprano when the ducks flew away. Comforting myself in their absence with the livestream of their cousins, Merlin and Minerva. Finding out Picasso had an owl. How Mr. Coconut returned with the partial lunar eclipse.
Playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on my kids’ Nintendo Switch. Disappearing into Hyrule. Watching Meg get into Animal Crossing. Mario Kart tournaments with the whole family. Being asked to play Minecraft and the boys teaching me to make a rollercoaster.
Family pizza and a movie night. So many good movies, and at least two masterpieces: Kiki’s Delivery Service and Paddington 2.
Playing piano. Learning Debussy’s first arabesque and “Bruyeres.” Guaraldi’s “Great Pumpkin Waltz.” Even learning the Succession theme. How I can hear a song 1,000 times, but the minute I learn it on the piano, realizing how much I didn’t know it.
Starting a 5-year commonplace diary and writing a favorite sentence in it every day.
My magic brush pen.
Prismacolor Ebony Graphites.
Copying out a poem on my typewriter and picking it apart.
Newsletter 2.0. All my kind readers.
Starting the Read Like an Artist book club with Literati.
Dipping into the archives and writing the afterward for the 10th anniversary edition of Steal Like An Artist. Learning InDesign well enough that I could lay out the whole Afterword myself.
How my books continue to have a life out in the world. YouTuber Ali Abdaal sharing how Show Your Work! changed his life and the book finding an even bigger audience. How people are slowly discovering that Keep Going is basically a pandemic manual.
Making collages out of used fireworks and lifted type and cyanotypes of dead things I find in the yard. Losing myself. Getting into the flow state. Stepping into the portal.
The tenderness of school pickups and drop-offs. Proper distance. What George Saunders calls “that airport feeling.”
Driving around with the kids, blasting “Surfin’ Bird” and the Bluey soundtrack in the car.
A road trip to Laity Lodge and the Frio Canyon. Making a fire and sitting out underneath the stars. (Jules: “It looks like the fire is trying to tell us a story.”)
My Apple Watch and Apple AirPods, two pieces of technology I initially scoffed at that Meg bought me and I ended up loving.
Making a page for my zines.
Spiffing up my speaking page and having our best year ever. Having a good rig, so I can talk and draw at the same time. Speaking to a quilting conference about my tape quilts. Working on more than one talk at a time. All my great clients.
Conversational shortcuts. Not greeting people with, “How are you?” but saying, “It’s nice to see you.”
A real January snow day in Texas. (Which was later overshadowed by the awful winter storm in February.) How much more the new growth of spring meant after the storm. How the palms regrew their fronds after being trimmed.
Trying to actually take weekends off. Pressing Schedule Send.
Letting things sit until they tell you what they want to be. Joy Williams saying more people should get writer’s block. (How Elton John used to say to Billy Joel, “Why don’t you put out more albums?” and Billy Joel would reply, “Why don’t you put out less?”) Remembering that nobody wants to read a book. Making covers for books I don’t intend to write. Knowing the difference between exploiting and exploring.
Listening to short stories instead of podcasts. Typing a short story writer’s name into my podcast app and seeing what comes up.
How some books suck you in and some books spin you out.
Tales of marginalia.
Leaving notes of encouragement to myself in really long books.
Reading like a diver — sometimes going deep, sometimes skimming. Reading like a bird of prey — swooping and perching.
Reading with a blade and a glue stick.
The Thoreau/Emerson/James trilogy of biographer Robert D. Richardson.
Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary.
Reading about physics. Leonard Shlain’s Art & Physics. 4 or 5 books by Carlo Rovelli. Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease To Understand The World.
Accumulating more gardening metaphors! How knowing a little bit about plants helped me realize I’m not languishing, I’m dormant. Anne Patchett on being a compost heap. Learning what seeds look like. Dormancy and Wintering. Not seizing the day — plucking it! Not being a pirate or a farmer, but a pirate gardener.
Becoming someone who takes comfort in mindless yard work. Literally tending my plot. Moving rocks with my wheelbarrow and shovel. Mowing with our old-fashioned push mower. Raking leaves. Power washing. Growing grass. My gardener’s hat.
Trying to love the squirrels, even though I hate them so much for invading the owl house and dropping half-eaten pecans all over the yard.
The total chaos of having a 6-year-old and a 9-year-old. One still attached to that little kid magic, and one on the cusp of becoming a pre-teen. The roughhousing. The fights and the love. Putting their arms around each other while watching TV. How much they read. How Jules leaves amazing drawings all over the house. How he sometimes keeps a diary. How Owen does the crossword in the NYTimes Kids’ Section. How they play keyboards at opposite ends of the house and make it sound like a Guitar Center showroom. How much they love Wheel of Fortune. How their dresser is basically a museum of technology. All the funny stuff they say. How they are always making fun of me. Their short film, “Cowardly Papa.” Wondering why Jules always drew me with a goofy oversized beard and then realizing it’s because that’s literally how he sees me.
Not trying to be a great parent, just a “good enough” parent. Telling them as much as they need to know, and no more. Playing a long game. Practicing patience. How Meg looks up a joke online and writes it on a post-it note that she sticks in their school lunches.
Drawing Batman cowls and Mario hats and mustaches on people in the NYTimes. Learning the kind of math they teach in school now. Making fart collages! Playing with their spin art kit. Printmaking with vegetables like leftover peppers and onions. Painting over Jules’ drawings.
Rethinking Owen’s stutter as “Our Stutter,” because it’s something we share. All the cool people in the stuttering community I’ve met. Brunch with John Hendrickson. JJJJJerome Ellis’s The Clearing.
How much we all still have to learn about ourselves and each other. How I wrote a post about aphantasia — the inability to make pictures in your head — and Meghan said, “I think I have that.” (She does!)
This photo Jules took of me.
The United States Postal Service. Getting mail from artists I love. Jules sending a letter to Nintendo and getting a response.
The re-opening of our local library branch. That feeling when your holds come in. Browsing the kids’ graphic novel section for the boys. My “What’s more punk than the public library?” t-shirt.
Kind nurses.
The idea that curiosity is not a luxury. Writing as just pointing at things. Playing an ignorant guy who’s curious.
Walking past a discarded beer can so many times I decided to turn it into installation art.
Trying to love Austin, as much as it is changing. Shouting “That’s right baby, when you got it flaunt it!” at a couple parked in a Ferrari on Burnet Road on Easter Day.
A woman on Nextdoor asking for a recommendation for ghost removal and how many people knew “a guy” and also had very specific advice.
Thinking of input as collage. Learning that when Joy Division were making “Love Will Tear us Apart,” they were listening to Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits and Sparks’ “No. 1 in Heaven.” Switching on PBS for 10 minutes every night after whatever we’ve finishing watching and seeing if there are any connections. How reading Carlo Rovelli and watching Michael Mann at the same time means they are now entangled in my brain.
Jarvis Cocker singing Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here.”
The Kata dudes shouting at the Olympics and the kids being bewildered by the spectacle.
Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing.
Denis Johnson’s commonplace book.
Thinking about writing as a spiritual practice. Writing pandemic prayers. Making art as a souvenir of gratitude. Not believing in myself, just trying to keep the channel open. Waiting for that tingle in the scalp. Embracing clichés, puns, and hooks. Skipping the boring parts. Trying to rewind my attention. Searching outside the algorithm. Throwing out the instructions. Not killing my darlings, but relocating them.
The Apple Notes app, how it syncs between phone and computer, sure, but also just crossing things out on a legal pad.
Upgrading to an industrial strength date stamp.
My Goldilocks theory of creativity: how there’s a sweet spot when life is just annoying enough that writing is a nice alternative.
Keeping in mind how toxic fame is. Wishing I had a pseudonym or some heteronyms.
How Instagram isn’t completely terrible yet. Gary Panter’s Instagram index cards. Liana Finck’s new mom cartoons. Monty Don’s gardens. Thor Harris’s life hacks.
The woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi.
The J. Crew pocket t-shirts that Meg buys me on clearance.
Getting in Costco Connection!
Reading an essay and then searching the writer’s Twitter feed to see the tweets that led up to it.
Thinking about time. Geologic time and the trouble with months. Time as the stream you go fishing in. Almanacs and cyclical time. How what you think is boring now may be interesting in the future.
Watching skating videos when I’m missing California.
Listening to the Radio Garden app.
Listening to a bunch of interviews with the same interesting person until you memorize their sound bites and big ideas.
Watching TV! The Knick! The Mandalorian! The White Lotus! Hacks! Grand Designs. The Durrells in Corfu. What We Do in the Shadows. Reservation Dogs. All Creatures Great and Small. Sex Education. The Great. Ghosts! Squid Game. J.B. Smoove as Leon on Curb Your Enthusiasm. How being a Roy Kent is better than being a Ted Lasso. Seeing Rick Steves on TV and shouting, in Chappelle’s Rick James voice, “You want to smoke with the ol’ boy Rick Steves?!?” Trash TV! Motel Makeover! How no matter how many episodes of Magnum, P.I. I wander into halfway through, I still can’t figure out what’s going on. Discovering we have 80s and 90s music video channels on the TV. How, at certain point in the year, Marky Mark’s “Good Vibrations” came on at the same time every night. The story of “Thong Song.” The small thrill when the Roku TV changes backgrounds with the season.
Listening to music! Blasting Depeche Mode all summer after watching Depeche Mode 101. Finally getting into Sparks thanks to The Sparks Brothers. “Bruyeres” recorded at home by the pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. Pharaoh Sanders and Floating Points’ Promises. Billy Nomates’ Emergency Telephone EP. (Made in her shed!) Dry Cleaning’s New Long Leg. The “Post-Brexit New Wave.” Horse Lords’ The Common Task. Suzanne Ciani. Laura Mvula’s Pink Noise. h hunt’s Playing Piano For Dad. Noveller. The Krautrock-inspired Lower Dens record, Nootropics. A playlist of tracks from the label Tasty Morsels. Silk Sonic’s “Smokin Out The Window.”
The way Jonathan Richman talks about The Velvet Underground. How even Hans Zimmer describes the Hans Zimmer sound as “that low drone-y thingie.” How Charlie Watts pulled off the hi-hat when he hit his snare.
How, somehow, I’m not sick of The Beatles? Revolution in the Head. Making a playlist of songs they listened to. How hard Paul tried. John Lennon singing “Cathy’s Clown.” The “God” episode of Song Exploder. Even Ringo’s fart.
Listening to a sweet playlist and checking to see who made it and realizing it was ME.
Watching movies! Mostly old movies. Watching half a movie today, half a movie tomorrow. How it was a particularly great year for music movies. Hail Satan! The Duellists. Midnight Run. Dangerous Liaisons. Hustlers. The Lady from Shanghai. Captain Blood. Val. Re-watching Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans with a couple of my buddies online, then rewatching Heat and Collateral. Even Dune! (Especially the David Lynch version.) How if you put Flea in your documentary, he will steal the show. Expecting nothing from Dunkirk or Tenet, and liking them both. (Same for Inherent Vice.) The Donut King. Plan B. Watching Fast 9 in my friend’s backyard and thinking about how much it aligns with The Heroine’s Journey. Derek DelGaudio’s In and Of Itself. Bo Burnham’s Inside.
Reading outside in the yard and smelling something delicious and thinking, “Dang, somebody is having something good for dinner,” then coming inside and discovering that somebody is ME.
Meg’s St. Patrick’s Day feast: corned beef and potatoes and sauerkraut and soda bread and Guinness.
Oysters, clam chowder, a cheeseburger, and affogato at Clark’s, out in their parking lot.
The carne asada burrito at T-Loc’s.
So much takeout and delivery. Stiles and Switch BBQ. Tso’s chinese. Enchiladas y Mas. Bagels from Nervous Charlie’s. Sushi from Kome.
Strawberry ice cream and pretzels.
Goodies from Milk Barn Farm.
Watching Meg fix the dishwasher after watching a YouTube video. The smart LED light Meg installed in Owen’s noise nook. The towel warmer rack she installed in the bathroom.
Fixing my broken prescription sunglasses by using frames from another pair of glasses.
Thinking about the harmony of tension, how most things in life run on the coincidence of opposites, like the string of a guitar slung between two tuning pegs: too slack, it makes no music, too tight, it snaps.
Signing books at Bookpeople. Walking into Kinokuniya and Black Pearl Books to shop and finding out they stocked my books. Meeting booksellers and getting to thank them in person.
Having a really great office, losing the office, and then dreaming about having my own studio again someday, while also knowing that nothing will ever beat working at the kitchen table in the morning sunshine.
When Willie and Merle, the neighbor cats, decided they lived in our yard now. The time Merle ran into the house and a wild chase ensued. How they slept on the porch all night and I had to decide in the morning whether to go outside with my coffee or let them sleep. How much I missed them when they moved to Elgin.
Halloween, the highpoint of the year, in between COVID spikes. Carving pumpkins. Trick or treating with friends and dancing in the streets. The painting I found on the sidewalk.
Playing Uno and Five Card Nancy with the kids. Playing Scrabble with mom.
Approaching 40, realizing how much I can’t afford to lose friends. Calling them on the phone. Meeting up. Having an (outdoor) lunch. Planning to get a bike so we can go for a ride together.
People looking through my telescope and seeing Jupiter’s moons and Saturn’s rings for the first time.
Re-reading letters from my grandma and writing her obituary.
KUTX’s Christmas mix, which I swear made Christmas 100% merrier.
Celebrating our 15th anniversary with Dairy Queen.
The steeple of the church near our house, how I see it in the distance and know I’m almost home.
The sunset over the river at Laguna Gloria.
Hearing the people I love laugh.
Taking afternoon naps.