Monday Miscellany: A time traveler? a metaphor? a delusion?
Notes from February 23 - March 1
Having spent the weekend on a beach retreat with my book club, I come to you today bearing glad tidings of the mighty Atlantic!
This was my first time seeing the ocean in over a year and it was so nice to be back. Highly recommend renting a beach house in the off-season—it’s super affordable, the shore is practically empty, and the views are simply to die for. The weather was nice enough for us to walk down to the pier and back, but also chilly enough to justify lots of indoor relaxation time. Talk about a win/win.
Read this week
On Saturday afternoon we blocked out a couple of hours to gorge on charcuterie and discuss our most recent pick, The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward. I suggested this one because it was the inaugural book published under the Well-Read Black Girl x Liveright collaboration and I’d read and enjoyed some of Daley-Ward’s previous poetic work. The premise of her debut novel is absolutely killer. When their mother drowns in the Thames, infant twins Clara and Dempsey are separated and sent to live with different families. They see each other periodically as they grow up but are mostly estranged, Clara becoming a successful author and public speaker with an alcohol problem, Dempsey turning into somewhat of a recluse obsessed with her own wellness. One day as she’s leaving a department store, Clara spots a woman she’s convinced is her and Dempsey’s late mother—though by all appearances she’s the same age as the twins.
I was captivated from the jump. Who is this mystery woman—a stranger? a con artist? the mother Clara thinks she is? a time traveler? a metaphor? a delusion? Books that allow for, or even encourage, individual readers’ own interpretations are some of my favorites. An unreliable narrator? Hell yeah. Three or more of them? HELL yeah. There’s so much to dig into and break apart here, so much fruitful book club discussion material.
Ultimately what kept The Catch from being a slam dunk, what frustrated my friends and me the most, was the conclusion. The pace is pretty consistent for the first three quarters of the book, the tension and weirdness building at a steady clip, but the last bit goes suddenly and unexpectedly off the rails and from that point nothing makes sense, even within the structure of this unsettled and dreamlike world. There’s even a list at the end that spells out all the different ways one might interpret what happened, and… I don’t want that? Let me revel in the ambiguity and talk through it with other readers and tease out my own understanding! Having enjoyed the rest of the reading experience, I was extra disappointed at the way it wrapped up. That said, if you’ve read this one, please hit me with your reactions and theories!
Another book club I’ve been participating in through the local art museum met this week to discuss The Vegetarian by Han Kang, a short novel that has been on my to-read list for years. I was so thankful for the push to finally pick it up. This one follows a young South Korean woman, Yeong-hye, who has a particularly violent dream and as a result decides to stop eating meat. Her husband and family do not take the news well, reacting with confusion, disgust, and anger, and their attempts to make her change her mind get more and more extreme as time goes on. Kang writes in a very spare and straightforward style, the book clocking in at less than 200 pages, and yet she’s unpacking some intense and weighty topics through Yeong-hye’s story: societal expectations, misogyny, patriarchy, violence, greed, sexism, bodily autonomy, capitalism, sexual assault, and more. It’s ripe for conversation and will likely also make a rewarding future re-read.
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Seen and heard this week
Oh hey, have you heard of Heated Rivalry (2025)?? My book club put the first episode on before dinner on Saturday, and then oops, didn’t stop until we finished the entire season. I think I’m probably the last person alive to watch this show, the mega-popular screen adaptation of Rachel Reid’s mega-popular gay hockey romance books. I had planned to get around to it eventually and wasn’t avoiding it on purpose, but maybe the overwhelming hype made me subconsciously resistant? Whatever the case, thank goodness for friends who sit us down and force-feed us beautiful experiences. We laughed, we blushed, we wiped away tears. I will be rewatching as soon as possible.
As Jordan and I have been reading through This Year, John Darnielle’s new book of annotated Mountain Goats lyrics, I’ve been exposed to a lot of songs from the band’s formative years that I didn’t previously know very well.1 One of those, “Going to Scotland,” from the Nothing for Juice compilation, has since become a bit of a favorite/fixation,2 and I think this is why:
It opens with a barn owl trapped in the rafters
The vocal harmonies between John and his then-bandmate Rachel are simple and perfect
There is an actual chorus that repeats a few times, a rarity in the early catalog
The chord progression is predictable yet deeply satisfying, especially on the line “but that was the only thing we knew” at the end of the refrain
It’s sensual?? “I took your hips in my hands and I drew you down to the newfound rich brown deep wet ground, had a vision of you burning on my mind.” JOHN, okay!
The tight two-minute duration is long enough to hook me in but short enough to leave me wanting more, so I’ll put it on once and twenty minutes later realize that I’ve looped it ten times
Haiku round-up
This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:
Monday, February 23
Attempt to open an infinite nesting doll, never reach the end
Tuesday, February 24
A thud and away, prey limp in your quiet claws, awe left in your wake
Wednesday, February 25
Wind roars in earbuds as, head down, I pick up speed racing toward an end
Thursday, February 26
Abandon all hope of a slow, relaxing start They’re storming the gates
Friday, February 27
Let’s hear it for the unexpected roadside fields of purple flowers
Saturday, February 28
Palette of pastels fading with the setting sun This evening is art
Sunday, March 1
Shorebirds gather close, bobbing gently on the sea as they greet the dawn
Until next time
One of the things I love about traveling, aside from the experience itself, is the way it briefly interrupts my routine, shakes me out of the rut I might’ve unintentionally fallen into, and reminds me that I have free will. While I do crave a certain level of predictability in my day-to-day, that can also become a trap—and suddenly life is just work, dinner, the same activities and habits, the same TV show, sleep, repeat. But going to the beach for the past few days felt like visiting a different world, one that’s a mere four-hour drive away. If I can fit that into my schedule, why can’t I regularly manage some smaller adventures too? What’s stopping me from going thrifting on an afternoon after a barista shift? Or taking myself to a favorite coffee shop on one of my mornings off? Or reading and writing at the library instead of on my couch, for a change of scenery? Truly nothing, beyond my own inertia.
So I guess what I’m saying is: here’s to remembering to break free of the established patterns from time to time. I think it would do all of us some good.
See you next Monday, and until then, I like the way you do that right thurr!
♥︎ Emily
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If you’re unfamiliar with John and tMG, take a brief gander on your streaming platform of choice and you’ll see that dude is, to put it mildly, prolific.
I may or may not have listened to it twelve times in a row on my drive to the beach Friday night, in an attempt to fully memorize the lyrics.