Coffee Letter #014: My Ins and Outs
When in doubt, make a list.
I knew this day would come, when I’m feeling uninspired and I have no clue what the letter should be about, when I haven’t read any book or watched any film.
A couple of days ago I went to a café with a friend, but my plan was to get there earlier and write — it’s one of my favourite things to spend a half hour just me and my journal, except this time I wanted to carry my book journal and a sketchbook, besides the usual planner and journal. This made me think about the Louise Carmen journals I keep seeing on TikTok — it’s a journal cover with 2-3 smaller notebooks inside that you can pretty much customise and use however you see fit. They look really cool and I could have all my notebooks in one place, at half the size. The downside is that a Louise Carmen journal is €170 without the cute customisations, and I already have other notebooks.
Does a Louise Carmen journal make sense for me, or am I just being influenced? Or maybe it’s just a trend and I’m good with my notebooks, even if sometimes my bag is too heavy. Alternatively I could just get thinner notebooks and make my own Louise Carmen cover to carry them in.
Whenever I find myself in a pickle like this one I make a pros/cons list. I love making lists. Which I guess leads us to the next trend of the month: the in and out lists everyone is making. This year, I made one too (I think of them as soft goals or just observations on the current trends in our lives):
~ read(ing)
I’ve been reading a lot but haven’t actually finished any book — except for some picture books for review (Dragons Can't Eat Snow Cones by Amanda Sobotka was hilarious, about perseverance and thinking outside the box) and a plant-based cookbook that focuses on healthy and easy to make meals (Proper Healthy: 80 Plant-Based Recipes With a Boost by Calum Harris).
I’m reading bits from a bunch of “year-long” books like The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman and A Mindful Year: 365 Ways to Find Connection and the Sacred in Everyday Life by Aria Campbell-Danesh and Seth J. Gillihan. I’m slowly working my way through 501 Essential Albums of the '90s by Gary Graff, while also listening to the albums.
I’m still spending my days with Katherine Mansfield, currently reading The Collected Poems of Katherine Mansfield, edition curated by Gerri Kimber and Claire Davison, and her Journal. I’ll return to her short stories soon, but fiction wise I was captivated by the following books:
Violeta by Isabel Allende, our book club pick for January and my second Allende novel, in which Violeta narrated her entire life, one hundred years, with all the changes of the century and the dramas of her family. It reads like an intimate coffee with an old and dear friend.
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín is another book for yet another book club. I saw the film years ago and I’m listening to the audiobook because it’s narrated by Saoirse Ronan, who played the main character in the film too. It follows Eilis Lacey as she leaves her small-town in Ireland for a better life in the US. Although first published in 2009, only last year the author returned with a sequel, Long Island.
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. This is the novel that’s got my attention the most this week — I’m 50% in and I’ll probably finish it soon because it breaks my heart every night and there’s only so many times a girl can have her heart broken. The novel tells the story of two siblings living in the Dutch house over the course of five decades. We see the story through the eyes of the little brother, Danny, but it’s told in such a detached way that as the reader you see more than Danny does. I am really enjoying the writing and I’m incredibly attached to the characters, all the characters almost.
Recently I started Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson, a cosy fantasy novel about Tress who is fond of collecting cups (me too, Tress, me too). It’s so whimsical and a much needed break from all the heavy stories I’m reading lately. Which is probably why I’ll finish it before any of the books mentioned above.
~ watch
I’m on season 13 of Supernatural. That’s all I have to say.
~ and other things I did last week
Music: I only have a song for you this week, and no, it’s not Father Figure, though it’s also an oldie, but a goldie: Don’t Speak by No Doubt. This song has me under his spell since I first saw the music video on MTV when I was a little kid. It provokes the same emotions each time and I can never get tired of it.
Scent: A hot new bombshell has entered the villa: Turmeric Latte from Lush. It’s warm and a bit spicy and perfect for winter. I’m a sucker for vanilla perfumes and I also have Vanillary from Lush, but Turmeric Latte is less powdery and more suitable for the season too.
Other things consumed last week:
Make a Soup, Any Soup (The New York Times). Just an invitation to make more soups.
‘The more relaxed you are, the better you are as a human’: Nicole Kidman on Kubrick, sharks and risk-taking (The Guardian). Obviously I’m still thinking about Babygirl, especially about Nicole Kidman’s performance. I was always a fan, but this article and her passion for acting make me like her even more.
At the Movies, the ‘Older Woman’ Is Growing Up (The New York Times). A Babygirl adjacent article.
Yukio Mishima’s Death Cult (The New Yorker). When I read Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima a couple of year ago what I found most interesting was not the book, but the author himself. The article tries to understand why Mishima took his life the way he did (spoiler alert — seppuku).
Jeff Koons on why he has drawn a red line on AI in art: ‘I don’t want to be lazy (The Guardian). Been thinking about AI a lot these days, especially in the art department.
How to be a half-arse human: ‘You probably aren’t going to have clean knickers all the time’ (The Guardian). Leena Norms is one of my favourite humans - she is smart, she is cool, she loves rom-coms and good books. I really enjoyed this article.
NASA’s New Horizons Probe Glimpses Pluto’s Icy Heart (The New York Times). I’m in a love affair with Pluto and I still think it should be a planet!
And the letter was written, sealed and… scheduled. Sometimes I write the first part of the letter on the first days of the week and I don’t need to worry about what to write, sometimes it only happens on Sunday morning and I open the blank page with no clue what I’ll do. Regardless of the type of week, I enjoy writing them and I enjoy it even more when you write back to me after you read them. So thank you, really.
Thank you for reading!