On My Mind, vol.08

this week's pilates class playlist ft. ONLY eagle-adjacent songs...

Sometimes life just is what it is, a passing of days where you wake up, go to work, go home, eat dinner, read a book, melt away the stress of the day or your mind in a pilates class, shower, get dressed for bed, get in bed, read some more or even doomscroll, close your eyes, fall asleep, and wake up to do it all over again.

If you’re a writer that must muse on the week’s happening, the only thing that comes to mind is to enumerate the humdrum. It’s winter, after all. Aren’t we meant to be hibernating?

And then, there I am, reporting live from Broad St. after the Eagles have won the Super Bowl, surrounded by chants of Fly, Eagles Fly, Elmo and his drum squad setting the rhythm, fireworks crackling, too close for comfort, people successfully scaling greased poles, beer filling the air, it’s a sea of green, and there’s nothing to do but let yourself be carried away with the crowd, its tide stronger until you hit a small break and you can breathe for a second before surrendering again, eardrums beating, heart, too.

So, here’s what I’ve been reading and wearing during my humdrum days (stay till the end for two silly surprises)…

reading

My appetite for reading escalated this weekend. I finished The Other Profile, picked up The Husbands, and hadn’t even made it out of bed on Saturday before finishing Shred Sisters. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about colors. And how it’s the accessories that have the power to bring a bolt of something else to my outfits. I’m counting books in that category, too. Maybe I’ll challenge myself to dress in the palette of my book covers this week. TBD. Just thinking out loud.

• The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson: Still cruising at 20 mph.

• The Other Profile by Irene Graziosi: It took me several days to finish this book, dense with family trauma, self-deprecation, influencer-dom, discovery, betrayal. Crude and cutting and probably just curious, 26-year-old Maia haphazardly assumes the role of public image consultant for 18-year-old influencer Gloria, despite having no experience. She chooses Maia out of all the candidates because Maia’s the only one capable of telling her the truth—or at least, Maia’s version of it. Maia grounds Gloria amidst a digital fantasy of a self that isn’t a self. She’s warned that Gloria will absorb the identity of whomever she’s closest to, but it isn’t until she watches Gloria give a speech using her words that she realizes she’s given away the only thing that holds power for her: language.

• Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner: I read this in a single morning before noon, pulled in by the quick-paced timeline and the green tea coursing through my system on an empty stomach, vision laser-focused, I couldn’t help it. The Shred sisters consist of younger sister Amy, highly intelligent, quiet, socially awkward, and high-achieving, and Ollie, who never knows when to put on the brakes. A sensitive and relentless read, it seems to say we’re often drawn to those who remind us most of the people we’ve loved and been mistreated by. But, in the end, we find forgiveness, treatment, and a sense that everything might just be alright.

• The Husbands by Holly Gramazio: Hilarious yet relatable and completely inconceivable, this novel follows a chronically single British woman living in London who stumbles into her flat after her friend’s hen party (bachelorette party) to realize that she is 1. no longer single 2. living a married life. As she comes to understand the magical powers her attic possesses, she begins to see that picking someone you want to spend the rest of your life with has everything to do with choice.

on deck

What’s in my bag? Well, good thing I took the books out for viewing… Mina’s Matchbox, What It’s Like in Words, and Margo’s Got Money Troubles I discovered while popping into bookstores in NYC a few weeks ago; it’s been in my purview for awhile and my best friend’s Bushwick-based book club Hoes for Prose just read it, Rejection; and The Familiar was, in fact, not familiar but the story seemed cool, so I grabbed it as well.

• Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

• Iron Gold by Pierce Brown

• Mina's Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa

• Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte

• Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

• What It's Like in Words by Eliza Moss

wearing

Two weeks have passed! Week one’s theme was playing with how to wear sneakers, when I normally wouldn’t.

• Tuesday: I’m lucky to work in a place where a sequin mini skirt is acceptable, if not expected, clothing. I don’t wear it enough and paired with a gorgeous green boat-neck sweater with sheen and sneakers seemed like the perfect balance of too much and not too much.

• Wednesday: All white foundation and let the silver studs of the jacket speak to the metallic silver overlay details of the sneakers.

• Thursday: Casual-cool, with my wide-leg jeans almost hiding the sneakers with a feminine puff-sleeve sweater.

I went with instinct for the second set of outfits, picking in the five minutes I give myself to get dressed each morning.

• Tuesday: One of my favorite outfits that I’ve put together recently. I started with the pants and something I do when I haven’t yet thought about what to wear is hold them up to all the tops in my closet, and there it landed. I had the realization that the jacket and pants were virtually the same color and texture and could work well as a set.

• Wednesday: What’s the point of cataloging my outfits if not to repeat the ones that I felt the most me wearing? So, a repeat from the other week served as a solid choice.

• Thursday: Copy / paste of the outfit formula of the day before, I stuck with the pants and added a cuff to give them dimension and let the red shoe stand out and converse with the red striped tee under my sweater.

inspired by

Ms. Kim said she decided to take up painting herself because she had grown “tired of watching other people be brave,” including an ex-boyfriend whose she had encouraged to paint. Still, she wasn’t sure what her subject would be.

• Kendrick Lamar’s halftime outfit, bootcut made the cut

• nytstyle x nytbooks co-post always means business: Read this article about Na Kim, who, if you’re a reader, or even have just past by a book store, is the book cover designer for major reads like Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart and Sheila Heat’s Pure Colour. She currently has a solo exhibition at Nicola Vassell Gallery that I’m hoping to check out this weekend!!

• Fashion week. Perhaps I’ll put together an article of all my favorite outfits (and try to recreate them myself)???

proud of

• This olive oil cake. Whenever it’s someone’s birthday on the team, we do a little celebration, and I got to bake a cake. It’s been a while since I’ve made this, but it’s one of my manager’s favorite, along with birds (though that adornment wasn’t my doing). Plus (not pulp), it’s citrus season, and the recipe called for 1/4 cup of freshly squeezed orange juice and the zest of one orange. Here’s the recipe. (btw, if anyone knows anyone at King Arthur, let them know I’ll bake and share endlessly in exchange for flour.)

  

goal for the week

• Handwriting thoughts, ideas, goals…

• Take inventory of all my tops, including sweaters, jackets, blouses, tees…

I have two postscripts this week: One is, of course, a collage I made of my time on Broad St. See exhibit A. The next is a silly little photo I took on the walk home from the library today. See exhibit B. Just in case you were curious, yes, you can track the Wienermobile.

Let me know what you’re wearing and reading in the comments!

xoxo