Category: Inspiration // Cool

A self-esteem boost courtesy Anne Lamott

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I’ve found this one sentence particularly helpful during a buck wild week of blowing my capacity levels by a country and city and outer space mile. … And also reading writers a million times better than me, which is wonderful but also makes one feel like getting a day job back sometimes, ya know?

God speed, friends.

Anne Lamott from “Bird by Bird”:

“The only thing to do when the sense of dread and low self-esteem tells you that you are not up to this is to wear it down by getting a little work done every day.”

Art you should know: Involvement Series by Wanda Pimentel

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Involvement Series by Wanda Pimentel, 1968-69, vinyl on canvas

Brazilian artist Wanda Pimentel began her series titled “Envolvimento” (or Involvement) in 1968, the year the country’s military dictatorship decreed one of 17 major institutional acts that gave the regime authoritarian rule and mostly threw judicial review in the can.

So, her dissent of the country’s politics and violence toward the powerless had to be somewhat veiled lest she and her work face censorship… or worse. At the same time, in other places across the world, pop art and nouveau realism were rubbing their graphically shaped stones together and making lots of boldly saturated sparks.

In the Involvement Series, Pimentel painted in vibrant colors but a reduced palette. Her flat scenes uncomfortably cram together interior objects, from which there seems to be no escape. Body parts hint at the humans in the rooms, but their disembodied, naked status comment on the feeling that humans can be props, just like the objects of consumerism they use and discard, use and discard.

“Everyday objects crowd compressed interiors and suggest acts of corresponding domestic labor. Figures are fragmented,” states the AIC placard. “In this canvas, two disembodied feet emerge below the red ironing board. Their owner is otherwise only indicated by the closet full of blouses and the ready iron, the trappings of consumer culture through which we assume and care for our external appearances.”

Trouble inside. Trouble out.

But there’s some exciting expression in the series too, again subliminally disguised. “Messy piles of clothing, pools of spilled liquid and slowly dripping faucets seem to reflect the recent collapse of the political order, but also the excitement of sexual self-discovery,” writes Frieze.

Five things I’m loving this month

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E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G in Ricky Gervais’ new Netflix special “Humanity”

Ricky’s thoughts on free speech (and the left’s weirdly ironic recent infringement on it), people, and the wild weird world of Twitter trolls is so cathartic.

“That’s what the world is like. People take everything personally. They think the world revolves around them, particularly on Twitter. I’m not tweeting anyone, I’m just tweeting. I don’t know who’s following me. I’ve got 12 million followers. They can be following me without me knowing, choose to read my tweet, and then take that personally. That’s like going into a town square, seeing a big noticeboard saying “Guitar lessons”, and you go, “But I don’t fucking want guitar lessons!” What’s this? There’s a number here. Right, call that. Are you giving guitar lessons? I don’t fucking want any! Fine! It’s not for you, then. Just walk away. Don’t worry about it.” From “Humanity” by Ricky Gervais

The Poem-A-Day newsletter

From the Academy of American Poets’ Poets.org. Sign up here for daily inspiration, new words, or interesting imagery that’ll scratch at your door for the rest of the day.

“I am poisoned with the rage of song.” From “Orion Dead” by H.D.

“Good as Hell” by Lizzo

I kind of forgot about this song until I saw it in a scene from the movie “Blockers,” a charming new comedy starring John Cena, Leslie Mann and the best Uber joke I’ve ever heard thanks in part, fittingly, to its perfect timing. Anyway, this song is so fun and feels as good as summer, ice cream and self-love taste!

This sweet snack

As I try to eat better and quit smoking (adfljkadf!!!), I fend off sugar cravings with this simple-to-make snack: two apples cut in fours, slathered in JIF natural creamy peanut butter (“Moms like you, as well as recovering addicts, choose JIF, choooOOOOose JIF!”), sprinkled with Viki’s blueberry almond granola.

Pro tip: This tastes 5% better when granola is sprinkled on a la Salt Bae.

 This drawing by my nephew

I haven’t much time to find more to love this month. I’ve been working my little tail off more than usual in preparation for some time off ahead.

So much so I won April’s Family Member of the Month Award!

I guess I love that I am able to get work that supports me and my family, work that is adjacent to other things I love and requires a skill I am ever thankful to have and be good at. But that doesn’t make for a fun post.

So here’s this shark attack drawing by my 10-year-old nephew that I keep on my bulletin board by my office computer. He showed me this via FaceTime one evening. I was so impressed by it, I asked my sister to save it for me:

Look at this god damn Renaissance-y masterpiece; there’s so much happening in it. I look at it a lot while I’m working. It reminds me to play. To have fun. To be creative. To do what I love and, oh yeah, tell the people I love I said hi despite a mounting to-do list.

Also it reminds me of this: Never enter shark infested water without a badass robot submarine that can shoot spears while effortlessly arm wrestling a hammerhead into cat food.

Pew pew pew!

Three entertainment purchases I’ve made this year that are proving totally worth it

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Something I’ve had to come to terms with in sobriety is that I can’t “have fun” in the ways in which I used to. Parties are pretty boring to me now. Womp, womp. My first couple years sober, this was challenging. I had to find new ways to let myself escape or enjoy life beyond the basics. I didn’t do a very good job of it.

So my goal for year three (which I enter next week!) was to invest in some things that could be fun for me. I know, planned fun sounds the least fun, but it was an important step. Here are three things I put the money saved not drinking toward that have proved worth every penny. You might enjoy them to, cocktail in hand or not.

MoviePass

It works like this: For $100 a year, I get to go to one movie a day in a participating theater. Participating is a key word here. You can only use MoviePass at theaters that accept it, but in Chicago, there are a lot of them.

Through the app on your phone, you check into the theater around the time the movie starts. Then you use the MoviePass card, which looks like a credit card, to “purchase” your ticket in the theater.

Justin and I got our MoviePasses in February and they’ve almost already paid for themselves. We’ve seen Annihilation, The Death of Stalin, Black Panther, A Quiet Place, and a few others. In 2017 we probably only went to watch a movie in the theaters once. (It was Fast and Furious, Justin’s pick, and we, ironically enough, got rear ended on our way home afterward.)

I love that MoviePass puts dinner and a movie into our date night rotation. Seeing movies on the big screen is so fun! But not when you have to stomach the sometimes $13 entry fee. Going to movies now feels like we’re going for free–and soon we pretty much will be.

Also, there’s something to be said for sitting in a theater with the phone off and your attention focused only on one thing. And it’ll be wonderful once summer hits and we can go watch a movie in the air conditioning after a day spent sweating it out in the sun.

Art Institute of Chicago Membership

OK, also $100 a year, but for $20 a pop if I wanted to visit as a Normal, it’s been worth every penny. Plus, it supports an organization I believe in, so can’t go wrong there.

Having my AIC membership gets me early access to exhibition viewing, and I don’t have to wait in the ticket line, which was a particularly beautiful experience when I went last weekend and it was f-f-f-freezing outside, where the general admission line draped.

This “basically free” entry means I go to the galleries a lot more. It too has already paid for itself and it’s not even May. Plus, that place is huge, so I don’t feel rushed or overwhelmed with trying to see everything just to get my twenty bucks worth.

And here’s the bonus: I get another adult in for free with me. When I have out-of-town visitors, it’s number one on our must-do list.

Oh also: Free coat and bag check, suckas!

Magazine subscriptions

In my 20s, when I had little to zero disposable income (thanks, student loans/ binge drinking!), magazines seemed like a frivolous expense. Ouch, goes my magazine journalism degree.

So for Christmas last year I bought myself yearly subs to three things: The Atlantic, Creative Nonfiction, and InStyle. ‘Cuz I’m a fancy bitch.

Nothing screams THIS IS ADULT FUN quite like creaking open my rusty apartment mailbox to find printed treasure awaiting inside.

The dark horse favorite has been InStyle. I don’t need/want all the stuff they try to sell me in there, but it’s inspirational, aspirational, sobriety-reaffirming in reading about and seeing women who seemingly have their shit together, even if it’s only that they know how to put a together a dope outfit.

An author’s note you gotta read

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I had to add Clarissa Goenawan’s new novel “Rainbirds” to my list of books to read this month because I somehow got an early-enough library hold on it and the next library patron in line WAS GOING TO HAVE TO PRY IT AWAY FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS.

Speaking of cold dead hands. The book is about a newly minted college graduate who lives in Tokyo. His older sister was just murdered in the small, mysterious town that she moved to about 10 years prior. He goes to the community to gather her things but ends up taking her teaching role and living in her old room, which, by the way, is in a creepy mansion that belongs to a suspiciously cold politician. Oh, and his wife. Who doesn’t speak. And stays in bed all day. And their daughter died mysteriously.

It’s excellent so far, and I recently skipped to the back of the book (careful not to catch a glimpse of any words of the last few chapters, lest a big reveal be exposed!) to see if she had written any acknowledgements.

I love reading author acknowledgment pages. They’re more in-depth than a front-of-the-book dedication and often give some clues or insights into the author’s personality or writing process. I love when they feel a little loopy or giddy; like the writer just can’t believe they pulled this huge feat off and are, justifiably so, as happy and as exhausted and as over it as they’ve ever been.

If a great story ending is a free piece of gum at the bottom of the Cracker Jacks, the acknowledgement page is the cartoon folded in the gum packaging.

Clarissa didn’t have an acknowledgement page, though. Instead she had an author’s note, a variety of which I was unfamiliar and, thus, presently surprised. It told me a story about her. And reminded me why I read.

Enjoy (then go wait in line to get the book to read “Rainbirds”!):

“I used to read a lot as a kid–at least a book a day. I would spend my recess periods in the library with my best friend. I loved getting lost in the new and fascinating world of each story, and I knew I wanted to be a writer.

However, when I went off to college, studies became my priority. As I struggled with mounting academic work, I no longer picked up books I hadn’t been assigned. By the time I began my first job in marketing, reading had become a thing of the past.

Then, one day, a colleague recommended a book to me. ‘I’ll lend you my copy,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’d like it.’

I politely turned him down. ‘I don’t have time to read.’

But he insisted I give it a try, so I relented.

That book ended up changing my life. It rekindled the wonder I’d once felt, and the dream I’d once had.

Thank you for picking up ‘Rainbirds’. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And if you have, I ask that you share it with someone. A friend, a family member, or a colleague–especially one who has not been reading for quite some time.”

Art you should know: “Heart of the Matter” by Otis Kaye

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So this guy, Otis Kaye, lost all his savings in the stock market crash of 1929. This loss had to have pissed him off or at least left him a little numb to and/or disillusioned by the financial world’s proclamations of glory, right? Right. He began making more and more forms of currency—coins, bills, etc.—the focus of his incredibly detailed paintings.

Decades later, in 1963, he created this oil on canvas masterpiece, “Heart of the Matter.” It “represents Rembrandt’s ‘Aristotle with a Bust of Home’ (1653)—which had been purchased two years earlier by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for a record-breaking price—torn into pieces and surrounded by and even interlaced with money,” according to the Art Institute of Chicago’s placard by the painting. “At the very center appears a suspended stack of bills; the ‘heart of the matter’ is thus the close connection between art and commerce.”

Now, before you go judging the irony of an artwork with these anti-capitalist undertones now living in an art museum itself, consider this: It was given to the AIC as a gift by Anonymous.

Me + “Heart of the Matter” + my heart… of all matters.

 

My list of books to read this month

Jackie Mantey 1 Comment

“Born to Run”

By Bruce ‘The Boss Babe’ Springsteen

File this under “Books I’ve Been Meaning to Read for a Really Long Time.” Long time meaning 2016, when this autobiography came out. As I write about the song “Born to Run” for a side hustle project, now seemed like the perfect time.

I love Springsteen’s lyrics and it’s no surprise this book has been enjoyable for me, though a lot of the recounting of technical musicianing and craftsmanship is over my head—so over it I skip. Here’s one of my favorite passages thus far (it’s a chunky lil tome… he has had quite a life and quite a story, after all). In this quote, he’s talking about writing the song “Born in the USA,” which he also said “remains one of my greatest and most misunderstood pieces of music”:

“I knew it was one of the best things I’d ever done. It was a GI blues, the verses an accounting, the choruses a declaration of one sure thing that could not be denied… birthplace. Birthplace, and the right to all of the blood, confusion, blessings and grace that come with it. Having paid body and soul, you have earned, many times over, the right to claim and shape your piece of home ground.”

Chew on that. Damn.

“The Last Equation of Isaac Severy”

By Nova Jacobs

Oh la la! A novel that’s billed as “a novel in clues”!

The Severys are a family of genius mathematicians and a few normies, like Hazel, our main protagonist and the adopted granddaughter of the title’s Isaac. After his mysterious death, Hazel gets a letter in the mail from him, with a message that he was murdered and the directive that he’s counting on her, of all people, to destroy the last of his work.

This book is turning out to be more about family drama and the brokenness inherent in the bonds of love more than a murder mystery. But it has its pros, despite, I think, its brain-teasey marketing pitch: Nova Jacobs writes lovely descriptions and there are bits of wisdom—non-mathematical, praise be—woven throughout. As the estranged, bitter Aunt Paige says:

“Your generation could stand to live in the pursuit a bit more. You’re all rushed to get to the end. To succeed. … It’s an empty way to live, in constant pursuit of the trophy.”

Preach, bitch!

Punctuate. magazine

By Columbia College Chicago

I picked this up at the Chicago Women in Publishing conference at the end of March. Columbia College Chicago was there recruiting for its MFA in writing program. You can read Punctuate. (as well as author interviews, book reviews, and other writerly goodies) here.

What pages are you turning this April?

Things I’m loving this month

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The New York Times obituary series “Overlooked”

In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, The New York Times unveiled a pretty genius idea: A series of obituaries for influential women who had been overlooked by history and the iconic paper, which called itself out as follows:

Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries: of heads of state, opera singers, the inventor of Stove Top stuffing and the namer of the Slinky. The vast majority chronicled the lives of men, mostly white ones; even in the last two years, just over one in five of our subjects were female.

Included in the series, called Overlooked, are obits for names you’ll know, like Ida B. Wells and Charlotte Bronte, as well as little known women who deserve their due, like transgender and LGBT rights pioneer Marsha P. Johnson; Emily Warren Roebling, who oversaw the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge after her engineer husband fell ill; and the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace.

Bookmark the interactive page and take your time to digest each woman’s story. It’s worth it.

Quartz Daily Brief

The Daily Brief is the email roundup of the “most important and interesting news from the global economy.” Quartz always makes this kind of news interesting with a unique voice, and The Daily Brief is the curation of both that you didn’t know you’ve been looking for. I’ve learned about everything from international trade to emo Japanese teens and why they matter to the tea market. Subscribe here.

Kinder beauty products

Oy. Plastic. Human cruelty. Animal cruelty. Etc.

I’m trying to be more conscious about my consumption, and I’m happy to report on two beauty products you can buy at your local drug store (read: they’re accessible and inexpensive) that are sensitive to all of the above AND actually work. Because that’s important too…

Love Beauty and Planet is a new-to-me brand of skin and hair products that are packaged in 100% recycled bottles, sourced from sustainable growers who provide fair wage jobs, and vegan/ not tested on animals. The bottles save 900 tons of CO2 per year, and for every ton of of carbon it emits, the company donates to clean-air organizations. That’s cool.

I’ve been using the coconut oil and ylang ylang shampoo and conditioner and I love the smell. They work as well as any other shampoo or conditioner I’ve ever bought.

All the alarming news reports of plastic in our oceans and the sick, sad tale of the exfoliating microbead, which I’d long unknowingly relied upon, has had me searching for a facial exfoliating scrub that is naturally derived but still feels effective. Found one!

Comedian Roy Wood Jr.’s special “Father Figure”

Roy Wood Jr.’s joke about the difference between white patriotic songs (about America) and black patriotic songs (about American cities that are safe for black people) is one of the funniest, most astute observations I’ve heard in a long time. Watch the full special here.

Soccer Mommy’s new album “Clean”

Float away on new sad dreamy poppy punky hooks by Soccer Mommy’s Sophie Allison. I hope they book her on Pitchfork this year.