Say Who You Are ( I Will Do So Here)
Here I am, pink forest days and cat brushes and pickleball.
Hi friends!
Two quick things:
I started a Discord server for all things culture, food and nature. If you’re interested, leave a comment (or if I know you, txt me!) and I’ll send you a link!
I interviewed Patrick Makuakāne, a master hula teacher that lives in my neighborhood. He just won a MacArthur Fellowship and the article up in the Potrero View
“Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won’t be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can’t help but be that. But more importantly, if you’re honest about who you are, you’ll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognize him or herself in you and that will give them hope.”
Charlie Kaufman, BAFTA Screenwriters’ Lecture
In the Zone
Last weekend I finally took my friend’s advice to connect with her friend about pickleball. I played very casually the past two winters in a park in Seattle, but since moving to San Francisco it just hasn’t been a part of my routine. I’ve been going outside of my comfort zone a lot lately to meet new people and socialize, so on a brisk Saturday morning I got up early (around 5am!) to putter around and get ready to meet up at a park around 7am.
When I got to the park there was one star out—probably a planet—and one older fellow getting ready to shoot some hoops on the court next to the pickleball courts. Nobody was there yet, so I started just practicing serving a little bit. Then people trickled in. Then a guy asked me if I wanted to warm up, and then another guy joined our warm up, and then we just started playing! I was rusty on the rules, but I was in total absorption mode as I got suggestions about how to hold my paddle better, where to stand, how to serve better, and everything in between.
Molly of The Long Game is currently running a group session to work on personal development via the book The Artist’s Way, and when I was talking about life balance I focused on how that session of pickleball was transformative for me. I didn’t do to it try to get likes or attention. I don’t have a vision of myself playing pickleball in the Olympics. I just forgot about everything else and just had fun.
A lot of my life right now is focused on figuring out the right choices for the next few years. What’s best for my children is the main highlight right now for a lot of those decisions, and Mike and I go back and forth constantly about what the right thing to do is as we get deeper and deeper in decision-making. But at least, with this one aspect of my life—exercise, play, movement—is balanced.
Cat brush power
I took a Ukrainian Petrykivka ornament painting with Leila and *loved it*! One of the things we learned was that traditionally Ukrainian people would decorate their homes with painted designs, and because all the dyes were made with naturally derived materials the artwork would have to be re-painted a few times a year. Or just if a new season or holiday was coming. Also, it’s a thing there to gently clip the soft, downy belly of a housecat and make paintbrushes from the cat fur. How resourceful! I can’t help by eye my fluffy goldendoodle and imagine her as a source of personal art supplies now.
Thank you for reading this far! Have an awesome day!