fallen in a month
The first trip I took on my US passport was Cabo a few weeks ago. The first vote I cast was in the gubernatorial race for Gavin Newsom’s recall. Being an American so far is both freeing and laden with stress!
I got a gel manicure for the first time in ages for the Mexico trip. The whole process made me so restless that I decided to never do it again. What is it that makes everyone (myself included) in there look up whenever anyone walks into the nail place? There was some kind of marketing exec from a studio giving feedback and notes on a one-sheet movie poster with such sureness but when I tell you, she couldn’t bloody pick a nail color to save her life. She um-ed and ah-ed for so long and then changed her mind again. Her decisiveness was compartmentalized.
I like hearing the customers flipping between Armenian and English when talking to each other. I never thought about how this happens in all languages, not just Hindi like it did in my house growing up. I watched the very-pregnant owner of the salon, hunched over working away and thought about how I didn’t dye my hair or get my nails done when I was pregnant just in case and here she was, breathing in fumes all day so I could have glittery nails for my holiday because wouldn’t that be fun. One woman chose the color ‘Machu Picchu’. “It’s the clay…” she said breathily to manicurist, “It’s the color of the dirt in Machu Picchu.” The manicurist nodded and smiled politely. These Jennifer Coolidge head asses, I swear.
Nail salons always make me think of Ocean Vuong’s mother and his depiction of her in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Recently I listened to him on the Talk Easy podcast and thought it was just one of the best conversations I had ever heard. Another recent episode of that podcast I loved was the Zola roundtable with the film’s director Janicza Bravo (who is the podcast host Sam Fragoso’s partner and one of my biggest inspirations in life) and editor Joi McMillon.
I felt hesitant to write about this but I’ll put my imposter syndrome aside and share that last month I signed with a team of managers at 3Arts. This is a small, first step but one that I have been working towards for years now. For TV writing, often the initial goal is to get representation in the form of a manager or agent who can then help you get a job in a writers room and / or develop projects. 3Arts was pretty much my dream place to be repped as a lot of my favorite comedians and writers are there and they produce many of my favorite shows. After I sent my latest pilot out (a woman suffers from a late-term pregnancy loss but decides to stay in her local online Moms Group to *perform motherhood* in order to deal with the grief… so yeah, a comedy), there seemed to be some buzz and excitement which led to me getting repped. There’s been ups and downs this year with the writing, and me just wondering if I should become a yoga instructor (there’s no brown ones!) so this feels very, very exciting. And plus, now I have people that I feel like I can’t disappoint which is a great driving force for me.
Thank you to Leon Neyfakh’s VERY good Grub Street Diet for sending me to the Wiki for the Netflix film Beckett. Please read the plot section and try to make it make sense.
The root word for my name is also the Sanskit word for love, sneha. Maybe this why I love oil massage so much. If you ever have the chance to try Abhyangha (Ayurvedic oil massage), I highly, highly recommend it. And if you’re in L.A., go to Surya Spa in Santa Monica for the best massage I’ve ever had.
This New Yorker doc about ‘A Gay Farmer on Love, Isolation, and Disrupting the Meat Industry in Australia’. I had a brief stint working in fashion PR in Australia (was just talking about how amazing it is that Margaret Zhang was this eager young, photographer/ blogger who’d come in the office all the time and now she’s the Editor-in-chief of VOGUE China!) and so my hearing about the Damien Woolnough connection piqued my interest.
Incredible essay in Believer about an AI software helping the writer talk about her sister’s death.
As part of The A.V. Club’s best of the 2010s in 2019, Jenny Offill listed her favorite books of the decade which included ‘Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired To Ignore Climate Change’ by George Marshall. She said “I read dozens of books about climate change, and this was one of the most important ones. It addresses the psychology of all forms of denial, active and seemingly benign. It gives interesting, concrete suggestions about how to start talking about it to friends and strangers. The science is all there, but he makes a clever choice to put it in an appendix so you don’t fall down a rabbit hole of doomy numbers and predictions right away. That said, he pulls no punches about how serious the situation is.” Add to cart!
I end up choosing the next book I’m going to read from the many, many unread books on my shelves by something the manifestation world calls pings. For example, when Samanta Schweblin’s ‘Fever Dream’ (a book that was released in 2014) comes up randomly twice in a day? That’s a ping. In this nonsensical way, I feel like I read the books I’m meant to read at certain times in my life.
Seeing everyone in Sydney make sourdough and do Zoom happy hours and trivia nights is giving me PTSD in the same way that listening to Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee does, taking me back to phase 1 pandemic in March-June 2020. Many friends here ask “what’s going on over there in Australia?” when they hear about things like the 5km radius rule or the amount of policing happening. It’s messed up! My Mum started making bread too and she shared her recipe with her notes on the side, one of them was “fold it like parantha, left to right, right to left”. Parantha is an Indian flatbread that Mum makes a lot, I love that she used ‘fold it like a parantha’ as her reference point.
This quote from ‘Sorrow and Bliss’ by Meg Mason is so gross! And no, in case you were wondering, this has no context to anything in the book. Semi-submerged litter in the Ganges is the reference for wanting your teabag out?
I love seeing an item of clothing or accessory that a friend wears regularly in situ at their house. There it is. That’s where she hangs that purse. There are those earrings!
I’ve been living in the Longform podcast archives lately which Brandon Taylor said taught him more about writing than his MFA lol. I highly recommend the Elif Batuman and Ta-Nehisi Coates and Renata Adler episodes and really any writer on there whose work you’re interested in.
I think we are all done talk ing about The White Lotus. I am rewatching my favorite Mike White show Enlightened to fill the void. Also the ‘Enlightened Dave’ episode of Dave I thought was so weird and excellent. Also excellent is the 100 Foot Wave documentary series on HBO. Big waves/ tsunamis are absolutely my number one fear so watching this feels like some form of shadow work.
Do you know about Aldous Harding? I didn’t and have become obsessed in the past couple of months (thank you Kelly!). Watch the videos for Fixture Picture, The Barrel and Zoo Eyes. A true NZ kook! Yesterday, Cattle and Cane by the Go-Betweens came on randomly and when I tell you, the jolt it sent through my body. I haven’t heard that song in, honestly, years and years and it is just so perfect and Australian. I ended up putting on 16 Lovers Lane and after Clouds, Isha said “can I hear that song again” and proceeded to ask for it another 5-6 times. I think they’ve been learning about feelings at school and she said that listening to the song made her feel, “happy and sad at the same time”. Damn girl, same. I have also been listening to this Australian classic a lot over the past year… no reason!
This might be my favorite-smelling skincare item ever and it feels really good on your face too.
This might be my favorite ice-cream ever. It’s by Chainsaw LA.
Last night I sat here in Leroy, New York. The sun was setting and I felt a slight chill from the changing of seasons. I did a 20-minute breathwork session which I highly recommend, Kyle is the TRUTH! In her newsletter, she wrote “In Chinese Medicine there are 5 seasons. Late Summer becomes its own moment in time, a hang between the bright, dazzling Yang of Summer and the cooling, quieting Yin of Fall. It's a beautiful moment to reflect and look ahead. Hopefully Summer was well spent; in community and nature, and as we look ahead, towards Fall and Winter we feel ready to work and settle into routine.” I am looking forward to the reprieve from hot vax summer. I feel like I’ve been on a hamster wheel for months and lately I’ve been having more and more moments of “holy fuck, we’re living through the biggest thing in our lives”, “oh my god, life is actually forever changed”. These might seem like yeah, duh! for others but my mind’s powers of deception are strong! But now it’s really reaching Edvard Munch ‘The Scream’ hours. Isha doesn’t say Fall, she says Fallen so she walks around saying “September is Fallen”.
Lastly… whose parents do you think these people are? Just imagine coming from two people this stunning, this effortlessly chic, this interested in aesthetics and then you’re…
(Emma Roberts, who famously tried to skip the line for a cronut because she was a celebrity but was denied.)
That’s all. It was a long one. Thank you for reading.