Once again I am kicking myself for naming my newsletter after a day of the week, alas at 10pm last night after returning from seeing The Book of Mormon for the second time in my life (more problematic than I remember), I decided that it would be better to send you this finished letter on a Monday, instead of a half hearted one late on a Sunday, so here we are. Let us begin.
READING // LONG FORM
I am in an audiobook fiction phase, which is quite a surprise as I have always been picky about narrators and voices etc. However, like the sheep I am, I waited until the last moment to read a book that many, my boyfriend included, have harped on about for years, as it has been adapted for TV. Panchinko is an intergenerational family sage set in Japan featuring the struggles of a Korean family and wider community before, during, and after, the war. It is horribly sad, more so than I had imagined although I would be lying if I said I knew much more than the skeleton of the story before reading. It has also been a surprise to see illness and disability featured so heavily, something scarcely mentioned in reviews I had read.
Its coverage is wide, from birth disfigurements to chronic illness in young men, and the treatment of the unwell whilst incarcerated. There is much to unwind within its discussions and representations which I am not sure I have quite unpacked myself. Much of it is ‘of its time’, I have no doubt much if not all, are accurate reflections of the era, what it meant to be disabled, what impact that had on marriage prospects as well as your masculinity. Despite knowing that, it is still difficult to read, particularly to listen to. It is confronting each time a characters worth is tethered to thier sickness and it feels harder to listen, because there is no ability to skim. So far at least, it is more emotionally challenging than I had anticipated.
I have a full length essay coming soon on Chloe Cooper Jones’ memoir, Easy Beauty, which is photographed above, but for now I will tempt you with an extract.
“As I got older, I learnt there were abstract places where I didn’t belong either. Sexuality, romance, love, partnership - these were all part of a province that I, as a disabled woman, was not meant to enter. I saw people cringe when I mentioned a crush or joined my girlfriends in lusting over a celebrity. I was neither expected to date nor marry. Doctors had told me my entire life I couldn't get pregnant. It was presented as a certainty that motherhood was yet another space I was excluded from. My parents believed the doctors and so did I. I accepted what I thought was a fact. And as a result, part of imagination never developed, the part that wonders what it might be like to love your own child”
READING // SHORT FORM
Let’s attempt to make this quick(ish) fire:
In defence of being weird and embarrassing in public - James Greig for Dazed on the surveillance state era, hangxiety and the weird cultural okayness of filming strangers for internet memes.
For South Asian Women, Living Alone Can Be Healing - Sahar Arshad for Teen Vogue on the joys of living alone in her own cultural context.
The Disability Pandemic - El Gibbs for Meanjin, a new to me Australian publication that has so many brilliant writers in this issue too. A succinct summary of the alternate reality most disabled people have, and continue to exist in, during the pandemic.
Kae Tempest: ‘I was living with this boiling hot secret in my heart’ - Michael Segalov for The Guardian, interviewing Kae Tempest’s experience as a non binary person in the music and creative industries. I loved Kae’s soulful book on creativity earlier this year, and this interview provides further context.
COOKING //
There has been little cooking in the last month for reasons explained below, but we have furnished our balcony with something more substantial than a camping chair, so as the sun begins to head out of site from our terrace we often sit for a snack, a platter, or as I have always known it, Picky bits. My mother was, and still is queen of picky bits, as I imagine all readers whose mothers pride themselves on kitchen skills, would say. Picky bits is a spread, a meal made up of smaller, often incoherent parts. Pork pies next to olives and sun-dried tomatoes, a side of coleslaw and the remainders of last night’s chicken tikka kebabs, with multiple carb options: breads, rolls, potatoes and crisps. Ostensibly picky bits are less hassle than a sit down meal, they appear to the eater as casual and nonchalant but in my years of witnessing my mothers spreads, they do seem more work than an average lunch.
These spreads come into their own around festive times of year, the boxing day picky bits around my aunt’s house, thirty of us crammed into a living room with a new floral three piece suite, there is many of photo of that. Bank holiday left overs, birthday party extras, New Years Eve before the drinks, all occasions can call for picky bits. Next to celebrations they remind me of Sundays, a spread put together as we got home from a begrudging trip to church with my grandparents, mum remained at home to organise said spread, although now I see that was perhaps a convenient excuse. If Sundays were for church, then Saturdays were for sports, in our house at least. I grew up with football mad family but my grandmother would watch anything she could shout at, horse-racing, Wimbledon, the Summer Olympics were her favourite, so picky bits would be delivered to her lap as she sat and commentated on the ever disappointing British contribution to all major sporting events. When I construct my own feeble attempts at picky bits, in a home of my own, in a place far away, I think of her, and her love for Picky bits.
A miniature, slightly sad, picky bits of my own. As an aside, Picky bits feels specifically British to me, and I would like to know, if you are reading from somewhere else, if you have a word for such a meal.
THOUGHTS IN PROGRESS //
Substack alerted me that this page was launched a year ago, which feels immediately yesterday and also aeons ago. When I began to write here, I was completing my undergraduate degree to become a teacher, now I have completed one half of my masters program, with an entirely different career in mind. When I began to write here it was because I had no idea how to write in other places, now I write regularly for publications I would have only dreamed of. When I began to write here, it was to express my complicated feelings about getting progressively sicker, I was just treading water and now strangely, it has come full circle. I am almost two weeks post COVID, and if you had also told me that last year I would have sobbed, berated myself for catching it and be paralysed from terror of the repercussions.
I have spent the entire pandemic so far focusing on avoiding becoming sick, being utterly terrified of a circumstance in which I could catch it and weighing every outing as a risk to contend with, I had never thought about what I would do if I caught it. We all have our risk thresholds, which fluctuate and interact dependant on multiple intersects like mental wellbeing and social commitments, and mine were higher than most people I know in real life, and lower than other disabled friends online. I caught covid within the first two weeks of attempting to work outside of my flat, visiting cafes to write and taking public transport to get there. From October last year, as the last leaves of autumn and warm weather left, I experienced what seems to be an annual decline in my health. I holed up at home and in doctors offices, I focused on surviving each day and the bad news continued to roll in. I lost my beloved grandmother, I found more endometrial cysts, I reckoned with my dwindling fertility. I was treading water for the entirety of winter.
As the new year rolled in I made some changes, took some things off my plate after my boyfriend explained my current existence wasn’t sustainable, which as usual, I already knew but needed someone else to tell me so. When the sun finally re appeared after its hiatus I was feeling something like hope, which often feels dangerous, or unutterable at least, when living in a body that doesn’t abide by such notions. I felt okay, better than okay, good (not cured, or healthy, but good). I was leaving the house a couple times a week, making an effort to meet some new people and within that short space of respite from 24 hour consumed by my own illnesses, I caught covid, and now I return to the place I was in when I first wrote these letters, treading water.
wow that was unintentionally a lot of words but I will stop now. That is all for this week friends, catch you on another part of the internet,
Hannah x