Mid-winter (blues). It comes every year and yet the tilt of the axis, the diluted sunlight that reaches the land where we all muddle about, arrives like a thief in the night to inject us with a sense of dull, bitter abandonment. You’ve popped your vitamin D supplement, doubled-up on socks, trudged through the snow or slid around on swaths of ice with strangers on various nets, strips, or blades. You’ve lit a candle, stared out the window at a dumping of cascading flakes as if in some kind of ceremonial mourning, and gone to bed early too. There are days, of course, brilliant with blue skies and arctic white earth and a Guinness at a dimly lit bar with good company, and there are days where words like hope and momentum are alien things and just showing up means resisting the deep ache in your bones. These days will pass. And the sun will remember to reach back for us, she always does.
Facebook Marketplace. For all the ghosting and low-balling and risk involved with telling a stranger to meet you in a parking lot with an antique glass lamp, Facebook marketplace is still the best thing to come out of social media. I owe my couch, rocking chair, kitchen table & chairs, mirror, and bookshelf to strangers all over Montreal who took the time to post an ad, respond to forty-two messages of is this available?, and bring it to me, all for some cold hard cash. Beware of scams though, there are little monsters out there who will take advantage of anything wholesome (never reserve via e-transfer).
Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. His latest album is an homage to Puerto Rico that weaves cultural pride, a spectrum of Latin music genres, critiques of American imperialism, and resistance to capitalist gentrification all together in banger after banger. It’s an album with a short film, videos, events, and a concert residency in Puerto Rico where the first nine of thirty shows are for residents only at affordable prices. Also a current antidote for many to number 2.
Boiled eggs. These little protein powerhouses are easily elevated with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of za’atar, or thrown onto some seasoned roasted veggies. 8-minute boil max for perfection.
Nurses. Nurses deserve everything good and beautiful in this world, all of it. In Canada, it is our provincial governments that determine hospital budgets and funding of care. This is one of the reasons why it’s crucial to vote in provincial elections (Feb 27th Ontario!). Trickle-down economics leave out the most vulnerable, and if you ever need to spend time in the care of nurses, that’ll be you.
Muffins. The first time I made muffins, Carlos came home, took one look, and told me the cupcakes smelled delicious. Recently when I asked him if he remembered that cupcake-muffin blunder he shrugged and said, the only difference is whether it has icing right? This triggered other memories of muffin mayhem:
A former roommate of mine, an international student from South Asia, ate eight of the twelve muffins I’d made in the span of a few hours while writing her thesis (the first I’d offered her before leaving the apartment, I guess it rocked her world).
In southern Spain, I searched near and far for a good muffin only to ever find magdalenas, super sweet lemon cakes in a similar lumpy shape.
Nadine, a close friend who is Lebanese and grew up in Dubai, once said in a voicenote that muffins are not a go-to option for a snack or breakfast in Lebanon and, can recall her first muffin as a child; it was bran and did not make much of an impression.
These observations plus three minutes of internet research told me that indeed: the UK, Germany, and North America are the world's major consumers of muffins.
I’d like to believe that anthropologists in the year 3025 will write something like this, before their international diffusion, many people in Canada and other colder climates, unwittingly took great comfort in making, buying, consuming, and sharing a humble snackfood called muffin, and in the average household, somewhere deep inside an oven drawer or cupboard, a rusted metal sheet called ‘muffin-tin’ could often be found for this very reason.
Something about this set reminded me of Michelle. I have a sneaking suspicion that she would have adored your writing.
Can't wait to read more, xo.