Fear of flying hands-free
Plus some intimate reads
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Dear friend —
I’ve often admired people who get on a flight hands-free. You’ve probably seen them: Almost invariably, they’re youngish guys. They board and breeze down the aisle encumbered by nothing but what’s in their pockets (cell phone, wallet). Ah, the freedom!
Most of us can’t travel that way. I usually board with not only a carry-on but also a “personal item” — usually a backpack with my laptop plus a bunch of other amenities I imagine I may need on the flight, ranging from snacks to a journal.
That said, many things I used to think were necessary for life, I no longer own — and thus no longer travel with, whether via plane or car. Some of these omissions are obvious: No one needs a CD player anymore. Others, like a printer, I’ve come to realize I can do without — It’s more convenient to go to a print shop or coworking office on the rare occasions that I need a hard copy of something than to deal with the storing, care, and upkeep of a personal printer. Who needs a physical mailbox when a virtual one sends me scanned PDFs of any old school letters people send your way? Who needs a home and furnishings and appliances when a series of Airbnbs and hotels let you come and go on a whim?
Nomad life has really taught me to whittle down my belongings. Will I one day be able to hop on a flight, hands-free? I hope to get close one day, though I’ll likely always be holding a book. Books are, after all, the most freeing form of transport —
Intimacies by Katie Kitamura (Riverhead, 2021)
There are several reasons this novel magnetized me. One, it stars a woman who, like me, grew up on multiple continents and can’t reasonably call any single country home. Two, said woman, like me, has recently arrived in a new city. Three, said woman, like me, is caught in indecision, often looking outside herself for reasons to stay — or to go.
The unnamed protagonist has newly arrived at The Hague to start a year-long stint as a translator at an international court. She has a lover, a man who’s separated from his wife but is still married. Their relationship develops but remains undefined, tenuous, delicate, because she is, in short, afraid to ask where she stands — or really to demand anything of him at all. Instead she relies on small gestures and words from him for momentary reassurances, she remains in that space of uncertainty and vulnerability, waiting for him to say or do something that’ll make all her big life decisions for her: whether or not to be with him, to stay at her job, to settle permanently at The Hague. Read it if you love protagonists that frustrate you because they remind you so much of your past self.
Get Intimacies from Bookshop
Lost In Summerland by Barrett Swanson (Counterpoint, 2021)
There are two types of people: Those who run away from things that disgust them, and those who feel an insatiable pull to explore that disgust by getting all up in it. Barrett, like many great personal essayists, is of the latter type — and as such he ends up in a lot of places erudite liberals are not known to show up: men’s retreats, conspiracy theory forums, a Noah’s Ark waterpark.
I found Barrett’s investigations of cultural zeitgeists interesting, but the essays that really pulled me in were the more personal ones about his older brother. This older brother roughed up Barrett often when they were kids, then as an adult got sucker punched outside a bar, banging his head so hard he went into a coma. After he woke up, he started hearing voices — until eventually he began to claim he had supernatural abilities. Had the brother become a clairvoyant — or just brain damaged? Was there a difference between the two? Read this book if you like exploring the liminal spaces between perception and delusion, love and hate, disgust and desire.
Get Lost In Summerland from Bookshop
Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Lee (A Public Space, 2021)
Once upon a time, in 2009, a person on the internet started a reading club of sorts called Infinite Summer. The goal: To make the 1000+-page tome Infinite Jest a collective summer read. This was during a different era, when blogs were still popular. It was just after David Foster Wallace died of suicide and long before Mary Karr spoke out about their abusive relationship. In short, a more innocent time! I got really into Infinite Summer. I read not only Infinite Jest but a bunch of blogs spawned by the project, the most memorable of which was written by a guy who, as part of novel-reading project, had also decided to wean himself off of oxy (one of the topics the novel tackles is addiction). I still remember a post of his that talked about how pills are the loneliest of addictions. With alcohol or weed there are the tactile rituals of mixing, pouring, shaking, rolling, smoking — and also the social ritual of sharing. With pills, there’s only a lonely swallow —
Fast forward 11 years to March 2020 and the start of the pandemic. This time, a litmag called A Public Space started a reading club of sorts called Tolstoy Together. The goal: To make War and Peace a collective read over a few months to get us through the pandemic, which I guess back then we imagined may be over in a few months — haha! Book discussions, led by novelist Yiyun Lee, were held over Twitter. I got really into Tolstoy Together! I read not only War and Peace but also a lot of tweets — and wrote tweets myself. Some of those are included in this book A Public Space put together about the project. Read it if you love reading tweets in print alongside poems by Adrienne Rich and tiny essays about Tolstoy. You can also join a second round of Tolstoy Together, happening now.
Get Tolstoy Together from Bookshop
Once a month, I share book recommendations. Shape it by recommending a read!
I’m still in San Diego but the next love note will come from Lima —
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love, California edition:
The last glimpses of California’s hippie utopias. “It's common in Northern California to find people who abruptly dropped out of society, never to return.”
L.A. county finally returns land seized from a Black family a century ago. “No other government body in the U.S. has returned so much land to an African-American group. The federal government’s initial and now infamous promise after the Civil War—’forty acres and a mule’ to freed Black slaves in the South—was rescinded by President Andrew Johnson.”
More than one-quarter of the nation’s homeless population lives in California — and the more I read about it, the less I understand what the solutions are. “What was once a community with many income levels now has basically two strata: the wealthy and the homeless. Venice’s unhoused residents have formed dozens of encampments, several of which abut houses worth seven or eight figures that occupy lots where modest bungalows once stood.“
Thanks for the book recommendations. Will check them out. I'm especially curious about Barrett's brother's story! And... It's funny because I read Infinite Jest years ago with a small group and this summer we gathered again to read War and Peace! (I couldn't do either alone :) )