"these constant vibrations / In the web of the unremarkable."

Poem
Meditation on Ruin - Jay Hopler

It's not the lost lover that brings us to ruin, or the barroom brawl,
or the con game gone bad, or the beating
Taken in the alleyway. But the lost car keys,
The broken shoelace,
The overcharge at the gas pump
Which we broach without comment — these are the things that
eat away at life, these constant vibrations
In the web of the unremarkable.

The death of a father — the death of the mother —
The sudden loss shocks the living flesh alive! But the broken
pair of glasses,
The tear in the trousers,
These begin an ache behind the eyes.
And it's this ache to which we will ourselves
Oblivious. We are oblivious. Then, one morning—there's a
crack in the water glass —we wake to find ourselves undone.

Beverage
Date smoothie

2 Medjool dates, pitted
1 frozen banana
boiling water
milk of choice
optional: spinach, protein powder or whatever, peanut butter if you're feeling wild

Pour boiling water over the dates and then forget about them for a while. When you remember, the water will be cool, the dates will be soft, and you can blend them until smooth. You can skip this step, but your smoothie will be a little grainy. That's fine.

(If you are using spinach, add it here. You can just fill up your whole blender basically. It vanishes. A splash of milk and blend until smooth again. You will not notice the spinach at all except for color.)

Once your dates (and/or spinach) are blended (or if you're skipping that step), add everything else. The frozen banana is what gives this its smoothie texture, but you could use ice. It just won't be as creamy.

Your milk measurement will vary based on what you add and your own preference on how thick you want the consistency. You can use very little and do a smoothie bowl type of thing, but I am all about using a straw.

I have been adding protein powder and collagen but not peanut butter lately. Peanut butter was a big part of this smoothie in 2012 when I worked a terrible job after graduating college, and my boss asked what was in the smoothie and I told him and he said it sounded like a calorie bomb. I did not stop adding peanut butter at that time. Great workplace culture. Anyway, peanut butter will just kind of take over the flavor profile, so that's just what you'd be opting into.

You can also add so much stuff to this base of smoothie, and it will be great. The dates give it a great little energy boost, it's easy to make pretty substantial for getting through the day, and it's really easy.

I have gone through phases of drinking the really like green tasting smoothies, but this one basically tastes like a date shake without me having a stomachache from ice cream.

Scent
Glossier You

Even if you don't know this perfume by name, you know it by scent. Unless you are my dad, who has had anosmia since before it was a pandemic affliction. It is ubiquitous.

I was talking about it with a friend recently who is on her own journey to find a personal daily scent, and Glossier You was a hard out not for its own qualities but because every party, every subway car, every office, every gym locker room, just everywhere basically, has smelled like this perfume for the last six or so years. Like how Santal 33 can transport me to a very specific time in my 20s though I never wore it, I have a feeling Glossier You will have that effect even as I wear it sparingly.

The whole thing is powdery and earthy and a little floral. I don't know if it actually smells like my skin or whatever, but the dry down is relaxed. It isn't a scent that reminds me of myself, which is I think what people who love it are looking for in this scent. Like the appeal may be that it wears so easily that it can become part of the sensory background of daily life? To be honest, though, last spring when I was buzzing around Central Europe with Lydia, we were spritzing it on ourselves constantly and so I had my moment with the Glossier You experience.

Personally, it is a little powdery for me as its perfume self, but what I do love is the Glossier deodorant. It's a natural deodorant that actually works, and You is one of the scent profiles. It works much better in that place for me. But I'm using the Sandstone right now, which is extremely unisex in a traditional way, and there is also an orange blossom and neroli scent. And unscented.

Now I'm thinking about how much the Glossier experience has changed since 2015, and that is truly headspinning. Remember the weird little stickers and the maximalist branding on the packaging with the alien smiley faces? And the super thick masks? Happy to follow up outside of this newsletter about that with interested parties.

Now playing via Spotify "daylist"

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Other things

Spring ahead

Garbage!!! One of the worst days of the year!!!!! Should be included in the poem above. I am going to bed in approximately twenty minutes without rereading or revising this newsletter. Can't wait to find weird syntax and typos at a later date.

Glossier memory lane

I went to a dark place to try to track down some Glossier branding memories after writing about Glossier You: the hidden photos archive of the Instagram account I stopped using while having some sort of social media meltdown in spring 2020. (lol) I found a few, but none were really representative of what I was thinking about earlier. Here's a ~creative~ little collage of the photos I found without looking very hard anyway, just a little treat. It's clearly the same brand, the G of course, but gosh, I wish I had a photo of the mask jars to throw on there or a compare-contrast of the postal packaging. I am sure there is a deep dive of this on the beauty internet. If you go and find it, please send it along. Also these flat-lays... dark.

Finstas and things like that

Sometimes I think about going back to using my original Instagram account instead of the goofy one I currently use. I originally created the newer one just to find out restaurant hours because all the websites were wrong. I go over to the old one mostly to look at acquaintances' babies.

But I could go back to the original account, with my preferred handle. Just pop back up years later without commenting on the fact that my life is totally different than the last time I posted there.

Relatedly, this past year, I finally emerged from a multiyear hermit mode that was more "working myself to the bone, delusional about what I can manage to do within a broken public school"-induced than pandemic-induced, though I know many people experienced that kind. Reemerging was great because I realized that basically every friend I care about reintegrated me into their life without further questions (true love), but the weird side effect was running into people who truly had no concept of where I was living or what I was doing. One friend at Pitchfork was like oh Brigid, so great to have summers off, right? Perks of teaching! How's DC? And I think my series of expressions was like 😯😬😅. This is a person I at one point had talked to daily for years and years. I felt a little guilty.

Anyway, I look forward to once again just doing some weirdo life changes without public announcement, except probably here to you — my nearest and dearest newsletter subscribers who now get a weekly feed from the inside of my brain in addition to the poem and beverage.

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love you, see you next week