This is the last full week before my family, and I move houses. It’s been five years in our little desert patio home, making this house only the second in my life that I’ve lived in for 5+ years. When I was young, it was normal to move house every one to three years until we landed in Arizona when I was eleven. These are facts about me, and I don’t think they cohere into a story, yet. I do find myself less attached to a place, a house. There is more to what makes a home. But now, having lived in Arizona since 2004 (with a short stint in WA from 2013-2016), I can’t say I’m new here anymore. I wonder when (if) I won’t feel like a very young, green person who just moved here and is still acclimating.
On Saturday, I went to a linocut printmaking workshop at Wasted Ink Zine Distro led by Dempsey Keenan, a brilliant local artist. I made a print of some lemons (predictable), and my brain is swimming with ideas. There was something very satisfying about shaving away the linoleum, strip by strip. After, I walked to Lola Coffee near where I went to college a long time ago, where I’d met Charissa of Wasted Ink, also a long time ago. The city has changed a lot since I first got to know it, and noticing those changes are when I’m most forced to realize I actually, like, am from here now. I remember the city under the current city. Phoenix is now more vibrant (as well as more expensive and gentrified). It reminds me of the quote I shared from Christina Sharpe last week: “I just think that staying with something can open up a different kind of aperture by which we don’t collapse everything into it but by which we can make an argument or see the world.” In staying with a place longer and longer, the vision is shifting, and I can see more. I keep my eyes open as I try to figure out how to be from a place where my roots are all self-planted.
I read a lot this week (perhaps seeking a third-party companion amid the chaos of moving) and wanted to share the links to my favorites:
Books
The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg
The Baby on the Fire Escape by Julie Phillips
The Wife of Willesden by Zadie Smith
Magazines
Rediscovering Natalia Ginzburg by Joan Acocella (The New Yorker, 2019)
The Radical Vision of Toni Morrison by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah (NYT, 2015)
Potatoes and Point by Angela Carter (London Review of Books, 1986)
How Kitchen Table Press Changed Publishing by Ashawnta Jackson (JSTOR Daily, 2021)
Newsletters
Cameron Steele on competing motherhoods via The Argonauts, On Not Knowing, Linea Nigra, and the Blue Jay's Dance in Interruptions
Brandon Taylor on redemption and morality in fiction in Sweater Weather
Victoria Meléndez on mother love and loss in Finding the Words
Amanda Montei interviewing Kelly McMasters on her new book about marriage, home, and fantasy in Mad Woman
Andrew Janjigian explaining why KitchenAid actually hates home bakers in Wordloaf
Tyler reminiscing on Phoenix architecture (the iconic Souper Salad building!) in Tyler Has a Gun
Allison Lichter on Roxanna Asgarian’s new book about family separation in Matriarchy Report
