Edition #47: Boarding a Plane to Nowhere

Plus, surviving quarantine with gourmet stoner food, everyone in TikTok is "gay", and a tool to foster understanding

A Note From the Editor

I was walking around the Greenpoint waterfront last weekend with a friend as we discussed the things we did and did not miss from the time before the virus. We marveled at the stark differences in the ways we spend our free time now versus then, how back then it was impossible to imagine a life that wasn’t bookended with upcoming travel plans: a girl’s trip, a long weekend, a holiday excursion. Even if the trip wasn’t for another year, just knowing it was on the horizon was motivation enough to power through the mundane. I tried to reason that this change was freeing, if only to discover that it is possible to live without having to board a plane to find joy. I took it a step further, as I tend to do: “I’m almost happy we’ve had to stay still,” I said, “travel was beginning to feel exhausting.”

In the circle of white-collar working Millenials not so long ago, travel was teetering on the brink of performative. Every dating app profile was stuffed with perfectly framed photographs in key destinations: a beveled foot and a far off look in front of the Eiffel Tower, a wide leg stance, arms sprawled straight out like an airplane propellor in a white and blue stairwell in Santorini. “I’ve been to 23 countries and counting,” punchy bios would tout, or “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list!” Like most occurrences on social media, the constant influx of travel-related content, posted in a slow drip to increase the perception of travel frequency began to resemble a rat race. “Is it annoying if I’m still posting pictures of my trip to Bogota?” one friend asked, and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t asked the exact same thing.

No longer can we rely on the travels that our jobs and former lifestyles afforded us in order to subsidize our personalities or to cement our place in some invisible, interesting person hierarchy. No longer can we pretend that being culturally immersed in a controlled setting is the same as showing up in our own communities. I thought about all of these things on the back end of my conversation last weekend, attempting to drum up a sense of gratitude for the forced pause.

But other memories surfaced, too, ones I hadn’t accessed in months. These images flooded the surface of my mind, pooling in shallow water that I waded into gently for fear of drowning in the sheer pleasure of them: lying on the beach in Amalfi, every square inch of sand packed in with loud tourists, our skin glistening. The local man seated next to me wearing nothing but a speedo, his generous belly dangling over the seam as he peeled an orange. A tap on my shoulder, a leathery hand reaching out and offering me half of the orange without a word. Placing a slice of the tender fruit into my mouth and biting down, its tangy juice quenching a thirst I hadn’t realized I felt.

Arriving in Marrakesh, dragging our bags behind us as we followed our taxi driver on foot through a narrow alleyway. Stray cats whose skeletons were perfectly visible under their skin lounging at our feet, meowing loudly as though our steps were disturbing their relaxation. Turning left and right and left, winding deeper into the maze until, when we finally arrived at our riad, we were afraid to leave again, certain we would never find our way back. Walking through an ugly, darkened street in Berlin with my little brother on New Year’s day, my body weak and recovering from an ugly bout of food poisoning, my teeth chattering from the frigid gusts of wind whipping around my face. And still, feeling the sense of pure hopefulness that only a fresh twelve-month calendar can provide. Speeding down a wide, empty road in Iceland, racing to get to a waterfall before the impending sunset. Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” crooning through the speaker, glancing out the passenger window to find a herd of Icelandic ponies galloping alongside us, the sky a wild, fiery orange. The distinctive feeling that someone, somewhere, was encouraging us to slow down, that maybe this was precisely the moment we were chasing.

Someone recently told me that it is only when we are in a new setting that our minds are able to fully comprehend life’s possibilities. When there is a physical distance between our body and the comfort of home, we are able to see the large, bulbous world and all of the roles we didn’t know we could occupy within it. Only then can we truly step back and consider the endless prospects that are enabled simply because of our beating hearts. This, I think, is why travel has become such a pinnacle for so many. Its effects are far greater than the taste of the flaky pastries we slip into our mouths, greater than the baroque images of gothic architecture we photograph with our minds. Travel is reaching for a precise version of fear over and over again, akin to standing at the edge of a rooftop, close enough to know that with one misstep you could go tumbling down, but far enough to know that you are safer than you want to believe. We arrive in a foreign country belly up with no choice but to trust those around us; to point us in the right direction when we are lost, to be patient as we sift through a pile of strange coins and unfamiliar bills, to grant us permission to peek behind the curtain and get a truer glimpse of what it means to live their lives.

Cheers, my dears, and thank you for traveling alongside me. Isn’t it a wonder to think that there was a time not so long ago where we could board a plane to anywhere? Until that day comes again, I’d love to hear about your most vivid, cherished travel memory so that I can pretend I was there with you.

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Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming

1. Surviving Quarantine On Gourmet Stoner Food For a 5-Year-Old. Parents of young children deserve a gold star for surviving the pandemic for this long. Though I am not a parent, I’m at least vaguely aware of the intense pressure parents face, particularly mothers, to be perfect and perfectly well-rounded. I adored this essay for rejecting the notion of how to properly parent during a crisis and instead, embracing the truth that sometimes you have to do what you have to do to get through a difficult time.

   Naturally, Loretta isn’t here for the nuance or the irony of what I’m preparing. She’s here for the fun. She’s here for the surprising mixture of familiar and adventurous. She’s here for corn dogs sticking out of bowls of udon, and for mama’s homemade McGriddles.

2. Everyone on TikTok is “Gay”. How often do you think about toxic masculinity? I've considered the notion frequently this year, thanks to readings like Ben Lermer's Topeka School and this piece from the Atlantic. If you’re not familiar, toxic masculinity is the notion that we've created a world where men aren't allowed to be feminine or sensitive, and that's the first thing I thought about when I read this fascinating piece. Young, good looking, ostensibly straight high school boys on TikTok are creating content in which they intentionally mask their sexuality by doing things like calling eachother beautiful, going in for a kiss, grinding against one another, etc. Critics of this trend say that using sexuality as clickbait is disrespectful to the gay community and borderline homophobic, but others argue that this sort of content is reflective of a future in which toxic masculinity and homophobia are but distant relics of the past.

   In other words, pretending to be gay is a form of adolescent rebellion and nonconformity, a way for these young straight men to broadcast how their generation is different from their parents’, or even millennials before them.

3. Leslie Jamison On Losing Your Sense of Smell. As I read this article, and I asked my friend, "if you had to lose one sense, which would it be?" Without a beat, she replied, "smell," affirming what an expert in the article cited. While we may think of scent as the throwaway of the five senses, there are countless studies that link the loss of smell to intense, lasting depression. Jamison explores her own loss of smell in a lyrical voice that never disappoints, expertly blending flowing personal anecdotes with well-supported facts. It made me think about how a smell can instantly transport us back to another lifetime, and how much I would miss it if it was gone. Smell is so dear to us, in fact, that an experimental philosopher is currently pitching Silicon Valley investors a strange invention that works to transport a person’s personal pheromones in order to improve our virtual communication methods (but that's another story, literally),

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Perhaps You Should…
Try To Understand the Other Side

Nowadays it can feel like a betrayal to your mormals to even attempt to comprehend the beliefs of the "other side", though the effort is undoubtedly important in our polarized society. I found this piece to be an impossibly useful tool in attempting to understand (and humanize) those who hold different beliefs than I do. The idea is that there are six basic moral principles, and how important each of these principles is to an individual is what determines their behavior. Through this lens, the only difference between s person who is very liberal and one who is very conservative is simply which of the aforementioned values holds the most weight for them, which feels more palatable than trying to classify people are “good” or “bad” based on their beliefs.

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**Bonus Content** (Charlie Brown and My Heart Strings)

I recently finished a novel that explores a group of young women in their 20's in South Korea as they navigate life and unforgivable beauty standards. After reading it, a conversation spurred among my book club about whether or not any of us had experienced the dangerous, compelling thought that, if we look like someone else, maybe our lives would be "better." It got me thinking about our tendency to resort to this line of thinking: if I had this job, that partner, this house, that amount of money, then I would be happy. We know this to be false, and yet it takes most humans a lifetime to digest these truths. It made me consider life’s simpler pleasures, which reminded me of this sweet song I learned in musical theatre class as a kid. Give it a listen and a watch, if only for nostalgia’s sake, and you might just cry a little.

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A Quote From A Book You Should Read:

“In a way, I will be glad when we are almost home and the scenery will turn into rice fields and farm plots, and I will be reminded of how far I have come, instead of what I cannot reach.”

-If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

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This newsletter is best served with a side of conversation, so drop your opinions, reflections, and thoughts in the comments below and let’s get to talking.

Or, share the most thought-provoking piece from today’s edition with someone you love, then call them up to discuss, debate, and percolate. As a wise woman once said, “Great minds discuss ideas.”