Hi friends,
I'll always be a little too raw from my days in consumer marketing and throwing absolutely necessary superfluous glitter all over the photo studio during holiday gift guide season. All supporting a key Q4 objective to attain product features on big media listicles of giftables, sparkling fodder for their columns on the other side lampooning our wasted consumerism fueled by listicle giftables.
Get over it, drama queen, I know. We're all just trying to live. So here I present a little list of 10 things that help me live through my routine holiday melancholy, and maybe they will for you too. I have not vetted for international distribution so US-based friends will have more luck with some of the consumables. In any case you have the beautiful option to just go to a local store and support a local producer and love on your local economy have we mentioned local yet?
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Any year of the "Amalgamay" from Château de Béru
My friend W. makes fun of the fact that my go-to grape is Gamay, which is as nonsensical as it sounds. I've never articulated my attachment to it outside of bars and wine shops, so here I'll say it: it's the perfect wine for writing, or designing, or doing any sort of creative work in the evenings. This is the only grape that I've drunk enough to understand the pricing spectrum. $20-30 will net a nice one, but once you go $30+, they get really good. Still easy drinking though the nicer ones get thicc, as in, they have a real body, they're earthy, and yet - très elegant.
As I would coax my friend W., you should really try this gamay.
Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief by Victoria Chang
This collection of letters cut sharp and caressed deep. A reminder that the past doesn't always reveal answers, but what else can we do but follow our trails of questions into the dark? Emerge with the clarity to cut our demons loose? I really loved this one and forever thank it for helping form my own voice. If you click anything here, I would love for it to be my poetry's web debut (!!!): poems.vickygu.com
Chili Crisp from Milu
This goes on everything for me at home. Sad brekkie? Sad lunch? Sad dinner? This makes everything less sad. The team's got heritage at Make It Nice Hospitality (the group w/ Eleven Madison Park) so their finesse is a given. The team is a friend so I'm biased but also my taste is 10/10, so. These have cobanero chili, cumin, coriander, cardamom, toasted soy nuts, and moar! Make those wfh meals more happy.
Negroland by Margo Jefferson
Jefferson has this way of methodically examining her rage that makes me jealous. Cast out pity and find self respect: she taught me this more than Joan Didion. And for those who have grown up in between worlds and races, whether 1960s "upper-crust black Chicago" or 2000s upper-crust Asian Dallas, this memoir speaks an authoritative victory — or at least a calm assurance — over the futility of winning the race.
Plum jam from Ayako & Family
There are 17 jammed hierloom plum varieties on the website as we speak, sourced from Mair Farm-Taki in Yakima, Washington. Sarah Cooke and I reported on Ayako for Currant's climate change series and I got to hang out and take pictures in their kitchen and taste test a tart burst of PLUM from a copper vat of burgundy gold. If you're in Seattle and at The Best farmers market in America (Ballard) go to their stall and get the fresh grilled shokupan and pick up the Best pastries from Salmonberry Goods next to it while you're waiting.
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
I borrowed this from the library and it was so freaking stellar I bought it. This is not just a music critique, a collection of essays that traverse the anthems of Black Lives Matter and Bruce Springsteen and Chance The Rapper and Nina Simone and My Chemical Romance and Carly Rae Jepsen. Oh no, it's reflection of how brutal it is out there, and yet — we sing.
A taste from the foreword, written by Eve L. Ewing: "Hanif would probably laugh at this because I don't think he counts himself as any sort of optimist, but this book makes me almost believe in things I thought I'd given up on. I might even dance again, daring to move my legs across this wasted land."
Pineapple Linzers from Té Company
Forget Milk Bar these are the real crack cookies. Scientific proof: I shipped these babes to friends across the country who also lost their minds upon arrival. Description reads "two discs of hazelnut shortbread and filled with pineapple jam" but the 4-part dark horse here is the "peppers, yuzu, lime, flaky salt"!!
Stay by Nick Flynn
This is mixed media collaged-photo-poem-excerpt thing is for your arty friend, or your non-arty friend with the means and the interest to invest into arty things. From Mary Ruefle: "If you could string a wire between life and death and pluck it, it would make the sound of this book. All Flynn’s ephemera...shows us, from the ground up and onto our shoulders, that it is dangerous to be alive, but the truly deep, massive complicated thing is to wake up and try."
I haven't really looked into Nick Flynn and am hesitant to in case he turns out as some dirtbag art guy that renders me obtuse for enjoying his art. I don't think that's the case but you never know these days.
Reeeally Nice Pyjamas from Desmond & Dempsey
I know, have I SEEN the prices. In transparency I received a set in exchange for writing a piece for D&D's paper, thanks to magnanimous editor Sam Hillman. I usually feel useless in the evenings, but lounging around in these? These strike down millennial malaise, at least until the morning.
Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett
My Christmas tradition is to read this book; I've blazed through it maybe four times now. Probably not the move for you unless you also prefer to process your grief by stripping and searing it, wondering at its ways while uprooting its numbing pain.
Haslett's writing is so imaginative and precise it consumes me with envy: a master class in clawing at the interior of the mind, a tender tribute to family dynamics the craziest of them all, an exploratory romp into music and parody.
This the most prismatic, devastating, funny, freeing piece of literature I own. I can't say what this story has done for me. Read and see for yourself.
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