Leave the Lights On
Hello Friends,
The original title of this newsletter was intended to be “Coworkers” and it was to be about the strangeness of my working life without my favorite coworker, my dog Otis, who we said goodbye to on March 9th. It was an impossible and compassionate choice and it’s been hard to grieve it properly given the rapidly shifting situation in our city in particular. In the previous months, Otis’s bed was right next to my desk, and I do find myself looking for him there, a detail about the universe that feels part of this current strangeness but is not.
Early on in this I half-joked to my husband that I was really feeling the pain of trading one very quiet and not needy office mate for three verbal ones who produced a lot of dishes. Make no mistake: it’s a lot to have two working parents run a homeschool and get their jobs done in a NYC apartment. But our family is lucky. We have job and financial security and kids who like schedules and we live in a low-density neighborhood with large, open-air park and we are more than fine. I’m even writing; it’s key to my routine and I’m grateful to be able to access that part of my brain right now. I’m sending love to those who are worried about their own foundations and health and caring for those close or at a distance, for those who are home with small children, are teachers or health care workers or who cannot afford to stay home. We bang our pots and clap our hands and whoop out our window every night at 7PM for those essential workers. I suspect many of us are enjoying a good scream.
I’ve always loved Eula Biss’s book ON IMMUNITY; when I first read it years ago, it cemented what it means to be socially responsible, how we can and should care for those we may never know we are caring for. The novel I finished writing earlier this year has this quote from the book as its epigraph:
What has been done to us seems to be, among other things, that we have been made fearful. What will we do with our fear? This strikes me as a central question of both citizenship and motherhood. As mothers, we must somehow square our power with our powerlessness. We can protect our children to some extent. But we cannot make them invulnerable any more than we can make ourselves invulnerable. "Life," as Donna Haraway writes, "is a window of vulnerability."
A few Saturdays ago (I cannot remember which, what is time?) I went to pull down our bedroom window shades and noticed in the cityscape before me that there were so many more lights on in windows. It was something that registered in my body, the shock of not the emptiness of the city, but of its fullness, of people really trying to keep one another safe by staying in. The lights have gotten more numerous every night.
Reading, Thinking, Feeling
So many people, knowing how much I’ve always been a phone person, sent me the various essays about talking on the phone but I’m gonna use this moment to re-circulate the one I wrote for Lenny Letter a couple of years ago on this same subject.
Found this clip of a Bronx Zoo tiger having a little dip and playtime to be quite soothing. If you have a cat at home please attempt reenactment.
Feel like I need to publicly state I’ve always loved beans and jigsaw puzzles and tie dye and handwriting notes and when I’m not spewing silver linings like some inspirational Instagram account, I’m muttering to my husband about how people need to get off my lawn. I got pushed over the edge when I saw how folks are price gouging puzzles online, asking $60 for something that’s normally well under $20. Stay human/stay petty.
Current book releases are really taking a hit. It matters more than ever to preorder and buy books and I’ve been spending money I am not spending on things like metrocards buying books from indies, many of which are fulfilling online orders and need our business now so they’ll be there on the other side of this. I’d like to shout out my local Word Up Books and the amazing children’s bookstore Books of Wonder as two reliable online ordering sources that will ship to you wherever you are. I’ve also been making use of Bookshop.org, which gives a portion of its proceeds to indie bookstores and is shipping as quickly as that other online megastore who shall not be named.
Books I’ve ordered during this time:
Lily King’s WRITERS AND LOVERS (currently reading and really enjoying)
Emily St. John Mandel’s THE GLASS HOTEL
Anna Solomon’s BOOK OF V.
Chani Nicholas’s YOU WERE BORN FOR THIS
Margaret Atwood’s CAT’S EYE
Other books I will preorder once my credit card starts to recover: Laura van den Berg’s I HOLD A WOLF BY ITS EARS, Natalka Burian’s DAUGHTERS OF THE WILD, Lynn Steger Strong’s WANT, Brit Bennett’s THE VANISHING TWIN. For my girls, ages 11 and 9, we’ve pre-ordered: Natalia Sylvester’s RUNNING and Chad Sell’s DOODLEVILLE and remain grateful for the NYPL’s e-catalog.
Where to Find Me
At home(school). Snack is at 10:45 and recess is at 12:30, which we mostly spend walking the beautifully empty woods of Inwood Hill Park.
Thanking this white noise track for the work I’ve been able to get done on my new novel.
Documenting my walks and the sky on Instagram @backtalkbook, where I’m so happy to see you all wedging yourself into the slivers of joy and humor of all shades.
Offering sliding scale single coaching sessions for the month of April and low-cost tailored exercise packets for anyone who wants to work on fiction. As ever, please reach out through my website if you’re interested.
I’m thinking of all of you with your lights on wherever you are, and hope that you are safe.
Talk soon,
Danielle