Recent Reads + A Reset

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We’re back!

I took some time between Christmas and the New Year to recharge. It was wonderful and restorative. Here are a few reads I’ve recently enjoyed, plus some writing and unwinding vittles:

My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing by Carl Phillips
A beacon as I prepared to springboard into 2025. Seven meditations on the writing life by poet Carl Phillips. The meditations on Ambition, Silence, and Community resonated most deeply with me. Phillips is attentive to the uncertainty and shapeshifting nature of the work, while also honoring how important it is to live. I’d mail a copy of this to everyone I love who writes if I could.

Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik
Fascinating and sharp. Anolik’s writing is immensely fun to read, the energy and pacing clip along with delicious sentences and, yes, of course hot tea. I love the subtle expansion of the premise here. What begins as a quest through the archives Eve left behind when she passed in 2021, a key to teasing out the relationship between Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, two literary daughters of California—often compared, contrasted, speculated about in tandem, framed in terms of either/or, you’re a Joan or an Eve, you love Joan or you love Eve—becomes an incisive study of two women writers, the industry, devotion to writing, parallels and departures, with intricate dot connecting re: defining circumstances and events of both authors’ lives. And, of course, the glimpses of Eve’s letters are as voicey and witty as her fiction. Here’s a snack from a farewell to a lover:

“…you should [stay in] your corner and leave bohemian cunts like me to their own destruction… I can’t think about you anymore.”

Tell ‘em, Eve.

The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut
Last year I inhaled When We Cease To Understand the World, and I’m still turning over what that book does and what it did to my brain. But let’s try. I think it had something to do with the work being so unlike anything else I’d ever read, or even thought I enjoy reading. Labatut’s books induce in me a simultaneous wonder, awe, compassion, fear, repulsion, and rage for humanity, discovery, advancement, and our attitudes toward progress. I’m also drawn to imaginative weaving that pinpoints the creative components of science and math, the daydreaming that can become obsession and madness, both of which fascinate (and haunt) me. Noting cream curls spiraling turbulence in a cup of coffee doesn’t seem so different from lying on a blanket, staring at the clouds and seeing god (or God, or love, or your youth rising up like a loud wave and a soft bell). I love Labatut’s books for how his specific blend of fact and fiction lays out wondrous and devastating paths of genius. How the mind can warp a blessing into a curse, dement a discovery into a mechanism of harm. It calls to mind C.D. Wright’s poem “Re: happiness, in pursuit thereof.” Check out these two lines in particular:

“We are running on Aztec time,
fifth and final cycle. Eyes switch on/off.”

Solitaire (aka patience)
A nice activity on a snowy afternoon, also one of my favorite ways to unwind or work out a problem. The cards won’t dance when you win, as they did playing computer desktop solitaire throughout the 90s, but feel free to mess them up on your playing surface to summon the complete computer room experience.

The Reset
This fall, I found myself deadlocked on what to do with several stories because I didn’t like reading any of them. My logic goes that if I’m not enjoying reading them, then a reader will likely feel the same. So I took a gentle break. I wanted to keep getting up in the mornings, keep getting to my desk. (I also can’t sleep in…so a total break simply isn’t for me.) So here’s the deal I made with myself: I could do morning pages if I felt so moved, I could read; I would not open a ton of Word docs and sit at my desk feeling shitty. So that’s what I did. I morning paged, I read. I dipped into the wealth of resources archived on Morning Writing Club. I went into sponge mode. I went into absorption, creation, generative mode. And I ended up drafting pages toward something else that excited me then, which I stepped away from when the year turned. I’m experimenting with leaving myself wanting more, rather than waiting until I tap out. I’m not waiting until I’m cranky and frustrated to get up from the desk. I’m calling my sessions slightly earlier, writing down some questions, and sometimes not making any notes, just seeing what sticks until the next day. By not depleting my energy, I get on with my day a bit less sleepy, moving through the world with a newfound sense of longing and urgency to be back in the work, churning sentences in my head.
If you want a peek at last year’s New Year’s reset, check out this post (complete with possum meme!).

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Kitsch Ocean in 2025
A year into writing this newsletter, I have a clearer sense of my bandwidth and what Kitsch Ocean realistically looks like. I like how this space pushes me to write on a shorter timeline; it’s a relatively low-stakes way to quiet the perfectionist currents and share kernels I hope others may find inspiring. Moving forward, expect more like 2-4 posts a month. This coming year, I aim to send thirty letters from Kitsch Ocean, as well as pepper extra posts in Swan Float for paid subscribers. I’ve halved the cost of annual subscriptions, so they are now $30. I appreciate the chance to grace your inbox, whether or not you’re a paid subscriber. So many channels want our time, attention, cash, and energy.

Thank you for being part of the swell.

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Frankie supervising bed desk time