March 13
Lasagna, clichés, Alice In Chains, and good friction
One of our neighbors just welcomed a new baby so tonight I’m making my go-to Care Dish to leave on their doorstep…
This weekend my son registers for his high school classes. Damn. Where did the time go? As it turns out, all the parenting clichés are true. Time has flown by but we are collectively ready for this new chapter. It is a treat to be with my teen, to delight in his developing humor, and to discover what he finds interesting. Music continues to be a major influence and currently Alice In Chains in having a real moment in our house.
Speaking of clichés, the writer Catherine Shannon has a really fantastic piece: A brief defence of cliché:
“So-called clichés, whether in wisdom or in experience, are easily understood; they tie us to one another, and they clearly endure. Clichés are not intellectual or aesthetic crimes, but grounded, commonplace truths, repeated endlessly. When we dismiss clichés outright, we risk dismissing the common life they articulate. Spoken with love, the most familiar words remind us that we are not so alone in this life; they place our private sorrows and joys in the shared custody of language.”
and
“We also shouldn’t avoid clichéd experiences. As our lives increasingly lose touch with everyday experiences in the real world, perhaps we should aim to have more of them (the everyday experiences, I mean). We live in a world riddled with disaffected irony. Social media rewards the unusual, the exaggerated, the hysterical, the false; it’s why we’re bombarded with bizarre things like elderflower cappuccinos. Too often, clichéd experiences are maligned for being “basic” when they’re actually just normal (and often quite good). A secure person can unironically enjoy a pumpkin spice latte. If you’re on page 37 of the SSENSE sale, you may never know the happiness of going to Target to get some fall candles. But I hope you do. (I hope we all do.) Red roses for Valentine’s Day? Well, what were you hoping for instead? A bunch of snapdragons? I would encourage all of us, especially the disaffected urbanites reading this, not to nibble around the edges of life but to devour it, to take in its most foundational and clichéd experiences without irony or reservation.”
Our living room lighting arrived! Now we’re just waiting for two blackened steel pipe tables hopefully in the next few weeks.
And a good reminder from James Clear about the importance of friction.
“The modern world is optimized for convenience, not improvement…But the body and mind only grow when placed under a stimulus. If you want improvement, you have to choose something different than convenience.”
Enjoy the weekend. xx
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