Reading Deprivation and Chainmail Debts
The Sternal Journal
Please send me album recommendations
Hello, Hello Sternal Journalists:
This is a strange week for me (of course, all weeks are kind of strange right now, but this one moreso) because I'm taking part in a reading and other media deprivation week as a part of this new age-y creativity self-help book I'm reading called The Artist's Way.
Yes, it's exactly the type of thing I would make fun of, but also--I make fun of a lot of things that are really positive forces in the world! It's how I communicate! It's why, at a wedding over the summer, someone who I had only met a few days before told me, "Don't be that Julian right now."
[There was a young child with a shirt that said "Shine bright like a dino," and he said, "That's a cute shirt." And I said, "Well, not exactly. The only reason any dino would be shining bright is because a meteorite is hurtling towards their planet."]
[The kid couldn't hear me! It's just jokes!]
Anyway, Artist's Way, great book. But this week is challenging me because I'm supposed to do (1) No non-work-essential reading, and (2) eliminate or cut back on other things like podcasts, tv, etc. Music is allowed for some reason.
This has, in some ways, been cool. I have more time. I've felt bored for the first time in years (turns out it's hard to be bored when you have the story of every cool murder ever two clicks away).
Yesterday, I found myself just looking at Rembrandt paintings on the Met's website (which I read you could do in a magazine, but last week) while listening to a rap group a friend recommended called Slum Village. Who's in Slum Village? I don't know because I'm not supposed to do any non-essential googling. How thrilling it can be to not know something.
On the other hand, this has been tough. If I don't see a new instagram post of someone accidentally bragging about breaking quarantine, or hear Michael Barbaro's (1 "r" or 2? I don't know, I'm not looking it up!) voice while making coffee... do I know the world is really out there? Intellectually, yes. Emotionally, not quite!
One of the ways I have filled the time this week is finally fulfilling my chainmail debts. I did not copy and paste and move the second line to the first line (sorry, Hilary and Anthony--you will not be receiving recipes or poems from my begrudging contacts), but I did send the person in the first line the thing requested.
And since I can't do my typical over-researched and -linked article now (still nailing the over-written), I'm going to share those with you.
1. A recipe you can recite from memory [I'm proud of this one. Share your vids and pics]
Julian's Savory Oatmeal
1/2 cup of oatmeal
2 eggs
1/2 avocado
1. Make the oatmeal (this is Great British Baking Show technical challenge level of detail, I know). I just use the microwave!
2. Slice the avocado both ways so it'll be easy to mash up once you spoon it out.
3. Spoon out the avocado into the oatmeal.
4. Mix up the avocado and the oatmeal really well so it's become more of a green oatmeal-type thing than a recognizable version of either.
5. Pack the sides in with your spoon so it becomes a bit of a mound.
6. Using the same spoon, make a dimple in the top of your avi-oatmeal mound. If you squint, it's kind of the shape of flan.
6. Bring water to boil in a pot.
7. Stir counter-clockwise (you're poaching these eggs!)
8. Poach the eggs and fetch them with a slotted spoon.
9. Deposit them into the dimple.
10. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, or hot sauce if you'd like!
11. Break the yolks and dig into the mound!
2. Any poem you love [I obviously didn't write this one, but I love it and it's from a poetry collection called Dated Emcees by Chinaka Hodge you should absolutely check out]
Mr. Carter watches The Godfather on the day his daughter is to be married.
like twelve and a half minutes in, shawn takes his feet off the desk to laugh.
no no no pause the shit for a second pause the shit
grant a meeting to all these neutral until they need me
friends? if you believe in america. and are raised on america
and still believe in that shit before you believe in me and
you come to my beautiful baby girl's first and only wedding day
to ask me a favor. i gotta grant you a meeting?
fuckouttahere.
all i ever done is listen to these streets, all i pushed for, this day,
no let me finish
one moment alone when i might call my given name and
raise my child, like an over-runneth cup, to the heavens
have baby see her own color as a triumph, call her blue,
knowing moving white was what financed her joy,
alongside an unspoken trail of crimson,
all the bodies that had to vanish in order to cement
her happiness, this america and here i am both god,
the father and
you could press play again
***
Alright, now please forward this to 20 people and tell them to subscribe to The Sternal Journal.
Jkjkjk
unless...
<3 Julian
but what if...