ELSE WHERE

There is one food group that has never disappointed me… Cheez-Its. Well maybe not never (I’m looking at you, non-Kansas City factories). But they remain a fairly consistent necessity in my life. Now you may still be held up on the fact that I called them a food group. But I would argue 100% that they are. There are plain, white cheddar, sharp cheddar & parmesan, just to name a few. That sounds like a group to me.

As I go through phases of life where I don’t necessarily have the time to eat what others would deem a ‘nutritious’ lunch, Cheez-Its become more critical. The vending machine downstairs serves as an emergency infrastructure, a dispensary of sorts. A few buttons, a swipe of a card, and lunch is ready.

Other foods come and go. I get sick of them. I forget about them. They betray me in some unforgivable way. But somehow, Cheez-Its persist.

Maybe it’s the salt. Maybe it’s the (potentially real) cheese. Maybe it’s the comforting consistency of knowing exactly what you’re going to get.

Provided, of course, they came from Kansas City.

I have been rereading The Secret History by Donna Tartt this week. You know, the book that gives you philosophical quotes on fatal flaws and beauty. It’s the kind of book that requires background knowledge on Dionysus and bacchanals. The kind of book that makes one look deep within themselves and ask, Would I rather be reading a book with Fabio on the cover? It has led me to wonder, though: am I reading the book? Or is the book reading me?

Amid the alarming number of GRE words, I am left to wonder: am I no different than Richard? Desperately trying to cling to words that will make me feel like I understand life and humanity. Or better yet, so I can seem like I do.

And yet, as I flip through the pages, I’m envisioning the next chance I will have to echo the words. The next time I’ll be able to wax poetic about how “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory.”

Richard would be proud.

A damning indictment on me.

I watched IT Crowd for the first time in high school and it made something inside of me fundamentally break (that feels negative… let’s go with “shift”). How do I know that something went a little haywire? Well, Richard Ayoade became my role-model. As a 16 year old girl, was I setting my sights on the wrong idol? Perhaps. Did I care then? Nope. Do I care now? Not particularly.

Ayoade goes through life with a form of indifference, scratch that, more like a form of annoyance, which I find commendable. Regardless of the situation, he appears to remain detached and aloof (boy, do I love that word). When you have those things, avoiding hurt seems easier.

But maybe my life-navigating inspirations are a bit psychologically harmful. Instead of aiming for aloofness, we should be aiming for… something else? I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist. Or a philosopher. Or, most certainly, a comedian.

Still, there is something enviable about being able to meet those hard times with a sense of annoyance. It feels counter-culture, and kind of chic, to be able to say “well I don’t care anyway”.

This is an irritating realization, because I do care. A little too deeply about most things. And I think that the more that I try not to care, the more I become a loser who is trying to hide my great capacity for caring under a level of attempted indifference (which, heaven knows, no one buys).

Richard Ayoade would probably have something funny to say about it.

Or he’d just scoff at me.

Churros are a large part of my identity. Not just any churros. Costco churros specifically. Growing up, every Saturday, my mom would placate me during my impatient walks around that suspiciously large (but not actually suspicious… love you, Costco) warehouse with that crispy, baked, sugary delight.

And guess what? They’re back after being off the shelves for years! Return of the Jedi, who? (I don’t know if that reference hits… never saw the movie. It kinda just came to me).

But also guess what? I can’t find them at any Costco near me.

A want becomes a need when you are told that you can’t have something.

And I really need that churro.

So I’ve had two major rejections this week… a true bummer of disproportionate measures. Could you tell by my most recent thoughts being quasi-depressing in nature?

It has however, made me think of a song that I love: “Two Hearts in Two Weeks” by The Last Shadow Puppets. And do you know what’s kinda cool (and arguably funny in a pathetic, dark-comedy kind of way)? I have the song beat.

Not only has my heart been compressed by rejection twice in two weeks… but in one. I should get an award.

Or at the very least, I should get a third TLSP album.

That is going to happen, right?

Right?

Alex and Miles, I’m begging you… Right?

I have a new special interest in my (apparent) quest for geopolitical knowledge… move aside, the Sahel, because Ireland is now in town.

Is this at least partially imbued by my love of “I Love You” by Fontaines D.C.? Perhaps. I can neither confirm nor deny. Primarily because I don’t want to admit to vapidly rooting my intellectual interests in my song of the week.

Anyway, my latest descent into Irish history has brought me to the concept of self-determination.

A dangerous concept to introduce to someone already predisposed to wondering whether she is making choices or simply watching herself make them.

At its broadest, self-determination is the idea that peoples should be able to determine their own political status and pursue their own futures. Reasonable. I would also like to do this.

Unfortunately, I cannot even determine what I will want for lunch tomorrow... Or tbh even today.

Which raises a much less geopolitically consequential question: how much of our own fate can we actually determine?

There are the obvious constraints. Where and when you’re born. Your family. Your health. The opportunities that happen to exist within driving distance. Whether someone happens to sit next to you at a conference one Tuesday and, through a series of increasingly improbable events, permanently alters the trajectory of your life.

And yet we are expected to emerge from all of this and announce, confidently, I chose this.

Did I?

There is a particular kind of disappointment that makes you want to die, although not in any practical sense. More in the Victorian sense. You’d like to develop a mysterious fever and be carried upstairs, where everyone is forced to speak in hushed tones about how you had such promise.

This usually happens when you’ve wanted something too much.

You did all the embarrassing things. You imagined getting it. You planned what you’d say when people congratulated you. Perhaps, in an especially humiliating moment, you pictured yourself pretending to be surprised. Then it doesn’t happen and suddenly you’re expected to continue participating in society as though you haven’t just been personally rejected by the universe.

People will tell you that everything happens for a reason. These people should be avoided.

The worst part is that, eventually, you will be fine. You know this because you have been disappointed before and, annoyingly, survived every time. One day this will become a funny anecdote or, worse, character development.

But today it is a tragedy.

Today I will be lying face-down on the bed, fully dressed, listening to something unnecessarily devastating (Jeff Buckley, I'm looking at you) and declining to gain perspective.

Perspective can come tomorrow.

I have a love-hate relationship with those (ideally) cotton, two-legged restraints. Finding a pair that fits: a true miracle. Likelihood of occurring: rare. When it does, though: life-changing.

Because finding them requires enduring the true Goldilocks problem. When they fit widthwise, they are too short. When they finally don’t look like highwaters, they make every step arduous due to the Chinese finger trap around your thighs. When the waist fits, something else inevitably doesn’t. You try on pair after pair, slowly lowering your standards from “these look good” to “I can technically move my legs.”

And then, somehow, it happens.

You find them.

They reach your ankles. You can sit down. The waist fits. You turn around in the dressing-room mirror approximately six times looking for whatever horrible flaw you must have missed.

There isn’t one.

But the relief is short-lived, because now you are betrayed by the many choices you must make. Do you buy multiple pairs? Different colors? If you only buy one, will you spend the rest of your life regretting it? Can you throw them into the dryer? Or will one poorly considered laundry cycle turn your perfect jeans back into the capris you fought so hard to escape?

The headache-inducing pathway that one must walk for well-fitting jeans makes you wonder whether it’s worth it. Maybe I’m meant to wear capris marketed as full-length jeans.

Or better yet, maybe my calling in life is sweatpants.

There is a particular stage of liking a song where listening to it stops being a choice. I have reached that stage with Marianne .

Fontaines D.C. are already dangerously overrepresented in my listening habits, so this isn't exactly a shocking development. But Marianne has lodged itself somewhere particularly inconvenient in my brain. It's beautiful and vaguely devastating and has exactly the kind of atmosphere that makes me want to stare dramatically out of a car window.

Music is probably the thing I could talk about longest with absolutely no invitation to do so. Fontaines D.C., Arctic Monkeys, Jeff Buckley, Kendrick Lamar, Bleech 9:3... the list gets embarrassing quickly. This is therefore less a music recommendation and more a public record of whatever has commandeered my headphones lately.

At the moment: Marianne . Again.

This past weekend, I drove six hours to eat Din Tai Fung.

I would like to pretend there were mitigating circumstances. There were not enough of them.

I love Din Tai Fung with the kind of enthusiasm that makes reasonable people start asking questions about opportunity cost. There are closer restaurants. There are restaurants that do not require crossing state lines. And yet.

The problem is that once I've decided I want something specific, “but it is six hours away” apparently enters my brain as logistical information rather than an argument against doing it.

I would also like the record to show that my restaurant opinions contain absolutely no internal consistency. I can be extremely annoying about where I want to eat and then turn around and tell you, with complete sincerity, that I really love Olive Garden.

Both things are true. I contain multitudes. Some of them want xiao long bao. Some of them want unlimited breadsticks.

I've been reading the Tao Te Ching lately, which is funny because a substantial portion of my personality is built around trying very hard at things.

The idea I keep coming back to is wu wei . Roughly, acting without forcing. Not doing nothing, exactly, but not constantly trying to wrestle everything into the shape you think it should take either.

I am, historically, more of a wrestler.

I don't know that I've become particularly Taoist as a result of reading it. I still make plans. I still care too much about things. I still have approximately seventeen tabs open in my brain at any given moment. But I've found myself noticing when I'm pushing against something simply because I can't tolerate leaving it alone.

Which is mildly irritating, because sometimes an ancient Chinese philosopher really does have a point.

I like vintage clothes because finding something good feels approximately 40% like shopping and 60% like winning a small competition no one else knew they were participating in.

This has not prevented me from wanting new things.

Current problem: the Songmont Hobo Bag.

My general wardrobe philosophy exists somewhere between vintage, Reformation, and convincing myself that one extremely good accessory would suddenly make every outfit I own make sense. I recognize that handbags have historically benefited enormously from this line of reasoning.

I haven't decided whether this particular argument will succeed.

It is going very well for the bag.

I’ve been watching Adults , and it has very quickly entered the category of shows I want other people to watch mostly so I can talk to them about it.

This is generally how I consume things. I don’t have a particularly dignified relationship with media I like. A book, show, album, or documentary either passes through my life normally or becomes something I suddenly need to bring up in unrelated conversations.

At the moment, Adults is in the second category.

Also somewhere in the current cultural pile: anything Richard Osman writes, and an increasingly deep rabbit hole of documentaries about the Sahel. There is no coherent theme here. That’s probably the point.

I’ve become a snob. A yarn snob. Never once did I think I would become so offended by wound-up plastic. But dear lord, am I revolted. If you had asked me a year ago about acrylic, I would have asked if you were talking about nails. Oh, was I wrong.

It’s a fabric that smothers you, reduces your ability to breathe. Trapping sweat in and making you feel as hot as if you were in the Sahel (still a special interest of mine since the last edition of my rambles).

Acrylic poses a silly thought piece though… when does caring about the material turn you into a soul-deprived goblin? Is it okay to care about yarn? To value a natural product? Or have I become the exact sort of person I would have found deeply annoying a year ago?

Because there is something sinister about acquiring taste. You start innocently enough. You learn the difference between wool and acrylic. Then you learn about merino. Then alpaca. Then cashmere. Suddenly you’re in a shop touching the sleeve of a perfectly innocent sweater, checking the tag, and putting it back with the quiet disgust of a Victorian woman who has just discovered an unsuitable marriage prospect.

My internal battle over my hatred of acrylic has made me realize something: expertise ruins your ability to enjoy things indiscriminately. Once you know what “good” yarn feels like, you can’t unknow it. Is knowing more actually making your life better, or have you simply acquired another category of things to be irritated by?

Perhaps caring about things is nice. Knowing why you like something is nice. Having opinions is, generally, what keeps us from becoming terribly boring people. Maybe the problem isn’t becoming a snob. Maybe it’s becoming an asshole about it.

It’s when your opinions about sheep hair begin informing your opinions about other human beings that perhaps it’s time to reassess.

So yes, I am a yarn snob. I want wool. I want alpaca. I want fibers that once belonged to something with a pulse.

But I will try very hard not to become spiritually ugly about it.

Unless you make me knit with 100% acrylic.

Then all bets are off.