Is anyone else tired? I’m in a funk, and not in the catchy Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson way. Regardless, I’m grateful to return to writing this newsletter after a two-week break. Welcome back to the Friday Five, your weekly roundup of joyful, cathartic relief in these wild, weird times.
Song: We’re taking it back to 2006 with Rihanna’s “SOS.” There’s something beautifully cathartic about a song that is largely a call for help that you can also dance to. It’s been on a loop in my head as we approach yet another wave of COVID with what seems like zero end in sight. When there’s nothing else left, at least we can dance through the pain.
Work of Art: I can’t stop thinking about seven-year-old Melody, beautifully photographed below for school picture day. She is an icon, she is a star, and she is the moment. We should all have Melody’s ‘you will see’ energy… and cat-eye sunglasses that we take bold photos in.
Recipe: I found an easy snickerdoodle recipe recently while up late, dreaming of what cookie I’d bake next. Snickerdoodles are underrated! I might even consider them the second-best cookie after chocolate chip. The debate is open for who takes third place: oatmeal raisin? M&M? Sound off in the comments if you’re passionate, I just don’t think sugar cookie deserves it.
This recipe comes together quickly and yields a fluffy, soft, and pillowy cookie. I’d love to be the person who freezes portions of cookie dough so I can have a cookie on demand (a C.O.D.) at any given moment, but I always end up making the full batch and feeding anyone in my proximity.
Poem: April is poetry month! What better way to start it than with Sir Derek Walcott’s “Love After Love.” Walcott is originally from Saint Lucia and has an incredible life story: he borrowed $200 to print his first collection and distribute it on street corners when he was nineteen, then ended up winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. This poem is about the most important kind of love! Self-love. I feel like I am constantly in a state of ‘arriving at my own door’ and cherishing myself, so this one hits very hard.
Love After Love
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
Joyful Internet Content:
Feast on your life,
Roya
I just cheers'd my monstera in the spirit of small flexes.
Omg I'm rolling. From Melody's 💁🏾♀️ sass to Feed Me Hotdogs. Does Kevin know he looks like burger? He is the comic!