Everything I Loved in Spring
`Happy clothes, satisfying cupboards, and percussive books
Hello Beautiful People!
THIS WEDNESDAY I’m hosting an evening workshop in New York if you’re around and want to hang!
LIVING ARTFULLY: Bringing creativity into everyday life
Creativity thrives in the way you notice, gather, and respond to your days. This workshop explores how to bring a creative sensibility into everyday life by paying attention to what moves you, following your curiosities, and treating ordinary moments as magic. Through a series of thoughtful exercises and conversation, we will explore how creativity is already present in your life and how to shape it into a practice that feels natural, sustaining, and your own.
This session is for you if…
You want to infuse more wonder into your daily life
You’re curious about paying closer attention to your own thoughts, memories, and daily experiences
You’re a writer or artist who wants a natural and personal creative practice
You’ve been away from creativity for a while and want to dip your toe back in
You’ve never had a creative practice and want a comfortable way to start
Wednesday, May 20th, 6:30-8:30pm
602 E. 9th Street
New York, NY
$95
Register here!
Wooo! Okay!
Hi Blueberries, and Happy May!
Whether you’re joining us live from the northern or southern hemisphere, I hope this transition season is treating you with kindness.
I also hope you are treating yourself with kindness, and making sure to get good helpings of nature in between chores.
The other day I had the perfect ten-minute opportunity to sit in the grass with my little baby pal, and it was exactly what we both needed.
Spring Whimsy
This time of year in the northern hemisphere presents my annual opportunity to remind you what spring is, which I love to do! Spring is muddy, drizzly, cold, harsh, AND soft as a pink peony petal on the cheek of a bunny’s tummy.
When we say “Where is spring? When is spring going to get here?” We are really rushing the season to summer—the young adult of seasons. But why rush the year’s childhood? Children are sometimes mature and often silly and always innocent, and their innocence blesses them with a wonder at the world and a dazzling range of daily emotions.
Springtime—the childhood of a year—can also bless us with an astonishment at the world and all it can hold at once, as well as a dazzling range of daily weathers and moods.
Springtime, like a vibrant child, is odd, playful, and WHIMSICAL (which longtime Blueberries know is a very important trait to me!). Its energy is a weather event that is a whirl of fluffy tutus, make believe, superhero capes, arithmetic, running fast through wildflowers, and thumb-sucking on a hard day.
I love April and May for dressing in happy clothes with taffy-colored shoes, stopping for a funfetti cupcake at the end of a morning walk, and admiring clown-head daffodils and kissy-mouth tulips in their various lipstick shades.
On the first warm day of the year, I went on a coffee-walk with my friend Alisha who was embodying spring whimsy in her leopard jacket and swan purse!!
Spring in all her manic pixie unpredictability and dreamgirl flakiness models for us that growth is nonlinear and full of contradictions. As spring grows up, she’s timid one day and effervescent the next. Some mornings she’s practically a Hot Girl Summer, and by afternoon she’s more of a Folklore Fall.
What better a time to embrace our own childlike complexities and inner manic pixie than in springtime? It’s a season to skip down sidewalks and cozy up with an adventure book and bag of candy. To honor the season, we can honor the inner adolescent who tries on new personas, gets lost in a morning of journaling, and experiments with hats.
I appreciate these fleeting months more and more with each passing year. Is it a privilege of youth to find more beauty in death than in new life?
I took a very cozy April trip to Cold Spring, NY—just over an hour away from the city on the commuter train.
The town’s main street is a serene vignette so dear and snug that it could be the setting for a children’s series about a badger and an owl dressed in cardigans and bowties who chatter philosophically whilst strolling from bookshop to toy shop, and of course shop is always spelled “shoppe,” and of course the shoppe keeper is always a kindly kangaroo with a monocle and a wise saying and an excellent recommendation for your next novel.
You know, that kind of thing.
It was the ideal location for me to embrace springtime whimsy under the canopy of cotton-candy magnolia blossoms and bubble-bath dogwood flowers.
My mom and I also visited this special and spacious Italian art museum, which whimsically has a herd of fuzzy Sardinian donkeys who roam their corrals next to the museum’s cafe. A spectacular little day trip if your eyes are hungry for the sights of serene Equidae munching on cruciferous crops and Southern European ceramics.
And I’ve been occupying my daily liminal moments with whimsical activities, like a book of memory games that I keep in my tote bag, or this meditative horse drawing experience (!) that I can’t stop playing…
The artist Michail Rybakov wanted to make something “small, optimistic and whimsical.” His gradient.horse, wherein you draw a horse with your mouse or finger and then release it to run and jump with others’ creations, is exactly that. Watching your horse run with others, doodled in whimsical moments by your fellow earthlings, has potential for poignancy.
You win ten million dollars if you guess which one is mine:
“Small, optimistic, and whimsical.” ←This is exactly how I would describe my dream life, and ideal state of mind. Spring is good practice for it.
A few more fanciful websites:
Window Swap
Ancient Earth Globe
Absurd Trolley Problems
Garden Letters
I Miss My Cafe
Snug
Spring Cleaning
While we’re on the subject, I’m always in the middle of some grand cleaning project or another.
That doesn’t mean my apartment is clean—in fact you’d call for your fainting couch if you entered the front door right this very moment—but it means I’m always in the process of dealing with some impossible corner that is actively frying my nervous system at all times.
Recently, I revolutionized my medicine cabinet, and now I can’t stop opening the door and staring at it in wonder and awe.
I was inspired by my mom’s medicine cabinet—a tangible oil painting still life of potions and elixirs for every affliction. She’s taken a Sharpie pen to each concoction with her cheerful, voluminous handwriting to boldly trumpet the expiration date toward all who may venture into cabinets unknown in search of remedies.
I went on my own medicine cabinet rampage to turn our expired, goopy mess of remedial potions into something functional and perhaps even worthy of a Dutch still-life oil painting master.
I tried to cover all the basics, while adding a touch of (you guessed it) springtime whimsy. Envious of my baby’s adorable post-vaccine Disney character band-aids from the pediatrician, I googled “joyful band-aids” and discovered these (allegedly) limited-edition floral plasters that, indeed, provide me with joy even in the midst of paper cut distress! (The more serious ones belong to Mr. Mari, who does not derive his particular joy from printed bandages.)
While I have yet to fold my laundry that has been sitting in the laundry basket for over a fortnight, I have embarked on a grand project to clean all my pots and pans.
You see, I am one of those degenerate scoundrels who audaciously tosses every soiled meal vessel into the dishwasher, whether it belongs there or not.
Even if a wooden spoon or fragile teacup or French frying pan explicitly introduces itself with an obvious HAND WASH ONLY engraving, I simply whisper “Try your best in there” and shove it into the fray along with my tupperware and mixing bowls.
Having a dishwasher is one of my greatest luxuries (dishwashers and microwaves are both rarities in NYC apartments, and while I finally have the former, I’ve never had the latter) and let’s say I’m making the most of this newfangled technology.
Because of my reckless dishwasher usage, my pots and pans boast battle scars from curry and mushroom bolognese, pancakes and failed paprikash. I’m cleaning them one by one with a bit of powder and this extremely satisfying pan and dish scraper.
I’ve also been (sorrowfully) parting ways with some of Mari Jr’s outgrown onesies and snowsuits and those baby hats with bear ears, and I found a wonderful and easy way to pass them along: donating to Cradles to Crayons, which provides children’s clothing for families who desperately need them.
You can donate locally in Chicago, Philly, or Boston, but a lovely person named Rachel will send you big purple donation bags and pre-paid shipping labels if you email rbrown@cradlestocrayons.org. Easy! Here was my project a few weeks ago:
Indulgent Asceticism
A recurring theme of my spring:
What if ‘giving up’ something can feel pleasurable, desirable, and even indulgent?
I’m reading Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan, which doesn't lecture about why you shouldn't eat animals, but instead makes a genuinely luscious case for what you gain when you don’t. It’s the same idea as another book I love, The Sober Lush: A Hedonist’s Guide to Living a Decadent, Adventurous, Soulful Life—Alcohol Free.
Whenever I’m in the position to ‘give something up,’ whether it’s for a Lenten challenge or because I find myself slipping into addiction, I feel restricted, deprived, and sad.
I immediately have an image of myself in a kerchief and apron, clanking my coins in a copper can, roaming the streets of Anatevka or some such place and surviving on crumbs of stale bread and bland tea.
A life without glasses of Sancerre, chunks of Manchego cheese, coupes of champagne, or slabs of buffalo mozzarella?! You might as well send me back in time to the Eastern Bloc where I will exclusively eat boiled cabbage under a single lightbulb alone in a grey concrete apartment.
Depriving myself of anything feels immediately unsafe to me, like getting dropped off at a sleepover, or having my teddy bear taken away when school starts. To be comfortable in the world, I like to have all my comforts.
So, I’ve been curious about challenging my ideas of what “giving things up” can look like, if the sacrifice comes from a place of affection and love.
I’m already vegan, yet I still struggle with the daily chafe of “giving something up,” like when a fancy restaurant can only offer me plain lettuce, or when I’m nostalgic for a cultural celebration I can no longer fully participate in, or when I’m traveling and realize that the national dish doesn’t apply to my proclivities.
Why would I keep choosing the smaller menu, the awkward explanation, the vague guilt I cast on others simply by ordering my dumb lettuce—if it doesn’t even make a real difference anyway?
These are questions I’ve thought about a lot.
These books talk about abstinence as a personally fun, abundant, blissful practice—self-serving, even. It’s so refreshing to read a book about veganism that talks about what’s in it for ME, not only the animals! ;)
Both books argue that abstinence is choosing, and we do this all the time. If you save up for a dream vacation to the south of Spain, you’re not “giving up” a trip to Columbus, Ohio. If you’re watching an underrated Hitchcock film on the Criterion Channel, you’re not “giving up” reality slop on Netflix.
You’re constantly choosing what aligns with your soul (and sometimes that is reality slop on Netflix!), which inevitably means eliminating other options. We make choices all day every day, and if we know ourselves well enough, that means the choices feel really good!
Every act of desire involves giving something up, and we don't usually call it sacrifice because we're too busy being delighted by what we picked!
These books ask: What if sobriety is a hedonist’s journey, and veganism is an edit toward what you actually crave? They’re really about what it looks like to live in devotion to less, and how much richness ‘less’ can bring.
What if we don’t need so much? What if we don’t have to consume all this? What if we can reduce suffering, and cope in healthier ways, and celebrate without harm, and create new and better traditions?
What if these personal decisions had no impact on society’s future whatsoever, and just felt enjoyable and nourishing to your soul—like handwriting a card instead of sending a text, watching a good movie instead of a true crime episode, taking a nature walk instead of scrolling, or listening to the birds at sunset instead of a TikTok rage bait video?
What if degrowth could be an enlivening and exciting opportunity, rather than something taken away??
Example: My 24-year-old friend recently bought herself a flip phone—a major downgrade from the many versions of smart phones she’s had for ten years. She told me that buying it was the first time she’s ever been excited to get a phone in her life. Upgrading her iPhone was always such an inconvenience and expense—something she resented doing—but getting her flip phone was like receiving freedom in a mailroom package.
Can a “downgrade” seem this exciting? Can saving the earth be luxurious? Can spiritual alignment feel sumptuous?? Maybe! And what a cool concept!
ON THAT NOTE: Fish has been the hardest food for me to give up. I grew up in a fish city, worked at a fish market, devoured fish in every form in every country I’ve visited. I used to say that my idea of perfect happiness was eating fish, next to the sea, under the sun. Moreover, I’m terrified of fake meat, and even the thought of fake fish makes me gag.
THAT SAID: Oshi Plant-Based Fish is unbelievably good, and a total life-saver for this fish freak. It’s expensive, yes, and I’m not getting paid to say this except in soul wealth, but their products are incredible and I eat them every single day. Dare I say they taste better than the real thing!? I do dare! This is joyful veganism!
As I confront a few areas of my life that could use some temperance (like making a budget—UGH—or reducing the number of baby lamb booties I buy for Mari Jr), I’m wondering where the enticing possibilities might be.
Words like discipline, moderation, and self-restraint aren’t any fun, but their synonyms could be: curation, devotion, tending.
A budget could be a colorful pie chart portrait of what I value. Buying fewer tiny lamb booties means that the ones I do buy feel extra special. Moderation provides opportunities for ritual (if you only have one coffee a day, it’s ceremonial!), and restraint can look like savoring.
Springtime Stretchiness
Another way that we can follow nature’s teachings and embrace a springtime state of mind is wearing stretchy clothes! Spring reminds us of our human creatureliness and how our human creature bodies expand, shrink, wrinkle, and grow in response to environmental and life changes.
Body changes are signs of life, and spring is the seasonal celebration of life in all its stages! (Repeating this to myself as I’m off to return yet another pair of too-small shoes post-pregnancy...)
Some tried and true stretchy clothes…
I rented this soft meshy dress for my trip to Chile and wonder why I ever wear any other fabric! It’s so breathable and expandable!
It reminded me of my adoration for soft meshy dresses, especially in hot weather! I also own and love this perfect tee for looking professional and put together when it’s sweltering, and this midi dress with the best name ever.
Obviously, stretchy pants are a gift from God, and I’ve been LIVING in these pull-on linen pants after renting and adoring (not as stretchy) linen pants for Chile. (Some day I’ll have these in every color and open up my closet to find the same pair of pants x 20, like a cartoon character with a uniform!)
That nice springy feeling
Here are a few more things that have put me into that nice springy feeling headspace this season!
*Kacey Musgraves’ new album, a return to her comfortable, simple musings from the inner world of a complex country woman. My baby and I especially enjoy the song “Rhinestoned” which sounds like a big sister to her stunning ballad “Rainbow” (a song that always makes me think of this beautiful review of Golden Hour from years ago).
*Begonias: While I am inordinately blessed with outdoor space in my apartment, that outdoor space is completely canopied by aggressive shade from nearby buildings, and it’s like pulling teeth to get any plants to thrive or birds to show up! However, beautiful begonias triumph with their balloon-blooms even in the shade, so I bought a few at the market and will happily pot them in my pitiful little shaded wind-chime garden this week.
*Lena Dunham’s memoir on audio: I wasn’t a fan of Girls or Lena’s last book, but after watching a couple interviews where she talks about being “famesick” (famously sick, sick of being famous, famous to the point of sickness), I found her so charming and so impossible not to root for, that I downloaded her book for company while running (err, walking) errands. On damp strolls to UPS and other such nonsense, my mood brightened with her buoyancy. Like Kacey, Lena sounds newly comfortable, which is such a refreshing state of being—and makes for lovely listening company.
*Empty movie matinees: Rainy mornings were made for 10am matinees! Daytime cinema also provides ideal nap conditions for a certain 9-month-old I know. Last week I took my baby to the Billie Eilish movie and, in an otherwise empty theatre, we danced and sang along to Birds of a Feather, which I’ve been listening to nonstop since early in my pregnancy.
*Crinkly library books and used vinyl: Spring is a bonus cozy season for leisurely consumption of cheap/free physical media. The plastic crinkle of a library book cover and the tired swoosh of $3 records provide percussive soundtrack to any pitter-patter you may hear from precipitation outside. Heaven.
Thank you for reading!! May you find your place to flourish this season, as these blossoms found theirs in the middle of Manhattan in April.
Gradient.horse was my favorite thing from NYT’s The Good List and has yet to be topped. But I Miss My Cafe, that’s pretty ingenious!
So much goodness and wisdom here as always. Really appreciated your words on curation and devotion as a mindset shift in “giving things up.” You are so wise and full of love!