OUTLAWING LOVE, DRY LAND, AND MEDIA MASHUPS

LIFE OF A BOOKMAN

Bookman: 1. a person who has a love of books and especially of reading. 2. a person who is involved in the writing, publishing, or selling of books. Oh, hi that's me!!

Books for lovers of love: What if love was a disease? That's the central question at the heart of Lauren Oliver's YA trilogy: Delirium. It follows our heroine Lena Halloway who falls madly in love with Alex in a future society that has outlawed love. When I tell you I devoured these books, I mean it. It probably has something to do with how much I love love (Hopeless romantic? 5-time officiant? Rom-Com obsessed? Somebody help me). Or with the fact that the society in Oliver's books would have saved me from the chaos of my past romantic choices (jkjk, sorta). The characters' emotions became my emotions, so it was a rollercoaster for three books. I can't say an emotional ride is an escape from my own life at the moment, but it was highly enjoyable ;)

WOMEN’S STUDIES

What gets passed down becomes our history. A few for the canon:

When I have a pattern of thinking that's self-critical, I will say out loud to myself: don't self attack. One of the places I see the women I love doing this the most is with our bodies. We pick them apart – never satisfied, never at ease – because we were raised in a society that attacked them for us: Too fat, too skinny-fat, too skinny, too short, too tall, too much, too little. Too old. Too sexy for being that old. Too sexy for being that young. Not sexy enough. Conceptually I know these are the messages that flew our way for decades, but then I watched this mashup of messages about women's bodies, compiled from popular media in the early 2000s. My reaction was visceral. At once, feeling both grief (over what we've all been brainwashed to believe), disgust (over this being fed to us and dubbed “entertainment”), and compassion (for why we're hard on ourselves to begin with). I encourage you to watch it and to remember not to attack yourself, but also not to attack yourself for attacking yourself – you were made to believe you weren't enough and that that was in fact “entertainment”.

PASS IT ON

Stories are heirlooms. Here's one of mine:

“What of this day isn't unholy if you're still here to witness it?” – Andrea Gibson.

I've recommended Andrea's book of poems to you before, but this spoken poetry shared on Liz Gilbert's Instagram will absolutely rock you. It's a letter from love's voice for when we're feeling lonely. Love had a lot to tell Andrea (and me). The message anchored me in staying really f*cking present and soft because time is so fleeting – and to hold onto our big desires even when they make us feel vulnerable and exposed. It was a sermon in the million ways that self-protection isn't protective at all: “Your willingness to drown is the only dry land.”

Woman on xx