Hi friends (and hello to dozens of new faces!),
Nicole came across this article recently; it brought up the idea of our minds as gardens, inspired by this French saying:
“cultiver son jardin intérieur” / tend to your internal garden
Recently, our mind gardens have been looking a little worse for wear. Weeds of personal anxieties - about school, our social lives (or lack thereof) and, lest we forget, the declining state of our planet !!! - are popping up everywhere. As part of our little garden-mending exercise, we thought we’d give Kopi Club a little refresh.
Growth is the central theme of this mind-as-garden metaphor. The goal is constant cultivation: of our sense of curiosity, of new ideas. As our newsletter-fam continues to grow, we not only welcome you to our mind gardens, but hope we can help you tend to yours.
Ok, that’s enough metaphors for now - please enjoy this picture of a very real plant (the latest addition to Justine’s windowsill garden):
J:
are morning people still relevant?
Instagram memories reminded me that this time last year, I was out of the apartment by 7 AM, preparing for another long day of work.
Studying from home doesn’t offer much, but it has left me with an awkward gap in the morning. My routine has been significantly cut down: no more racing out the house to make sure I snag my favorite study table. Or waiting for delayed buses, or long walks to Center City, or beating the line to get coffee. My desk is two feet away from the edge of my bed; theoretically, I could hit the ground running faster than I have before.
But I don’t know if I want to.
Mornings have come to take on an air of righteousness. Like other simple luxuries - reading for pleasure, coffee shops, free time - early mornings have been co-opted by the cult of productivity. From the moment we’re up, we are thrown into a cycle of constant motion, physically and mentally: checking emails, cooking breakfast, going for a run, listening to podcasts - often, performing more than one of these tasks at a time in the name of efficiency. It’s years of repeating morning-centric mantras to myself (Rise and grind! Early bird gets the worm!) that makes the thought of sleeping in almost feel like a cardinal sin. In reality, it feels really freaking great. I’ve intentionally started moving slower in the mornings now. I take my time getting out of bed, and stay in my pajamas a little longer.
Without the ability to create spatial boundaries between work and leisure (two feet doesn’t give me much to work with), I’m now trying to create temporal ones. This is my mid-year resolution: to treat mornings as that much-needed buffer, and remind myself that time doesn’t have to be something we just fill, or spend, or maximize. In the mornings, maybe it’s just something we hold on to.
N:
on libraries and change
Mutability is a word that means the liability or tendency to change.
This word came to mind when I read the story of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. It was one of the largest and most significant libraries in Egypt built in the city known as the ‘Capital of Memory’. The library was conceived by the students of Aristotle, who strove to transform it into the intellectual pinnacle of the ancient world. A place where scholars gathered to dream, think, and write. But despite its ambitions, size, and grandeur, it disappeared entirely over the years.
What’s interesting is that the long-standing myth was that the library went up in flames due to one cataclysmic blaze, but the reality was that it was burned multiple times over the years and eventually quietly withered away. The latter seems sadder to me. I guess it says something about how from day to day we can only see the world change slowly, then suddenly everything is different.
As Design Intelligence writes, it is “the story-telling of architecture that contributes to its richness.”
And if the buildings no longer exist, it is the stories we tell of those buildings that keep them alive. To that end, enjoy this Twitter thread of the most beautiful libraries in the world.
J:
what I’d like to sound like when I prepare dinner
N:
An early morning coffee song: Tuscany by Anja Kotar
And a rainy day song: You Ruined the 1975 - Lizzy Mcalpine (lofi remix)
J:
Something New - Bananagrams
...Is both a fun picnic game and - at least for me - a lesson in humility. After just one 20 minute game, I learned that:
Beej is not a word, no matter how many times I say it out loud.
Mo, on the other hand, is.
There is no need to call up Banangram’s R&D team to insist on the addition of an apostrophe tile, because id is also a word
It is best not to play this game outside on a windy day
Something Old - Rom-Com Movie Marathons
I spent a Saturday evening doing what I do best - rewatching movies. My Best Friend’s Wedding is a staple that makes an appearance at least every other month.
Repeating several lines of the movie to myself (verbatim, might I add), I was reminded of one of my favorite NYT articles: “Rom-Coms Were Corny and Retrograde. Why Do I Miss Them so Much?”. Thank you, Wesley Morris, for finally putting into words what I’ve been trying to articulate for so long.
N:
Things I’ve discovered this week:
“What defines the metamodern condition is that we strive toward unity while maintaining our separateness.”
The Memory Police: a book by Yoko Ogawa where things start to go missing on an island controlled by the ‘Memory Police’ who ensure that what disappears remains forgotten.
A lovely, soul-filling facetime conversation with a friend about how childhood introversion makes us who we are today (hi M, I appreciate you!)
This old poem about September I wrote a while ago
J:
“The great benefit of slowing down is reclaiming the time and tranquility to make meaningful connections - with people, with culture, with work, with nature, with our own bodies and minds” - Carl Honore, In Praise of Slowness
& also…. this quote I’ve been seeing on Instagram. September feels a lot like the ‘hump month’ of the year, and this message feels timely.
N:
“There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know.” – René Daumal, Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing
J:
I Travelled Back in Time
I was in for a happy surprise when I stumbled upon an undeveloped film roll from my trip to London. Many of my friends and I feel the same way - spring break was a fever dream. I sometimes wonder if March actually happened; it was nice to remember that it did, and that (pre-apocalypse, of course) it actually looked kind of sweet.
N:
“The word ‘stanza’ means room in Italian. It makes me think of poems like they are houses made out of words and memory” (unknown)
And a question I’ve been thinking about, (via B. Zhang): What is the difference between inaction and patience?
PS: It occurred to us that this newsletter could finally serve as the answer to the time-old “fun fact” question. Newsletters are still cool, right?
Hugs,
J & N