no. 30: so to recap, 🔎
reopening our rooms of memory
Hi friends,
Happy almost–new year! 📅
This week we share a collection of favorites from the last 12 (wild) months.
We met up earlier this week for our regular sketching/reading date. Justine is drawing a beautiful plant + coffee pot; Nicole is reading W.H. Auden (The Dyer’s Hand) and Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek). As we set our eyes on the coming year, we’re excited to tinker around with some new ideas for Kopi Club: perhaps an accompanying podcast, an occasional vlog, a YouTube channel, more art-based content (but if we’ve learned anything from the past year, it’s to embrace the inevitability of plans changing - we shall see how this goes 🤞). Let us know what you think!
N:
Conversations on Self Awareness
Earlier this week, a friend and I had a really interesting conversation about self awareness. The conclusion we came to was that self awareness has two components: 1. The awareness of thought patterns and 2. The control over letting said thought patterns dictate behaviour. Sometimes our awareness is limited in that we recognize what we are doing is not ideal, but still perform the action. True self awareness is the alignment of thought and control. Aiming for that this year! :)
My Top 3:
Trees in Bloom (from no. 22: at once chaotic and joyful)
It Is Not Persimmon Season (from no. 13: what the hell is “fika” anyways?)
The Man Who Hugs a Tree (from no. 06: on stability)
J:
some words from joan
I’ve spent the majority of the past week horizontally: sleeping in, lying on the floor with Bailey, reading on the couch; this feels like the right way to welcome the much-needed embrace of winter break. Currently, I’m reading Joan Didion’s Blue Nights. Didion is a recent discovery from this year. I feel (almost embarrassingly) late to the game with this one, but am glad to have her countless books and essays to keep me company over the next four weeks.
Didion:
“I’m just telling you to live in [the world.] Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it.”
For many reasons, this is a quote I want to hold on to: as both a reminder, and perhaps as a challenge. Though 2020 has made me hungry for the kind of spontaneity I hope to rediscover, it has also taught me that the act of endurance can be worthy in and of itself. To honor the promise of new beginnings, as well as the patience it took to get here.
and on that note,
my top three reflections from the past year:
Please Excuse the Mess (from no. 23: once more, with feeling)
On Firsts and Lasts (from no. 20: small tugs)
Is There a Sixth Love Language? (from no. 18: affectionisms)
N:
this is not music, sorry!
Didn’t have too much music to share this week, but have a newsletter to share:
“Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.” — G.K. Chesterton
J:
so to recap,
I picked the top three songs from each month and made a playlist to celebrate my favorite tunes from the year (too many EDM tracks from all the summer workouts found their way into my Spotify Top Songs of 2020, so consider this my own Wrapped lineup).
N:
Photographer Tobias Baumgaertner captured this image of two widowed fairy penguins looking over the Melbourne skyline. It has won an award in Oceanographic magazine’s Ocean Photography Awards 2020.
“The lighter penguin is an elderly female whose partner died this year. The darker one is a younger male who lost his partner two years ago. Biologists have followed them as they meet every night to comfort each other. They stand for hours together watching the lights in Melbourne.” – @meindiva
Are they truly comforting each other? Who knows what the authentic meaning of their embrace is, but they serve as a symbol of togetherness and that’s all that matters.
J:
inexplicable sources of happiness
The podcast @lexie
Steamed vegetable dumplings
A recent tweet from my favorite internet hero of 2020, Gerald Stratford (otherwise known as the king of big veg). We absolutely love to see the purple shirt.
Folding over the first page in a new sketchbook
This hidden gem from my camera roll
N:
Happiness, joy, and nostalgia
“The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid." – J.D Salinger
I interpreted this to mean that happiness is more graspable, more evident, more stable, whereas joy flows in and out according across different moments in life. What do you think?
And a bonus quote for the new year:
“Nostalgia rearranges the rooms of memory: it makes the beds, puts a vase of flowers on the dresser, opens the curtains to let in the sun.” – Leslie Jamison
J:
“Life, then will, always contain an inevitable surplus, a margin of the gratuitous, a realm in which there is always more than we need: more things, more impressions, more memories, more habits, more words, more happiness, more unhappiness” – James Wood, Serious Noticing
N:
The Plateau of Latent Potential
One of the key ideas I’m taking into the new year with me comes from the well-known Productivity book, Atomic Habits. James Clear writes that “habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance”. This threshold is called the ‘Plateau of Latent Potential’.
The invisible things make the visible ones possible. Change is an accumulation of past choices that add up to the present. The process itself creates serendipity. So if there is something you are pursuing that isn’t reaping benefits, keep at it for long enough and it will amount to something!
J:
semester’s out, but here are some things i learned this week:
The History of the Word Okay
Back in the 1830s, misleading abbreviations were used as coded messages (No Use became Know Yuse, or KY; All Right became Oll Wright, or OW). OK became the most famous of these abbreviations, with the original meaning - “Oll Korrect”, or all correct. The more ya know.
There is a Chateau in Italy with Picasso Murals…
…and once again, another destination has been added to the Post-COVID Travel Bucket List. It reminded me of this Picasso quote: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Here’s to finding ways to return to that inner child.
I Have a New Hobby: Partaking in Furniture Polls
The folks over at @themillievintage have been sharing polls in their stories all week, and I feel no shame in admitting that this is one of the things I look forward to every morning now. You already know the 2021 vision board has a section dedicated to future post-grad apartment inspiration.
Where Seals *Actually* Come From
Perhaps the most important discovery of the year.
Wishing you all a safe and happy start to the New Year! We’ll catch you on the flip side.
Hugs,
J & N