notes from sag season

i’m not reading much these days. i’m not being very active online as a result, which is just fine by me. i’ve never been someone nostalgic for the time before smartphones because i’ve never felt held hostage by the internet, but i do hold it somewhat accountable for much of the disconnect that we feel with ourselves.

i hid through libra and scorpio season, and now we’ve found ourselves in the midst of sagittarius season, which i have reluctantly accepted as my own in the past few years — astrology is just for fun, but it’s really only fun if you lean into it.

aging is weird, mainly because it feels both scary and a privilege. we all listen to ribs by lorde on our birthdays right !! it is difficult to accept the fact that each birthday is a step closer to death. even though it’s not any larger of a step than every single day is, we love to mark the passage of time in neat little years.

aging feels even weirder when it’s mixed up in the slush of an ill brain, one that is surprised every year that we’ve made it this far. one that couldn’t ever picture age 25, 30, and now, as of last week, 34. officially mid-30s, halfway through a life that i have often not appreciated or wanted at all and have just as often marveled at. a life that i’ll struggle with until the end.

a few days after my birthday, i went for a walk on the beach in north carolina with my mother during low tide. it was cold, hats pulled over our ears, but bright and peaceful. plenty of dogs were out for walks, their owners bundled up and urging them along so they could get back inside sooner. a dolphin crested over the waves, delightfully close to shore. a seagull devoured a fish on the shoreline, the detritus of pried open clam shells all around it. it felt fitting for winter, a season we so often conflate with death. more of that, too: a swollen crab in a shallow pool, reanimated by the lull of waves washing over it, and a horseshoe crab that had been caught too far up when the tide went out.

horseshoe crabs are considered living fossils, which are named as such because they so closely resemble a species that we only know otherwise through the fossil record. this is somewhat of a controversial misnomer; living fossils aren’t actually ancient species, and they have evolved and adapted like the rest of the living world. no species alive could be here today without adaptation, horseshoe crabs and humans alike.

evolution happens on such a macro scale that i’d feel silly comparing our ability to adapt day-to-day with our ability as a species to survive. but still — we are a resilient bunch, perhaps even to the detriment of our fellow earth dwellers, and that has allowed us to marvel at wonders in all corners of the world. the very first humans would have stood on the beach and been curious about birds and dolphins and living fossils, too. that is incredibly cheesy, but it comforts me to know that our place in the world has always been here.

sagittariuses are always known as the restless travelers, which feels very human to me; we are a species that has always needed to see every inch of the planet, curious to a fault. on the days i forget to be grateful that i’m aging, i can at least be grateful that i am human, restless and curious. it is a privilege to witness it all.

as anthony bourdain, restless traveler, said: in the end, you’re just happy you were there, with your eyes open, and lived to see it.

and here are some books for sag season, just to make this newsletter make any sense because it’s here for books in the first place. this would have been better at the beginning of the season, but it’s fitting that i’m late and not editing myself:

World Travel by Anthony Bourdain (had to)

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

tell me what books scream sagittarius to you! or better yet, what books remind you of your own sign.

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also, as a housekeeping note, you’ll be getting a final end-of-year wrap up from me, but i’ll be skipping consumption diaries for september-december. i’m hoping to get back into posting regularly here in the new year.

i’m keeping my books and films up to date in other places, though: you can find me on instagram, goodreads, storygraph, and letterboxd.

thanks for being here, even in my absence!