Portrait of a March on Fire

Please don't unsubscribe because of that bad title

March’s consumption diaries are late because I spent the beginning of April traveling all the way across the country for work, to a conference for editors. I’m truly amazed at how fucking huge the US is whenever I fly to the West Coast. It takes years off my life, as lovely as it is out there. 

Last year I had an incident, for lack of a better word, one that was both personal and professional and completely shook me of my already fragile confidence in my work and career, but I do know that editing is a job that fits me well. I’m under no illusions about my skillset and capabilities; I’m not a groundbreaking editor, and I don’t know so many things, even after 11 years at it. I am not the best editor, but editing is what I do best. I’m always thankful (and a little relieved) to be reminded of that. 

Also, it was announced at the conference that the AP Stylebook is switching its primary dictionary to Merriam-Webster (my dictionary of choice), eliciting an audible gasp from not only me but also the room of hundreds of editors, followed by actual cheering. I’m only mentioning this to say that if you are reading this and are also a dictionary person, please talk to me about it.

And if nothing else, I will go down in conference infamy for getting stuck in the hotel elevator with 11 fellow editors. We had to be pried out by the biggest, beefiest, most stereotypical firefighters I’ve ever seen, and I’m sure one of them is saying we were the nerdiest bunch of people he’d ever seen, so we all confirmed our biases that day. The hotel apologized by leaving me a bag of gourmet white cheddar popcorn in my room while I was out for dinner, which is so funny and weird and made even weirder by the fact that I’m not 100% certain it was hotel staff because there was no note. 

Also occupying my mind instead of writing was the solar eclipse, which was very cool even if we weren’t in the path of totality here in DC. I love space shit anyway, but to be earnest for a second, it felt special in that very human way that we were all craning our necks with stupid little paper glasses for a few minutes on a warm Monday in spring. 

And in Aries season! I love an Aries because I love a fellow fire sign. And two of my Aries pals are also Virgo risings, like me, so that has to mean something. Or maybe it doesn’t, but you’ll have to ask my friend

Cameron Steele

for more on that — I love her newsletter interruptions and her monthly horoscopes and her insightful writing in general, but she also offers tarot and astrology readings (which I have been too scared to do because I might be perceived, the horror) in addition to her genuine friendship. 

Without further ado, may I present: the best, the worst, the middling consumption of March.

Books

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino — I finished this book early in March and have been thinking about it regularly ever since. I already know it’ll be a favorite of the year. It’s about a girl who is both girl and alien, never quite fully present in either world. The book spans her life, including vignettes of human observations that she chronicles and sends to her own far-off galaxy via fax machine. They are all funny, perceptive, and a punch to the gut. 

I’ve never read anything that has captured the sweeping spectrum of human joys and sorrows quite like Beautyland has. It’s hard not to feel like humanity is cursed and doomed and yet entirely responsible and deserving of our inevitable demise; we can be so unfathomably cruel, far more often than we are kind. The universe, its laws of physics, its entropy can seem like 

I have a hard time talking extensively about books I really like (because I’m a complainer) but I’m hoping to do a separate newsletter on this at some point. 

Beach Read by Emily Henry — I wanted to do a re-read ahead of Emily Henry’s upcoming release because I am an unapologetic EmHen girly. I rarely re-read books and I’m so glad I did! Delightful. 

And …that’s it. Only two books this month! Who cares! I also read plenty of interesting articles and newsletters that I intended to share here, but I did not organize them cohesively over the past month and it’s a lost cause. I’ll try again in April!

Movies

An American in Paris (1951) — I think we need more ballet movies! They’d never make this today. And not just because Gene Kelly’s ass in beige tights during the final dance scene is borderline TV-MA. 

Dune: Part Two (2024) — I wanted to hate it, but I did not. This is one of those movies I’m glad to have seen in theaters just because of the experience. I do have mixed feelings about the inevitably of people just not getting it, of not seeing the common thread of humanity’s never-changing darkness. It’d be easy to chalk it up to Timmy fan girls who can’t see Paul Atreidas as the enemy, but I think we’re all a little blind to what we don’t want to see sometimes, and what we don’t want to see is what could be when it feels both wildly different and eerily similar to what already is. 

Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024) — the Alamo Drafthouse movie pass really paying for itself (and churro popcorn) here. 

Spaceman (2024) — Hopefully the men who watch this will learn they don’t need to go all the way through space with a giant spider for a therapist and then learn the meaning of the universe just to come to the realization that they maybe are shit husbands.

Players (2024) — I didn’t have high hopes for this one, which is good because it made me cringe for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Jane the Virgin is such a pick-me here and I am still dying laughing at the idea that journalists’ jobs are just to write one feature and then get a promotion. 

Love Lies Bleeding (2024) — just exactly what it needs to be, and unapologetically so, a theme I’m really appreciating in lesbian movies of late (Drive Away Dolls, Bottoms) — best spoken about in this article. I would so happily get roid rage for Kristen Stewart. I mean!

Irish Wish (2024) — my favorite line was Lindsay Lohan saying “The cliffs of Moher, do you know them?” 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) — HOLY SHIT. I won’t attempt to string intelligent words together lest I detract from this perfect movie, but I think it’s damn near perfect. Barbie was supposed to be the movie to make us all proud to be women, but Portrait of a Lady on Fire is what makes me relieved to be one, even when there is little relief to be found in it.

Roman Holiday (1953) — Audrey Hepburn is such a delight, even if her 3-inch waistline is painful to watch. I didn’t realize this was her first movie! There is something so charming about movies from this era, though maybe it’s just because I am stupidly nostalgic, even for experiences I’ve never had¹.

Dream Scenario (2023) — this made the best case for why celebrity veneers are so bad.

Ate, drank

Everything at Anju. Like actually everything. The fried chicken and mandu especially. My sister and I were also delighted to partake in drinking makgeolli after watching so many K-dramas and not being able to guess what it tastes like. It’s good! 

The burger at Johnny’s — sometimes you just want a messy burger and a cheap beer. I can’t remember the last time I had a burger that wasn’t fast food for $11, let alone one as substantial as this one, so I’m deciding not to gatekeep for my fellow DC readers. 

misc.

A new word: eau de nil, which is a light shade of green I’ve never had a word for until now! The history of the word is even more fascinating: it was Gustave Flaubert’s tongue-in-cheek description of the water’s unique color, which he observed aboard a cruise down the Nile a la an Agatha Christie character (cue Gal Gadot’s “enough champagne to fill the Nile”).

From The Paris Review: “Eau de Nil (“water of the Nile”) is a tricky color to pin down precisely. It is a light-greenish hue, more saturated than celadon, less gray than sage. It has tan undertones and a cool bluish cast. It is, confusingly, an entirely different color from Nile green. … Like the ever-changing waters of Flaubert’s Nile, the color itself changes. Sometimes it is yellowish and springy; other times it is bluish and murky. There is something about “ishy” colors like this that seems to call forth memories more vividly than their primary counterparts.”

A list of March’s small joys:

• The mourning doves returning, resting on our window sill, taunting Oxford the cat every morning and sometimes afternoons too

• My sister visiting, the fact that I have sisters at all

• My oldest friend, who I have trouble describing the importance of to others who do not have a friendship that has existed for 95% of their lives, becoming a mother 

• In the movie theater, a kid in the row full of children in front of us, saying impatiently “I want kung fu panda” during the previews (they must feel interminable at 5) for kung fu panda 4

• A funny group chat name

• Being drunk on the dance floor at 2 am 

• Not the first warm day of the season, but the day where you realize there have been more warm days than not

1. fun fact! there’s a word for this feeling: anemoia.