the body

Hello, readers.

Recently, I made hot chocolate.

The way I made hot chocolate is that I put some amount of cacao powder in a pan. And also I put into this pan some ground cardamom. Then I toasted these things in the pan before adding some milk and whisking it up and then adding some more milk and warming it to not quite boiling.

Then I tasted this and it was very yummy and I have made it on other days and some days I put inside this hot chocolate a tiny bit of salt and maple syrup and you should be careful with this amount of deliciousness because you should do things with your life other than making and consuming hot chocolate.

Not very many other things, perhaps. But some things.

Speaking of things.

Body (official video) – YouTube

I enjoyed this thing that is a song by Gia Margaret and also less of a song and more a bit of musical bedding for some spoken word by Alan Watts, a British human who is apparently known for popularizing certain mechanisms of thought in English-speaking countries. He published a book in 1957 called The Way of Zen.

Gia Margaret is a Chicago musician whose work you can read about here.

Speaking of bodies.

Em and I are in the midst of rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also, Angel. Though for Em it is the first time of seeing Angel.

Tonight, we will watch "The Body." In this episode of Buffy someone is dead and their body is discovered on a sofa. It is an episode of much harrow and humor and there is no music and sometimes people talk about negative space. It is the first work of art, I think, that caused in me actual grief.

Sometimes watching Buffy this time around it has occurred to me that certain moments of this show live in my body the way trauma lives in bodies. It is fascinating to understand how much I identified with this show and how that identification lives still in my body and I get goosebumps sometimes, or my heart races, and it is all a memory of a memory and happening still. These characters. These actors. These moments. These bodies of art and the spaces inside myself into which I imagined them.

Happy Monday, readers.

I hope your body is not a burden. I hope your body is, perhaps, more like Japanese Breakfast imagines it to be—a blade that cuts a path from day to day.

ttfn.