I'm back in Nevada for the holidays. Last night, my brothers and I went to Bangkok Thai here in Reno. They have the best damn yellow curry I've ever had. Like, when I want to give up on the world, I think of this curry. When it's cold and rainy, this is the curry that I want to snuggle up with. If I were trapped in a blizzard, I'd want to be trapped with this curry. I've been thinking about this curry for the past 1.5 months, waiting for the next time I could have it.
So we sat down, and when it came time to order, I said to our server, "We're going to have the yellow curry, the pineapple fried rice, and--"
AND THEN THE POWER WENT OUT. Just in the restaurant. The rest of the block was fine.
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We were hungry. So hungry that we didn't know where else we wanted to go for food. It's the kind of hungry where you look at a menu and you get overwhelmed by what's on it, and you don't care what you get as long as it tastes good and you get to eat it ASAP.
We finally decided to go to P.F. Chang's. My brothers had never been there before, and I felt like it was the only place we could go that would not be a complete disappointment. And it delivered. Those chicken lettuce wraps were A+, as was the Mongolian beef, the shrimp fried rice, and the spicy chicken. We ate everything.
On the way home, my brothers started talking about a song called "Panda." I, being old and increasingly out of touch with what the young people are listening to, said, "'Panda?' Never heard of it."
And so, I was shown the song called "Panda."
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It occurs to me that a lot of our lives are made up of sharing -- whether it's bringing someone to a new restaurant and ordering food they've never had, or showing someone a new song/band/movie they've never heard of. Many of the things that I enjoy feel like little gifts from the people in my life.
So it's in this spirit of sharing that I want to start this series of posts.
A show and tell, if you will.
I'm constantly coming across things on the interwebz that I want to share -- websites that are awesome, indie shops that make ah-mazing shit, articles that make me think of the world a bit differently, poems that make me throw my hands up in the air and say, "Well, fuck. Nothing I write will ever be that good, so I'm just going to quit." So on and so forth. Etcetera, etcetera.
So, here goes.
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- I swear to god, I have been wishing for a website like Hella Pinay for awhile now. And it's here. THANK YOU.
- This piece by Jessica Luther, detailing the multiple assaults of a ballet dancer, the aftermath, and her survival is so necessary. We need more writing like this, that looks straight at the reality of sexual assault survivors with nuance and compassion.
- The Safety Pin Box is the perfect, productive alternative to the whole safety pin debacle. Education, self-reflection, accountability, and a little redistribution of wealth? Yes, please.
- In "She Called It 'White Woman Shit'" fellow VONA/Voices alum, Vanessa Mártir, writes about a white woman who took Mártir's words and ideas without crediting her. Mártir meditates on silence, and the necessity of womxn of color taking up space and demanding the recognition that we deserve. So good and so familiar.
- I'm going to be honest. I haven't read the Indivisible Guide yet, but I'm super fucking excited to dig into this. It's subtitled "A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda," and it's written by former congressional staffers. We need all the help, advice, and perspective we can get.
- Two poems by the inimitable Michelle Peñaloza.
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That's what I've got this week, folks. I'll leave you with this Boomerang video (also a new favorite thing of mine) of my brother, Adam, busting some moves.