Modern Miscellany ~ Vol 1 ~ Slow Down for Summer

June ~ Taking Time for a Slow Summer

Hi Friend,

I hope your summer is off to a wonderful, peaceful start and that you are finding time to spend with the people and things that bring you the most pleasure and joy. I’m launching this newsletter just as my husband, stepson and I are home from Costa Rica. The nine days spent in Central America reminded me of many things ~ but just one is the theme for this month ~ the importance of slowing down.

The beach town of Nosara is humid jungle punctuated with thunder and lightning storms and the hooting calls of monkeys. All around us the fecundity insisted that we step back from our normal doingness in favor of the slow - slow food, slow breathing, slow decision-making, slow enjoyment. I spent time in a hammock watching leafcutter ants carrying tiny flowers and green leaf trimmings across a concrete expanse. I also spent time reflecting on my heart and health and how much my life has changed over the years. The slower pace gave me so much and it’s the one biggest thing I want to keep doing this summer. Sitting still, slowing down, taking my time with the things I enjoy instead of rushing through lunch, speeding out the door to work, and thinking about my to do list.

I’m going to be slowing my pace this summer, resisting the temptation to touch my cell phone and make too many plans in order to intentionally walk barefoot, listen to the birds, watch the grass grow. Honestly, I think these are the things we all did more of as children and it’s what made us feel so alive and energized. We fed off the world around us, the parts of the world that give life ~ not the parts that take life from us. Below are some things I’ve been into lately and that I’ve been savoring…my Modern Miscellany for a June well spent. I hope you enjoy :)<3

Slow Fashion

The Emmaline Blouse at Emerson Fry ($128)

Slow Read

Once you’ve fallen in love with Julio Cortazar there’s no going back. A couple weeks ago I was working on my memoir project trying to recall the name of a Cortazar poem from Save Twilight (dumb that I didn’t list the poem title with my favorites or commit it to memory). Anyway, while google something like “heartbreak, lover, fountain, Spain” I came across other Cortazar writings that led me to purchase Cronopios and Famas. This is a collection of translated shorts that are surreal and zany. One title “Aunt, Explained or Not” starts with the sentence “Whether or not anyone cares, my four first cousins are addicted to philosophy.” The collection is imaginative and I find that reading authors who don’t confine themselves to normal, expected writing or thinking patterns to be very inspiring. I’ve also put a Cortazar poem below for your reading pleasure. I adore the last five lines beginning with “My wife…”

Nocturne

Tonight I have black hands, a sweaty heart as if I’d just wrestled into oblivion the centipede
of smoke.
Everything stayed back there, the bottles, the ship,
I don’t know if they loved me of ever hoped to see me.
The newspaper tossed on the bed tells of diplomatic meetings,
an exploratory bloodletting, knocked off happily in four sets.
A towering forest surrounds this house in the city’s center,
I know, I can feel a blind man dying nearby.
My wife does up and down a little ladder
like a sea captain who doesn’t trust the stars.
There’s a cup of milk, sheets of paper, eleven at night.
Outside it seems as if packs of horses were coming up to the window at my back.

Hawthorn Tree in bloom

I’m generally on the lookout for high-quality staples for my closet. Slow fashion items that I can wear year after year. Emerson Fry is family owned and made in the USA. They source block printed fabrics ethically from India. I think I found them online while hunting for a dress to wear to a July wedding, or maybe for new throw pillows for our living room. Their housewares and wardrobe staples (t-shirts, pants, leather sandals) are gorgeous and their India Collection brings me back to childhood brands and stores like Laura Ashley and Pappagallo (which I don’t think exists anymore).

I’ve been eyeing their Platform Sandal (but, boo, they are out of my size); The Emmaline Blouse in Violet Wildflower; and the Sara Tier Dress in Allium Azure. I could do some serious damage to my savings in this store but I think I’ll just get one piece and treasure it.

Slow Plants

If you’ve known me for many years you probably know that I love plants, especially medicinal ones. I studies herbs and herbalism in Vermont where I studied with a woman named Janice Dinsdale on her farm and at night slept in my tent in a pine tree grove. I’ve continued to learn and study off and on over the years but for a lot of reason kept putting plants to the side. I have a habit of doing that, putting what I love off to the side of my life. Why? I need to stop doing that. My love of plants reemerged while I was in Costa Rica. (That country really gave me space to reconnect with some lost parts of me!)

While I was in Nosara on the pacific coast of Costa Rica I found an apothecary and bought some Hawthorn. Hawthorn is a heart herb and since integrating it into my daily routine it has been showing me how to let go of some older, heavy heart wounding. It’s also really helped my stomach since the gut and heart can be connected in many ways. I read this blog by Celia Linnemann on her study of Hawthorn and found it fascinating. I plan to find and pick hawthorn berries and make my own tincture this fall since Hawthorn is all over the place here in Portland.

What is your list for a slow summer? I’d love to hear from you. Meanwhile, here are a few other things I’ve found and enjoyed lately:

Shogun, by James Clavell (read it! You will be swept away)
An Architectural Digest ‘Open Door’ Home tour of Dakota Johnson’s house - I adore her style (apologies about the ads that play first ~ very not slow)
Banana Coffee - make a smoothie with your elderly bananas, coffee, ice and sprinkle with raw cacao or carob nibs or cinnamon. Sooo yummy (especially if you use a good quality espresso shot dumped into the center of a banana oatmilk frappe).
Tagine chicken - Ah-maze-ing. You know those conical shaped clay cooking pots you see sometimes in kitchen stores? Buy one and make this: https://www.unicornsinthekitchen.com/moroccan-chicken-tagine/ and thank me later!

See you next month…or sometime down the road.

Jessica