Gathering in the folds

Welcome to Brown Paper Packages!

In this inaugural post, a longer preamble than you'll find in the weeks to come, just to show you around a little...

As the horrors persist, so do we, and this weekly(ish) check-in aims to provide both a momentary escape from All This and an invitation to engage in it in new and... I don't know, maybe even regenerative? ways. (That said, as I type this, a bunch of construction workers outside are blasting concrete off of a balcony while also blasting an unsettling electronic cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence." They're really meeting the moment, to be honest. So, if this post feels in some way unhinged, well... so do I, and so do they, I bet. And you?)

Anyway. If Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, Maria Popova's The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings), and the music of Sadé and The Cure are your jam, this space and newsletter might be, too. If you're into personality typing (which has many, many limitations, I know, but who doesn't love a parlor game sometimes) and tend to feel commonality with INFPs, INFJs, and enneagram 4w5 folks, then: Hello! We are same! You me both yes! Social anxiety also yes? Yes. That's why we write, huh (stares blankly, blushes). Havndaygood too! (waves at the end of the zoom, hyperventilates).

Or: maybe you were raised on Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street and Care Bears and Rainbow Brite/Punky Brewster/other-proto-manic-pixie-dreamgirls-from-the-'80s alongside Janet and Madonna followed by Nirvana and Channel One news reports in homeroom? If so, pull up your chair of choice, pop an ibuprofen for all your parts that snap and crackle (it's a bummer, I know), and make yourself at home.

If none of the above applies or appeals to you, maybe something else here will, or maybe it won't. On to the first installment of things that have made my heart swell lately and/or scratched some deep itch in my brain:

Things I want to share with you this week

1. That thing you're feeling—or maybe have always felt, if you were a melancholy little Eeyore kid? That ache over all the agony in the world, over the way things are vs. the way they could be/should be? Of course the Germans have a word for that. It's weltschmerz.
2. Deep in the weltschmerz themselves and deciding to do something cozy about it, there's this collective of makers around the country who, as the founder explains, "gather in the folds" online as a sort of resistance community of "artists, crafters, creatives, sewists, quilters, crocheters, knitters, makers-of-all-kinds, beginners, experts, and everyone in between." Now, if you're wondering "What in the pink kitty kat hat nonsense is this," let me direct you to this cultural history of sewing circles and the like (and let me suggest you read it asap before what's probably going to happen to PBS actually happens to PBS). Also, fiber arts are good for mental health. For better or worse, it's a whole thing.
3. Did you know anxiety belching is also a thing? And that there's stuff you can do to make it stop? Look, you can pry these cruciferous vegetables from my cold, dead, belching maw—baby needs her broccoli—but in case you're over there shotgunning ginger ale and refusing any kind of therapy, consider switching things up a little is all I'm saying. ::hiccups::
4. Speaking of vegetables, have you eaten any today? This is your Aunt Amy prescribing a little something for dinner:
   1. turn down the lights (not too far, though; there will be knives)
   2. turn up Olivia Dean's Messy album or anything by Cleo Sol
   3. pour a cocktail or mocktail (we're calling them "n/a beverages" now, yes?), grab your best knife, and cut up whatever assortment of vegetables, seeds/nuts, and dried/fresh fruits you want (for me, the move is romaine or bibb lettuce, baby cukes, cherry tomatoes, half a Honeycrisp or Granny Smith apple, those salty smokehouse almonds [you know the ones], and dried cherries, but do what you want! it's your salad! maybe add more protein, IDK! ...either way, doing half an hour of mise en place is my version of meditation—it makes me feel calm(er), every time.)
   4. in a tight-lidded jar or bowl, make and shake this umami-ass dressing that will in fact make your eyes roll back inside your head. The recipe says you need a blender but it lies. Who wants to clean that??? Not me.
   5. Eat up. Delicious and nutritious, bing bong boom. Look at us being kind to ourselves.
5. Let me turn you onto the poetry of one Hollie McNish, one of my favorite modern poets. She's not on Bluesky, so if you're not averse to popping into IG for a quick minute (I SAID A QUICK MINUTE, DON'T YOU GET STUCK IN THERE YOU HEAR ME), here's an introduction and here's where you can buy her lovely books.
6. Two more book recs: I've been trying to read more novels to balance out all the creative nonfiction I'm drawn to, and I usually don't finish the ones everybody's talking about. I care a lot more about voice and character development than any kind of plot, maybe to a strange degree. But of what I read last year, I'm still thinking about these two, which have plenty of all of those things: Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio and Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino. Voicey, smart, crisp writing that meanders just the right amount (for me, anyway) and sticks the landing. Hit up Libby or the library or your closest indie bookstore (see also the Bookshop links above); let's not give the dong rocket dudes any more money than we absolutely must, mmmk?
7. And finally, giving the people what they want: capybara content.

That's all for this week, friends. May the road rise up to meet you.

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

-Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

26 February 2025

[read the previous week's post] [read the following week's post] [see all posts]