Fire can be a candle flame

[dolorosa_12]

It's got to the point where I have had to actively avoid all sources of news, including most social media platforms, because it's so overwhelmingly awful that I was on the verge of tears at work, and on my walk home. As I said to my mother when we chatted on FaceTime this morning, it's one of those weeks (months? years? decades?) which just makes you feel worthless as a woman.

My solution in the face of all this is (once I've ensured I'm still registered to vote in the three countries in which I am eligible) is to turn my attention to things resolutely domestic. I find it soothing.

And so, this weekend, I have turned a full fridge of groceries into meals that will take us through to Tuesday (I always find it particularly satisfying to cook a roast chicken, because I always get at least one second dinner and several lunches worth of leftovers out of it, and then make about a litre of stock from the bones, so it feels very efficient), planted four purple and pink heather plants in the garden, cleaned the bathroom, done two loads of laundry, and gone back and forth to the market to buy all the food I'll need to cover the week ahead.

I returned to a comforting old series of books — a series I've loved since I first read it as a ten-year-old — for yet another reread. The series has five books, and I'm on to the fourth. I possibly would have made more headway if not for all the time I spent scrolling through the Yuletide tagset trying to figure out what to offer, and watching comments appearing on the Yuletide letters post to see if other participants' prompts might help nudge me in a particular direction.

And I've been fairly active over on my reviews blog, posting reviews of two books/series that absolutely blew me away and which I'm pleased to see made it into the Yuletide tagset (I didn't nominate them myself, but I'm so happy to be able to request them).

The first is Katherine Arden's Winternight series, my review of which I have linked to before:

Arden makes much of the everyday labour of women: preparing food, sweeping hearths, embroidering elaborate headdresses, assisting in the birth of children. The lives of these women may be circumscribed, lived within a narrow space, travelling between hearth, bathhouse, and church, but they are not inconsequential. This is a series in which the labour of a mother giving birth to a child is of greater supernatural significance than the outcome of a battle, where a girl slipping bread crusts to household gods does more to forge alliances than the political machinations of men in Moscow palaces.

The second review is of Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, which I absolutely adored:

This is a world in which women save themselves — and each other — using the tools at hand. It is a world in which the work of a market stall seller, or a noblewoman presiding over a rowdy feasting hall, or a girl feeding chickens is given equal weight to magical powers. Indeed, it’s a world in which supernatural beings view prosaic, human skills as having a kind of magic of their own.

Looking at both quotes together, I seem to have very clear priorities in the kind of historical fantasy I want to read. In any case, I highly recommend both books.

I've just finished doing a bit of yoga (I'm so happy to have found a good Youtube channel with yoga classes to follow for free at home, since I dropped regular yoga classes after their times and locations became too inconvenient), and I'm just about to start cooking tonight's dinner (an Ottolenghi recipe which, miraculously, doesn't have a million ingredients that need to be bought in specialised supermarkets). Matthias and I will probably finish off the weekend by watching the last two episodes of the second season of Luke Cage, which I've found enjoyable and frustrating in equal measure.

I'm not sure how sustainable it is to continue to insulate myself in a news-free, cotton wool-like existence, and I feel a lot of guilt for being able to do so, but I am glad this weekend that it gave me these little, quiet moments, where I could be small, and calm, and gentle.

Comments

[author_by_night]

Yeah, social media isn't an escape right now. Which sucks because I'm used to LJ/DW, at the very least, being my happy place. But. :/

It's like, I care obviously, but it's kind of nice not to think about it every second, too. Otherwise I go to a not so great place.

Yoga works! :) The books look interesting.

[dolorosa_12]

I can bear it on Dreamwidth because everything unfolds at a much slower pace. It's not like Twitter or Facebook, which at the moment are like watching hundreds of people simultaneously yelling 'despair!' every single second.

Yoga was helpful, at least temporarily. And if you do read either of those books, let me know what you think!

[merit]

I sometimes take news/current affairs sabbaticals. Of course, when I last attempted that, Australia ended up with a new PM, so. It wasn't very successful.

Haha yeah, Ottolenghi's food looks delicious but some of the ingredients do seem like they would add minimal value to the meal/could be substituted.

Hopefully there's lots of Yuletide requests for those fandoms! :)

[dolorosa_12]

My mother and sister (an ABC journalist and a political staffer for the Victorian state government, i.e. people who spend a lot of time focused on politics) were both overseas for almost all of September, so they had the weird experience of the entire ABC board kerfuffle (and most of Morrison's first month in office) happening while they were out of the country.

I do cook Ottolenghi recipes from time to time, but I substitute a lot of things or leave them out, because I don't have the time to hunt down all the ingredients from specialist supermarkets, many of which I would need to go to London in order to find.

And yes, I am very much looking forward to Yuletide this year. Normally I only ever want to request my nominated fandoms, but this year I had trouble narrowing it down, which bodes well for reading material in the collection.

[iberiandoctor]

Yeah, I generally get off on righteous outrage (it fuels my day job!), but it does get tiring when my usual escape, fandom, is afire with, as you say, every single other person yelling "despair!". I'm glad you're taking care of you ♥ Yoga/pilates helps me, actually. As does online shopping (cue this month's credit card statement yelling "despair" ;)).

[dolorosa_12]

Yeah, yoga has been helpful. My other outlet is cooking, and I think it's very telling that my fridge is completely full of meals that I've cooked to last the entire week...