March '26 Roundup

Monthly things

Jump to: Reading | Watching | Listening | Eating | Doing | Bits & Bobs

Reading

• Haruki Murakami, Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to love this as much now as I did when I was 20-something. It had me deep in decades-old Reddit threads reading people’s theories and interpretations. The first time I read it we had Selected Ambient Works Volume II on at home a lot and #3 became the song of the golden beasts for me.

• Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre. Quick hit of gothic/folk horror. Unfortunate cover art.

• Zadie Smith, “Joy”. I reread this the same week I listened to this album (also linked below) and it felt like her benevolent pill head stepped off the page and into my ears.

• Rachel Eisendrath, “An Unsettling Civil War Photograph”.

  …we are surely mistaken in thinking that old trees are wise, projecting onto them the qualities we might wish to find in our own aged selves, but at least trees have the virtue of not talking. Rather, they just stand there, holding space for what lies outside our comprehension.

• Alex Lewis, “How to Start Your own Album Club”. I might have to fuck around and start my own album club!

• Mo_Diggs, “Unexpected Beauty”. Really loved this reflection on the importance and role of beauty in our lives, wherever it comes from.

  I have been clean for two and a half years, but I still look around me for small signs of the miraculous. As I am writing this, my kitchen ceiling has a pinkish hue from the sunlight refracted through my orange curtains. The light is beckoning me to go outside and enjoy this lovely day. Perhaps it is beckoning you as well.

Watching

I was thinking we didn’t watch that much this month but then I looked at my letterboxd log and realized why I didn’t get any reading done.

• Boogie Nights (1997). Rewatch #473 or something. This dance break brings me such joy every time. The way he strums that little air guitar lol.

• Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989). Leave it to Wim Wenders to make digicam footage look good or, if not good, at least interesting.

• Velvet Goldmine (1998). Wow. AN EXPERIENCE. I wish I’d seen this as a teenager.

• Train Dreams (2025). I haven’t read the novella yet and now I have to wait awhile to give it some space. It didn’t cast the towering emotional spell on me that it seems to have cast on a lot of others but I liked it well enough.

• How to Shoot a Ghost (2025). I’m a Charlie Kaufman defender (and Jessie Buckley needs no defending) but this short felt like a student film. imho.

• Blue Moon (2025). This had me stressed!! Richard Linklater + Ethan Hawke forever!

• Anatomy of a Fall (2023). We had to stop this 30 mins in the first time we put it on bc that song almost drove Ben insane lol. Finally came back to it. I was expecting more of a whodunit but then I just found myself feeling very sad. The scene where the kid gives his last testimony…ugh. Also Snoop doesn’t have a letterboxd credit 😒 I feel they should make an exception.

• Vladimir (2026). Perfect for watching while on the stair master over the course of a week. Way goofier than I remember the book being. But I got to remember Rachel Weisz responding to some question about what her and Daniel Craig talk about by saying she, “didn’t marry him to talk.” hahahaha I love her. Thank you Raechel Anne Jolie for alerting me to this adaptation.

• The American Revolution (2025). Who knew being a voice actor in a Ken Burns docuseries was such a hot commodity. The cast on this thing!

• Amadeus (1984). I made us rewatch this mostly bc I just wanted to see this scene again. God, it’s so good!¹ Do you have it? (You go too fast!) Do you have it?! Show me!

Listening

Music

• Blond, Frank Ocean. Still so good! Sluggish, lazy, stupid, and unconcerned. lol.

• Themes for Dreams, Resavoir. Very chill. Perfect for a rainy Sunday on the couch, napping under the weight of two chunky basset hounds.

• I know you’re hurting, everyone is hurting, everyone is trying you have got to try, Joshua Idehen. I danced, I laughed, I cried.

  If I must live this life

  I must be alive in it

• Sleepers, Mourners, The New Cut. Why do drums like the drums in this song make me SO emotional?? What’s that about?

  All I ever wanted was to be pretty

  And pretend I don’t care

• Wolf Alice Full Set Laneway. I’ve liked their albums but after seeing this live performance I think I’m a superfan? She’s got some pipes, as my dad would say.

Podcasts

• Saving the City with Una Mullally. It’s easy to talk about how everything is bad and always has been bad and always will be bad. It’s much harder to push past that and talk about how to actually make things better. I really appreciated this 10-episode series on the difficulties cities face across the world and ways to actually help turn things around.

• 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s: The 2000s, Paramore — Misery Business. I’m always a little surprised and delighted by the lineages Rob Harvilla traces. I’m only a casual Paramore fan so I didn’t realize just how messy they are. Fascinating

• Fashion Neurosis with David Byrne. Our giggly king.

Eating

• Around Bellingham: I took no photos. Not of the wontons at Red Light or the sandwiches at Old World Deli or the burgers at Cabin or the sushi and ramen at Fugaku or of our last pizza at our favorite pizza place which has now closed shop and moved back to Seattle 😭 truly devastating.

• At home: My paneer tikka masala game is improving. Ben’s gotten very into a specific pasta recipe. I’m taking a foraging class and the first one was all about early spring greens (pictured shotweed and chickweed). And on the opposite end of the spectrum, my consumption of Big Chewy Nerds is at an all time high.

Doing

I wanted to take more classes and workshops this year and I’m off to a strong start!

• I finished Cameron Steele’s course on the Major Arcana and will be mapping everyone I know’s birth charts as I count down the days to her next workshop series. Sign up with me!

• I took School of Radical Attention’s Attention Activism 101 and 201 seminars. I have a whole laundry list of things I want to do for ATTENTION SEEKERS and this has been helpful for honing in on what might actually be feasible right now.

• I started a yearlong foraging class that meets one Sunday a month led by a very cool woman I’m hoping to turn into a friend. This month was all about early spring greens and buds — some things that are common (like dandelions and nettles) and some that are only really regional (like oso berry and salmonberry (so named bc the berries appearing often coincides with the salmon run!)). I was hoping this would help me feel more rooted in this specific place we now call home, and I’m pleased to report it already is!

• I put myself out there (eek) and cold called² some other tennis beginners and have been having cute little tennis dates. I continue to be terrible but it continues to be fun.

Bits & Bobs

A good bumper sticker; Marge; an incredible plant store; a friend rescued a bunny; more from the foraging class; Otis; one good snail; two more good bumper stickers; a classic tiled floor omw to get my bangs trimmed.

K, love ya, bye!

1. My only qualm is Elizabeth Berridge nearly ruins every scene she’s in. (Also this watch was the first time I realized a young Cynthia Nixon is in this. She does this thing with her eyes and I was like, wait a minute, is that Miranda!?! And it was.)

2. Cold texted, really.