Taste of The Week 2/18/24

The Palace of People, tool library and seed library, Anarchist Calisthenics, and some good essays.

I have accepted that there are certain weeks that are meant to be uninspiring. An unhealthy amount of ramen is consumed, journal untouched, workout undone, pen dried, bookmarks stuck at where they were a week ago. There are just certain days when leaves are just leaves and nothing else. I won’t say I’m necessarily enduring the time, but in times like this, I feel like it’s my instinct requiring me to stay still, experience the mundane, and hope it will pass.

So, following, this week’s round-ups.

BOOK

It is a symptom of modern young intellectuals to moan about the disappearance of third places and community, yet at the same time, sit in front of a screen for 16 hours a day. I’m guilty of it. Nobody wants to hear this, but we failed each other as a community during COVID, and we are still in the process of rebuilding trust. We have all, at some point, been left alone helplessly, more or less, in the past three years. In the past week, I’ve been reading ‘The Palace of People’ on how social infrastructure—physical structures that enable people to develop social capital, such as libraries, parks, tea houses, etc.—helps people build connections and get through crises. It shocked me to realize that I’ve never made any friends at casual social gatherings in the aforementioned places, simply because the lack of support makes it hard for us to prioritize and, therefore, frequent such spaces.

What does it take to get you out of the house? A playground, an outdoor movie, a band playing in the park, a gathering at the library? I need a less busy 9 to 5.

If you are interested in this topic, also check out this podcast: The 'Quiet Catastrophe' Brewing in Our Social Lives

LIBRARY

Talking about libraries, I briefly discussed why everyone should have a library card in my previous post. If the reasoning wasn’t strong enough, I have more for you today:

Tool Library

Working in the sustainability industry means sometimes I need to do some weirdass research on anything related to emissions. Do you know how often the average American household uses their lawnmower, leaf blower, and many other power tools? Around 9 times a year. So purchasing a leaf blower that comes with tons of embodied carbon seems financially and environmentally unclever when you can borrow it from your local tool library. Mark it on your map and give it a visit before spring starts.

Seed Library

I only just discovered the existence of seed library. A seed library collects and stores seeds to “lend” them to members of the community for free. You can borrow seed packs at planting time, and at the end of the growing season, save seeds from your plants and return a portion to the library. I was surprised by how common this project is; you can probably find it at your local library or university greenhouse. The amazing part of a seed library is that the more people use it, the better and more diverse the library becomes.

I love it for the resources it provides, but also for the concept of “borrowing” and “returning” as an economic model that can potentially be used to resist the erosion of Earth and humanity by capitalism. So, imagine when every grower/plant parents participates more or less in the seed library, then the solar punk movement and many other futurisms that are rooted in environmental concerns won’t seem that unrealistic.

READ

I’m in a book reading slump recently (probably a side effect of feeling uninspired this week). I’m deeply stuck at page 178 of A Sport and a Pastime, page 150 of The Writing Life, and page 20 of Crime and Punishment. Reading slumps are different; for some, I felt like I’m uninterested in what the book has to offer, but for this one, I feel like I’m illiterate. I can’t decipher the message, and the words flow through my mind like whatever is outside the windows of a speeding train. It is blurred with no traces left. However, I did have good reading experiences with articles and essays in the past few weeks. Here are some that I would like to share:

• “Everyone’s a Sellout Now” by Rebecca Jennings on the online personal marketing scene. It’s argued that artists and even normal individuals feel the need to spend a chunk of their time building a personal brand online in order to succeed (literally me struggling on TikTok).

• If you haven’t checked out my last week’s essay on building your taste, please do. In the essay, I mentioned a must-read piece: Tahirah Hairston’s essay “Thoughts on Taste.”

• “Check Your Privilege” by William Deresiewicz. It is a letter to college students, but really, if you are reading this column, this letter is also for you.

• “What Did People Do Before Smartphones?” by Ian Bogost. Seriously, what did we do? I’m having a hard time remembering how I filled my minutes while waiting for a bus, walking home from school, sitting on the toilet. It is scary to think about how much smartphones have changed the way we consume.

• “The Quiet War Between the Capitalists and the Consumers” by Eugene Rabkin on the daily conflicts we experience and ignore as a consumer class.

CONCEPT

How radical do we want to be today? A concept you need to know is ‘Anarchist Calisthenics,’ which involves practicing breaking some rules in small ways daily in order to be prepared to break the bigger rules in the name of justice and rationality one day. I have so much to say about this, having grown up in a regime where breaking rules was the only way to keep my mind clear. But another day, I will write about this, another day when I find the inspiration back.

A simple fit from this week