Hello and welcome to the first edition of The Vessel!
Here is a table of contents of sorts:
Intro
Essay: The Key
10 Things to Fill You Up
Playlist: Dreamy December
Welcome, also, to December, the month wholly dedicated to the holidays and all manner of festive, cheerful vibes (pandemic notwithstanding, ugh). The writer/content creator in me is tempted to align this newsletter’s theme around “home,” or tradition. But while I love the holidays, it’s refreshing to not feel beholden to any sort of editorial calendar in this space, to just share what feels right.
Today I’m sharing an essay I wrote while going through some major life changes (cue Thundercat) a year and a half or so ago. I was living back with my mom at the time, having boomeranged back to Sacramento after moving for a relationship that fell apart mere months after the move.
I’ve recently begun to look back on this unstable period fondly. While life’s twists, turns and “oh, fucks” often feel insufferable in the moment, the experience of being uprooted can take on a warm glow in the rearview. I think it has something to do with feeling very much awake during these moments of upheaval. Slogging numbly through life isn’t really an option when your routine and status quo has been jostled loose and squished into an unrecognizable shape. Your mind’s eye has no choice but to go from half-lidded to wide open.
This acute state of awareness, I’ve come to realize, is the silver lining of being thrust into a humbling phase of life. Make no mistake, at the time I interpreted it as a huge step back – I’d given up my job, apartment, and much of my savings to make the move – but on some level I valued my heightened connection to self. Meaning felt enhanced as I considered my choices and identity in a new, critical way, and I felt very much at the center of my life story. Creatively speaking, I felt compelled to mythologize much of my thoughts and experience into writing.
So, here’s the essay I wrote while existing in that transitional phase, wherein spending time with a dog from a previous chapter allowed me to look back, and somehow get more comfortable with the present.
The Key
We meet at a wine bar to “catch up,” but mostly it’s to hand over the key to his apartment so I can pick up the dog. Blake’s asked me to look after Oscar at my place while he’s on vacation with his girlfriend for two weeks, and I can’t say no. After chatting congenially about his upcoming trip to Spain, the subject of the key comes up. It’s the whole reason we even got together after months of seeing each other exclusively through the inscrutable prism of Instagram Stories.
“Oh shit,” he exclaims with a pause, eyes widening and leaning back in his bar stool. “I forgot the key!”
“Oh, that means this hangout wasn’t purely transactional,” I say. “Actual friendship has transpired!”
We laugh, knowing the reference is to my recent text that brazenly shined a light on who are we to each other now. Mid-dogsitting coordination, I’d posited carefully, “Hey, I’ve wondered lately why we’re not really friends. When we were breaking up, we said we would be.” I felt exposed giving him that kind of implicit power, like he was the one behind the decision to barely stay in touch over the last two and a half years since we split. I felt bold enough to ask despite his avoidant, surface-level way of interacting with me, but I still wanted to give him a way out. “Was it just an easier-said-than-done kind of thing?” Given my track record of begging for him back after regretting my decision to end things, I was wary of scaring him off with more neediness.
He sips his wine and says, “I’ll leave it under my mat tomorrow.”
In a few days, I’m visiting my boyfriend in San Francisco, and rush back home to Sacramento to scoop up the dog from Blake’s.
His flight already took off earlier that day, so the idea is not to strand Oscar alone for too long. I feel for the single key under the worn mat and let myself into his one-bedroom apartment for the canine kidnap. I’ve been inside plenty of times to chat as I pick Oscar up or drop him off, much like a divorced couple exchanging pleasantries and life updates. In these scenes, I may as well have shouted to Oscar, the poor kid stuck in the middle, “Go get your things for the weekend!” Or, “bring your swimming trunks, I thought we could go to the lake!” But it’s been a while since all that.
I head into Blake’s room to find our little Australian Shepherd coiled up on the bed. It’s my old bed, my old hot pink quilt. It’s an odd anachronism among so much change. I sit on the bed gingerly and let my eyes wander around the dimly lit room. A deviant thought creeps into my head as I stroke Oscar’s Blue Merle fur. I could stay here while he’s gone… I scan his stack of books he uses as a nightstand: Critical Path, Nadja, The Air Conditioned Nightmare. I imagine laying around reading books, listening to records, being in my preferred neighborhood.
The thought scares me; it’s perverse. I interrupt it by starting to shut down the place, turning off the fan and the a/c. I come across a couple polaroids faced down on one of his speakers and lift one up. It’s Blake and his girlfriend brushing their teeth in the bathroom mirror. They grimace charmingly against the pink tile backdrop. I place it back carefully and peer into the kitchen. It’s unassuming and humble in a way that fits Blake’s whole character, but also old in a way that makes it appear perpetually filthy. In the corner, there’s a tall table where he does his work. It’s covered with papers, his laptop, a used coffee cup.
“Honestly, it’s not personal,” his reply to my be-real-with-me text had said. “I don’t do much of anything these days. Mostly I’ve just been working on projects, saving money, tending to O.”
I imagine one of those projects was worked on here at this table: the book he wrote. He’d revealed it to me as we sipped our glasses of Primitivo.
“You wrote... A book?” I could hardly believe it. I felt a mixture of pride — a vestige of how we used to root for each other’s ambitions — and surprise at being out of touch for long enough for him to write a book. Then jealousy clawed to the surface, raw and unapologetic. I started asking questions that skirted the envy. He’d probably picked up on it because he tried to answer humbly. “Yeah, it’s not something I ever thought I’d be able to do. I never would’ve done it had I not stopped writing for bullshit publications that used me for my voice, but would never give me a seat at the table.”
Now it was me writing for publications. Were they bullshit? Would I ever get a seat at the table? I didn’t know. But I certainly wasn’t on the precipice of banging out a book, that was for damn sure.
I grab Oscar’s bag of food and toys, and link the leash onto his collar as his eyes widen and he snorts excitedly. I lock the door after myself. It’s been six months since I’ve seen Oscar, but he jumps right into my back seat. He acts as if his estranged mother kidnapping him out of the blue is the most normal thing in the world. Like he was waiting for me all along.
The idea of that — that while Blake is at work, he might think of me, miss me even — deeply saddens me. It’s ridiculous, I know dogs aren’t capable of wistful speculation. But maybe within their furry bodies lives some sort of elemental nostalgia? For their actual canine mothers, for the human ones that had to let them go because of painful breakups and work schedules?
I consider that even after all this time, he could think of Blake as only one half of his parentage, of his selfhood. Maybe I’d always be a ghostly other half, all throughout his temporal dog life. Banishing past lovers from my own selfhood had always been a challenge for me too. I connect with this imagined longing I picture within Oscar and I feel heavy. I glimpse him in the rearview mirror wearing a toothy, panting dog smile. It’s indecipherable whether it’s exuberance or anxiety.
For the first couple days, I develop a complex that Oscar doesn’t like me much anymore, convinced he must’ve sniffed out my beta personality. He seems distracted and, if anything, only interested in my mom, the alpha. But slowly, we rebuild the bond. He follows me around the house, relaxes by my feet dutifully as I write on my laptop. My mom even says he whimpers when I leave in the mornings. It starts to feel good to anticipate his needs. One night, I notice he hasn’t drank much after chewing his bone, so I bring his water into my room. He hops off my bed and laps it up immediately. It’s gratifying.
For days, I’m too caught up in work and Oscar’s needs to even think about Blake’s vacation. But one night while crawling into bed, I do, and open Instagram Stories. The first time I check, there are Blake’s token mood-setting, slice-of-life style captures of Spain’s historic monuments. They’re followed up with intimate portraits of his girlfriend. She's being what I imagine to be “so her” by practically scaling a mountain to pluck some berries from a hillside bush. I sense this is supposed to reveal some essential wildness, a free spirit, the thing he loves most about her.
The nostalgic pull for the travels we had together as a couple, if limited and domestic, pings inside me like an unread notification. Before I push it away though, the feeling dissipates; jealousy isn’t present so much as blank amusement. I feel lighter having somehow passed this social media torture test.
Oscar stirs at my feet. I know he knows this charming berry-picker. He perks up from his repose, looking at me the only way he’s ever looked at me. Like he knows me, like he’s mine and I’m his, like he can’t live without me. Even though these days, he very much does.
Blake returns on a Friday and I don’t see him in the exchange. In fact, I don’t even see Oscar. I get off work and rush off to spend the weekend in the city with my boyfriend. I text Blake to use the key under my mat; it’s his turn to “kidnap” Oscar. I wonder if he peers into my room, if only for a moment. Sees my unmade bed, the bedside book I’m reading. But I wonder most about Oscar, if after the excitement of being reunited with Blake — maybe it takes a couple days — if some part of him feels a pull, some kind of primitive longing for a life that almost was.
10 Things to Fill You Up
✨ Things I recommend checking out ✨
“Bridge Dog,” by Sarah Miller for the New Yorker, which is about a dog, and also not just about a dog. (Kind of like the above!) I love her writing; her comic sensibility is so accessible and delightful. She is all the more adored (by me) simply because she’s based just up the freeway in Nevada City. This is a great weekend read about grief and healing and companionship and hope, with many hilarious details.
Sisilia Piring’s YouTube channel, which makes me equal parts nostalgic for the desert (I believe she lives in Joshua Tree part-time), and lustful for her funky vintage aesthetic. Watching a few of her vlogs, though, sort of awakened me to the fact that her personality is a bit wooden? Something about the flat tenor of her videos has wiped some of the veneer off of the perfection of her IG page for me, which I suppose is satisfying in some weird way. The joylessness of it (which is totally my own perception) brought about an obvious conclusion: nice things are just things… Maybe, though, daily life just appears banal when holding a camera up to it. I still love her content and style; it just made me think.
Alison Roman’s Vinegared Apples With Persimmon and White Cheddar. I made it for the first time earlier this week, and in a hurry, might I add, as Andrew had prepared us a delicious fall-themed main and I suddenly felt like contributing a salad. I made the recipe using Roman’s cookbook, Nothing Fancy, but it can also be found online at the link above. It was perfectly crispy and plenty satisfying thanks to the cheesy bits. (I’ve also made her salmon recipe included in that link, and can testify that it’s objectively amazing as well).
Am I the Asshole Twitter account, a stupid but amusing Reddit-inspired thread to read aloud with a partner or friend-in-your-pod now that California’s lockdown is upon us once again.
Grateful to have discovered Las Culturistas this year. Not sure which episode to link; they’re all so fun. “Ding, dong… Las Culturistas calling!” (<— How they enthusiastically open each show). Their segment, I Don’t Think So, Honey, is one of my favorite things…ever?
The “chone zone.” This isn’t something virtually accessed, but rather a very physical mode that Andrew and I made up that you, too, can (and probably do) embrace at home. The “chone zone” refers, of course, to the state of being in your chonies (i.e. underwear) or comfies around the house. It’s a state of repose, of extreme lounging. We’ve found it’s even more delightful simply by giving it this cutesy moniker. You might say it’s – now more than ever – my preferred mode of existence.
Alicia Kennedy’s recent newsletter, “On Prestige,” where she examines our relationship to impressing ourselves and others with work that is recognized as powerful or important. Specifically, she explores her relationship to seeking out prestigious bylines as a writer, which I found relatable and illuminating. It’s a call to question the capitalist, patriarchal framework that bestows prestigious opportunities on a select few.
HBO’s How to With John Wilson, which is a hard-to-describe, slice-of-life docuseries that made me burst with wonder. The series is unlike anything I’ve seen on HBO, or anywhere. It’s hard not to become enchanted by Wilson’s eccentric storytelling and gentle point of view, a refreshing foil to the coarse New York streets he documents. I especially enjoyed how he employs a signature bumbling delivery in his voiceover to make peculiar punchlines and even enhance the impact/depth of thought. He captures disparate New York b-roll – a lady stuffing a live pigeon in her canvas carryall; a passerby piling yet another piece of trash onto an overflowing heap; an oversized, filthy teddy bear belly up on the sidewalk – and conducts offbeat interviews (thanks to his talk-to-anyone-and-everyone style) to tell one connective philosophical message each episode. The mundane, the strange, the undeniably human, it’s all there. The final, sixth episode is especially poignant in how it covers the beginning of the pandemic in New York.
This lovely article on How to Write a Poem in The Creative Independent. My goal is to finally take a stab at writing one and submit it to the neighborhood “Inspiration Station,” a physical post in my sister’s neighborhood that regularly posts local poets’ work.
My funky ceramics obsession continues. Will I score a coveted mug at their next “web drop?” Confidence is low, but hopes are high.
Extra Thing: Is there anything more soothing than observing someone do Tai Chi at a park? Probably doing Tai Chi, huh?
Playlist: Dreamy December
Lately I’ve been into music that’s downtempo yet dancey. There’s something life-giving about music that embodies both the groovy and the gloomy, especially during hibernation season. Dreamy December is a little bit dream pop, a little bit electronic r&b, with a touch of bounce and blues. A lot of the artists on the list are independent electronic producers/multi-instrumentalists that emote a sense of yearning or nostalgia. Sort of syncs up with our collective desire to break free and bust a move amid all the sameness and suffering.
I’ve been streaming it in the background while working, and can just as easily dance around to it while straightening up the house.
Next newsletter drops into your inbox in two weeks. In the meantime, catch me on IG, where I just changed my handle to my actual name.
Thanks for reading,
Vanessa
Great read! Thank you for sharing. Your recommendations are so appreciated. I enjoyed “The Bridge Dog” article very much.
Hello Vanessa! I really enjoyed this read! Thank you for being so vulnerable & honest . I am very much looking forward to future essays!