Recommendations for Repair

1/1/23

I asked Instagram for recommendations—stories, in any form, about repair. Suggestions could be very broad dealing with any and all kinds of reparations: in communities, structures, systems, relationships, self. Stories about broken dreams & changed patterns. Stories about items that have been repaired, healed or reconstructed in a dazzling or revelatory way. Stories about repairing a way of thinking, of being. Repair from an injury or an experience. Stories with levity and positivity. Stories about healing. 

My friends delivered. 

• Finding Me by Viola Davis 
• The Wreckage of My Presence by Casey Wilson 
• The Old Place by Bobby Finger
• Welcome Home by Najwa Zebian
• One Night on the Island by Josie Silver
• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 
• Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams
• Intimations by Zadie Smith 
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Happy to be Here Podcast by Vivian Nuñez
• How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon 
• You Made a Fool of Death with your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi 
• Dream Out Loud: The Sneakerhead’s Path to Redemption by Rikki Mendias and Wendy Adamson
• Mango & Peppercorns: A Memoir of Food, an Unlikely Family and the American Dream by Tung Nguyen, Katherine Manning and Lyn Nguyen
• Pan de limón con semillas de amapola by Cristina Campos
• Due sirene in un bicchiere by Federica Brunini
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Spiderman: No Way Home
• Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Ecclesiastes, the Dao de Jing, and the Mandukya Upanishad (together)

My recommendation (and current read) -> Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. 

On giving in to the enchanting promise and possibility of a new year.

photos by Carol Guerrero

I admit to giving in to the enchanting promise and possibility of a new year. Today, I will gift myself flowers.

On the day after my 33rd birthday, I did a photoshoot themed to "Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches," to commemorate reaching a period in my life I've been dreaming about for years. It wasn't a perfect experience but it still felt momentous. We ended, serendipitously, near Strawberry Fields.

I'm reflecting on another year of learning, growing, loving, hurting, messing up, excelling, of good and bad and big decisions. Appreciative for it all. I never pick a theme for the new year but I thought this time I might, and the first word that kept surfacing from my mind's depths was Repair. I didn't like it because it inherently indicates some brokenness and it doesn't sound sparkly or profound, but it is persistent and it's stuck. As it marinates, the more it feels a reflection of some thrilling deep work ahead and a fitting conduit to the expansive and exploratory 2023 I've been working towards. I am a little nervous, but also confident and hopeful. And ready as hell.

I didn't reach my goal of reading 25 books in 2022, but I doubled the goal for 2023 anyway. I think I can do it. And even if I don't, the win is that I'll be reading more robustly and intentionally this year.