LOVE: Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Here for every single piece of content written about this story.
HATERADE: Things past their expiration date.
We went to Queens last Saturday and had dumplings. The day - the Queens Botanical Garden, Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, and then finally Tian Jin Dumpling House - is so potent in my memory for its normalcy that, even as I write this, it overpowers the detail that we left our house for boroughs east after a new president was elected after four years and four days of chart-throbbing, non-stop news coverage.
It felt normal. And that made it otherworldly.
With news of vaccine alongside the appointment of a coronavirus task force made up of doctors, public health officials, and statisticians, I couldn’t help but think about normal this week: our longing to return to it, what we’ll call this OtherTime, and what awaits us when NormalDay finally arrives. Will we wear it effortlessly like a favorite t-shirt lost for months in the space between drawer and dresser frame? Or will it fit like first love, a beautiful memory not meant to be revisited?
The internet also said:
As an Indian woman married to a black man and as the mother of two children of Indian and black descent, I’ll have things to say at some point about the historic nature of the vice president-elect and what it means to a family like mine. For now, this essay - Why Kamala Harris was Raised as a Black Woman - has had me thinking so much about (racial) identity: the one you define for yourself and the one the world defines for you, deciding who and what you are by the way you look.
This election week in the life of a 26yo Trump supporter will also stay with me a long time. “How are we ever going to be able to vote for a president again, now that we know that fraud has been going on?”
If I could dive into these demographic trends that explain Biden’s victory and swim around in them, I would. This is America and they are a photo in Portrait mode.
What began at Four Seasons Total Landscaping shall also end at Four Seasons Total Landscaping. This interview with the owner of the Fantasy Island adult bookstore was exactly what I wanted. Here’s hoping someone gets the owner of the crematorium next.
Until next Thursday,
Nitya