50. How to hold a grudge.
Listen to me read this essay:
Last week was full of rain.
I dreamt that I rode the Greyhound bus all night to Milwaukee. I dreamt that I slept in the wrong place and woke up with the wrong person. I dreamt that my dog came back, that I found her, cozy and curled up underneath a dock down by the water, that she wasn’t actually dead; it was all just a misunderstanding, a mistake; just some silly confusion.
I woke up in another rainstorm, and decided to stay in bed, the two cats in an uneasy truce on either side of my feet while I scrolled through posts about the murdered aid workers, the survivors and the martyrs of Al-Shifa, the daily horror, until the sobs and the wails and the tears gathered in me like stormclouds, welling up and spilling over, wracking me as they broke in waves—and then: absurdly, incongruously, I got up and started my day.
We said we would scatter the dog’s ashes in the Wissahickon when the rain lets up, but I’ve been so very busy since leaving my job, imagining writing letters to everyone I love, thinking about pitching a book proposal, planning to definitely finally for sure get into strength training, now that I have the time. In truth, though, I’ve been grieving, and resting, and restless, and listless, a little lost.
By yesterday I started to notice that I was becoming a too-keen observer of—maybe even a participant in—the tempestuous dynamic between the two cats, and I thought: hmm. Maybe I should leave the house.
The sun had been shining gloriously in the windows all morning, but by the time I stepped outside, grandiose and dramatic thunderclouds gathered yet again. No matter: the days of rain and hours of clear, dear sun had remade the world, and suddenly every patch of grass and gutter and garden was an uproar of purples, pinks, and yellows, dead nettle, grape hyacinth, dandelion; quince and pear and weeping cherry.
I rode the subway for the first time in weeks, and I found I had already lost my sea legs; my ears were shocked by the shrieking of the rails as the train pulled into City Hall Station. I walked from there, through Love Park, along the Ben Franklin Parkway, past the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, tears again welling in my eyes as I passed a camellia bush in vivid, deep magenta bloom: who knew they even grew here? My grandmother grew camellias in Monroe, Georgia—all through the winter, we picked them, and floated the blooms in glass bowls in the center of the table, filling the rooms with the scent of tea and jasmine. I loved the way my grandmother said camellia in her soft lilt: cuh-MAIL-yuh, the same way she said her husband Julian’s name, JULE-yun.
I kept walking, through beds of neon pink and red and yellow and purple tulips, and the whole city smelled like that one spring I worked at Ricky’s Flower Market in Somerville, Mass, riding my bike to work in the early morning sunrise to sell flats of pansies and Lenten rose to city householders while Ricky yelled from the back room in his thick Boston-Italian accent, oh yeah, baby, you plant that hosta, you’ll be a HERO!
I arrived at my destination, the Parkway Central Free Library, where I aimed to find a cozy corner to be alone among people, to write. But I had never been here before; the times I had tried to visit, it was still closed due to COVID, so I decided to meander a bit.
Almost immediately, I was overtaken by a desperate urge to consume everything—to devour every book, every archway, every painting and plant and card catalog and microfiche reel. I wanted to simultaneously absorb it, preserve it, and share it, to have my cake and eat it too, to explore every alcove and stairwell, to know everything and keep it all for myself, while giving it all away, lavishly.
I wandered into the rare books department, where Sumerian cuneiform tablets sat under glass, a few specimens from a library of thousands: receipts from ancient business deals, the sale of barley and donkeys, and what amounts to a 4,000 year old paystub, detailing a worker’s labor and wages. It boggles the mind, the works and days of humanity on this slate of time.
At the far end of the long hall containing the cuneiform displays, and the 18th century Pennsylvania German weaving pattern books, and a Quran from North Africa circa 1400, I saw a woman with long brown hair standing on a stepstool, her back facing me, winding a grandfather clock. I stood and watched for a moment, as the clock made charming whirs and clicks and chimes as she worked. I approached her and asked her how often she had to wind them. She turned to me, smiling. Every week, all eight of them! But I forgot to do it yesterday, so they all stopped, she said with a laugh and a small, apologetic shrug.
This place is so amazing! I gushed. I just kind of decided to leave the house today… well, sorry if this is TMI but I’m in between jobs and my dog just died… I looked up at her face, next to the face of the grandfather clock, to register whether it was, indeed, TMI, but she shook her head encouragingly.
No, I’m so glad you’re here! Have you seen Grip yet?
What’s that?
She clapped her hands and stepped down off the stool, leading me down the farthest hall, past an original print by Andy Warhol, and paintings by Maxfield Parrish and N. C. Wyeth, to a giant black bird encased in layers of glass: Grip, the pet raven of Charles Dickens, who inspired Edgar Allen Poe. I marveled. Never did I imagine, when I woke up that morning, my head full of rain, that I would find myself here, contemplating an almost-200-year-old famous taxidermied raven. And why not? When we look in the right light, life is stranger and more wondrous than even our strangest dreams.
I thanked her and continued on, through the departments: Art, Print and Picture, Music, The Fleisher Collection: the largest lending library of orchestral music in the world. Each corridor revealed another little temple of knowledge, of art and culture, to say nothing of the social services and social work outreach that was obviously continuously occurring throughout the building, all within the quintessential library atmosphere: spacious, clean, orderly, reverent.
I wandered into the Education, Philosophy, and Religion department, where one particular small, wooden, square study table was illuminated by an inviting column of light falling on it through the skylight; I sat down on its sturdy, wooden, half-stationary-half-rocking chair, built so that one could sit, and lean forward normally to study, but also one could lean back occasionally for a nice reclining reading posture. They thought of everything.
I settled in, and I wrote for hours, sipping on my thermos of chai tea from home, toggling from writing to reading, or reading emails and answering texts, and back to writing. It was exceedingly pleasurable to be alone, together with others, even in my lost-ness, even in my grief.
Every grief has its own flavor, its own duration, its own style and languor and rhythm. When I am quiet and I listen to this particular grief that I find myself in right now, I understand that it’s not just my losses that I mourn. It’s not just my dog or my job, my sister, my friends, my grievances. It’s also the blinding swiftness with which everything is changing, all around me, all the time. It’s the accelerated pace, it’s this age of my life, of knowing so much about the past, and so little about the future. My son will be leaving for college in a matter of MONTHS. I don’t think I even comprehend what that means, much less have I had time to process it, to think about feeling so bereft and so happy at the same time, the depths of that profound change. And beyond that, this new old broken world, being remade again and again: it’s enough to make you fall to your knees and weep at the sheer magnitude of it all.
After a while in my cozy nook, I looked up, and I realized I was sitting smack dab in the middle of the Devotional and Inspirational Literature section, under a special display of self-help books with the following titles: Tired as F*ck, The Art of Grieving, The Art of Extreme Self-Care, and the one that brought me the greatest delight: How to Hold a Grudge. The Education, Philosophy and Religion librarians could not have curated a collection of titles more apropos to my current pathos if they WERE PAID LOTS OF MONEY TO and THEY TRIED. It was like the universe took out a neon billboard to gently troll me, to send me a message meant only for me, beloved child, to comfort me and make me feel seen in my alone-ness and my lost-ness, and it worked.
I laughed out loud, elated. I nodded and winked at god. I did a little wiggle in my half-rocking chair. I understood, again, that these moments of synchronicity, these moments that take us completely outside of ourselves—outside of our grief and our grievance—and connect us to the whole living, breathing family of the universe, these moments when (to summarize Jung) events are connected by meaning rather than by cause and effect, how could they be anything other than a little glimpse behind the existential curtain, evidence for the absurd hypothesis that everything is unfolding exactly as it should, that the world is perfect and complete and whole even in its brokenness, especially in its brokenness, that WE are perfect and complete and whole in our brokenness. We are whole in our sorrow, and we are whole in our grief and our lost-ness. Especially in our grief and our lostness. And healing is remembering our wholeness, again and again and again.
Home.
Flourless Chocolate Gateau with Lavender White Chocolate Ganache
Flourless Chocolate Cake is a classic and was (maybe still is?) a best seller at the Cake Shop. It’s simple, easy to make, freezes well, and adapts to a variety of toppings. I made one for Easter to share with my family, and topped it with a white chocolate ganache infused with dried lavender flowers.
The recipe is from
/Joy of Cooking, so I won’t reproduce it here. But if you don’t already own a copy, what are you even doing? And, you can find many approximations of the recipe online. Here’s the basic method:Prep one 8” round pan (spray with cooking spray and line the bottom with a round of parchment paper).
Melt chocolate and butter in the top of a double boiler, whisking occasionally until fully combined.
Separate your eggs, and whip the whites to stiff peak with the cream of tartar and sugar.
Whisk yolks into chocolate/butter mixture.
Fold in egg whites gently.
Pour into prepared pan and bake in a water bath for exactly 30 minutes at 325 degrees.
Let cool completely, then chill at least 5 hours.
For the ganache:
Combine 1/2 cup half and half with one tablespoon of dried lavender flowers and carefully bring to a simmer.
Break up 8 oz of white chocolate into a bowl, then strain the hot cream over a sieve into the white chocolate. Whisk until combined and smooth, and cooled to a pourable consistency.
Pour ganache over top of the gateau, and garnish with additional lavender flowers, if desired.
And here’s a lil springtime playlist for all you tender hearts:
The World.
Once again,
on Palestine, and how the Venn diagram between narcissism and white supremacy is a circle.
Thank you for reading this, my 50th issue of Home + the World! I’m looking forward to continued growth, dialogue, and community in the next 50. Please consider sharing, liking, and commenting on this newsletter if you enjoyed it; those actions really help the newsletter grow, which makes it sustainable for me to continue writing it. Stay safe and sane out there during this very intense Mercury Retrograde x eclipse season.
And thank you, thank you, thank you.
xoxo
Jodi
Home + The World is a weekly newsletter by Jodi Rhoden featuring personal essay, recipes, links and recommendations exploring the ways we become exiled: through trauma, addiction, oppression, grief, loss, and family estrangement; and the ways we create belonging: through food and cooking, through community care and recovery and harm reduction, through therapy and witchcraft and making art and telling stories and taking pictures and houseplants and unconditional love and nervous system co-regulation and cake. All content is free; the paid subscriber option is a tip jar. If you wish to support my writing with a one-time donation, you may do so on Venmo @Jodi-Rhoden. Sharing
with someone you think would enjoy it is also a great way to support the project! Thank you for being here and thank you for being you. ⚔️❤️ Jodi
I read slowly noticing that I was holding my breath as not to interrupt the stream of consciousness that I was being swept away on. To live on the edge of vulnerability of ourselves is the hardest work we can do. I resonated with being outside an organization I was embedded within. This leaving of others that we shared life with is a mean spirited exorcism. The perceptual shift that Pema Chodrun and Jon Kabot Zinn talk about allows us to see the synchronicity, the hidden door to joy.
50!!! Wow, that’s such an accomplishment! I LOVE Parkway Central & librarians & serendipity so sounds like a perfect day! Speaking of, im also searching for the perfect flourless choco cake for Passover so i will check this one out!