A Burst of Color

The BIG news: this year’s #1000wordsofsummer big summer session starts June 1 and runs through June 14. I will be doing two free in-person events in New York City on June 1, and one free in-person event in New Orleans on June 8. Details coming soon!

Also I have three more in-person events coming up in Baton Rouge, Baltimore and Greensboro. Details here.

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Hi friends.

This letter today has nothing with writing and everything to do with community. I promise to write more about writing next week although I will tell you that I saw Percival Everett speak last week in New Orleans and he said, “Whoever controls language controls everything.” So go ahead and chew on that for a while.

Anyway!

This week I am thinking about this amazing rose bush a few blocks from my house. I’ve been here long enough that I remember when it was small. It is my favorite in a neighborhood that has a lot of great rose bushes and plants. It’s this one:

There’s something about the psychedelic pink against the faded blue background that I love, and also that it’s tall and the roses are so spread out but still in conversation with each other and I wish you could see how it moves in the wind. It’s also located at an intersection, which makes it stand out. I’ve had so many chats with strangers on the street about it. We are all taking pictures of it or stopping to admire it. I thought the other day: this rose bush is spontaneously creating community. Who could have imagined that when they planted that? The person who originally planted it has since moved. I hope they know how well it’s doing.

This week I am also thinking about this sandwich I used to eat during the early days of the pandemic in the pretty backyard garden of Saint-Germain, a wonderful restaurant in my neighborhood. It was an incredible fried chicken sandwich with this addictive, tangy sauce on it, served on a soft bun. It was enormous and sometimes I’d take half home or sometimes I’d eat the whole goddamn thing, depending on how weird or terrible the day had been. On Wednesdays, they would have half price bottles of wine and these beautiful chicken sandwiches, and lots of friends of mine would go there, spread out and socially distanced and waving to each other across the backyard. There was this period of time when I was really living for those Wednesdays. I know this is minor in the grand scheme of things during a terrible time in all our lives. But also it was one of the only things that made me feel human again.

I recently interviewed one of the chefs there, Trey Smith, because there is a chef character in my new book. I guess now is the time I tell you that their restaurant is actually quite fancy and special, so this chicken sandwich was really just particular to that moment in time. We talked about a lot of things during the interview, but I made sure to mention that chicken sandwich and how meaningful it had been to me and other people. He said he had been thinking a lot about comfort food during that time. I was glad I told him how special the sandwich was.

I will now briefly describe Trey to you: he has long brown hair, and a beard, and has a cheerful demeanor.  He is from Texas. He quit law school in his third year to go to culinary school instead. He is incredible at standardized testing. Once, after a hurricane, he let me use his still-functioning phone to get in touch with my family. And once, in an empty grocery store, from a few aisles away, I heard a man shooting the shit with the cheese monger, and I stopped to listen for a second (because that’s what I do for a living, eavesdrop in grocery stores), and I thought, “Oh that person sounds nice.” And then when I rounded the corner it turned out to be him.

After the interview I was thinking about the community that popped up around that sandwich. Then I was thinking of the sauce on it which I suddenly couldn’t describe or even quite remember what it tasted like. I asked two of my friends who I had eaten that sandwich with on more than one occasion if they could remember, and they agreed it was a special sandwich, but neither could quite exactly recall the sauce. Finally, I messaged Trey, and he described it as “a roasted red pepper rouille…made with roasted pepper and garlic, white wine, and olive oil.”

I guess I just thought you’d like to know.

It’s interesting what we remember or even pay attention to in the first place. (Are you paying enough attention?) I just remembered that sandwich feeling like home.

The third thing I’ve been thinking about is how I had my house painted recently. I’ve lived here eight years and New Orleans weather is tough stuff and the wood was starting to rot so it was time to fix it up. This is what it looks like now:

My house is small, about 1000 square feet, and it is the perfect size for me and my tiny dog and all my books. I love it. Also I will be paying it off for the rest of my life. Like I looked at my mortgage statement the other day and I thought…is anything even happening here? You could tell me that once a month I was paying money to no one in particular, that no one was keeping track of where it was going, just money disappearing into thin air, and I would believe you. So sometimes the thing we live in feels intangible. Repainting the house made it feel tangible again.

It’s been fun to have neighbors stop and admire it and say nice things to me about it. One of the things I was thinking about when I was choosing a color is how I live on a street that’s just a few blocks from train tracks and at least several times a day, cars get stuck waiting for the train to pass. It’s annoying to be stuck behind this train. Not quite a day-ruiner but it might make you late for something, so it’s close. So I thought it might be nice for the people trapped to have a bright raspberry colored house to look at while they wait. Maybe it might cheer them up for a second. It’s not alive like a rose bush and it’s not filling like a chicken sandwich but it’s a cheerful and inviting burst of color to consume for a minute or two when all you can do is sit and wait.

Why not make something appealing for someone else today? Why not make something that makes someone else feel like they’re home? I think there are ways to do this even if the subject matter is sad or dark or complicated. I am always trying to crack the code of how to invite people in and start a conversation. I am interested in the spontaneous formation of community. I am interested in bright colors. I am interested in amazing chicken sandwiches.

What are you interested in?

Jami

p.s. This week’s donation goes to House of Tulip in honor of Trans Day of Visibility.

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on twitter and instagram.