vol. 40: engage the phenomena of the world with earnestness
personal libraries, Buddhist sutras, & three-ingredient bagels
Hi beloved B&Bers!! I’m writing the third draft of this 40th(!!) edition on a patio in Mile End, Montreal after a yoga class. Someone locked their bike to my bike leaving me trapped so I’m forced to enjoy a patio beer while I wait for reprieve….
My first draft of this issue was a complex exploration of dharma and identity. It followed my reading of Taffy Brodesser-Akker’s Nytimes magazine piece about not wanting to spend her career writing about the Holocaust the night before I recorded eleven new songs by a wonderful Canadian composer about his family’s Holocaust history. (For context, I have spent a disproportionate amount of my career singing/performing such pieces, and it’s something with which I grapple regularly.)
Perhaps as an antidote to that fraught draft, my second draft focused around the beauty of magnolia season in Toronto and other fairly innocuous readings I’d partaken in over the past month.
Perhaps we can combine the two? First, a poem:
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
- Li-Young LeeI first heard this poem on the podcast Poetry Unbound; a podcast which served as a balm for dark West Coast mornings when I was living in Vancouver doing a school tour with their opera company.
Next, a recipe:
Three ingredient high-protein bagels (c/o my sister-in-law/toddler mom extraordinaire)
1 cup of regular or self-rising flour (I used self-rising… seemed like the right move)
1 cup [full fat, obvs] cottage cheese - blended until smooth
1 whisked egg for egg wash + whatever toppings you’d like.
Preheat Airfryer to 350 for 5 minutes or oven to 375. Combine the flour & blended cottage cheese and knead 8-10 times on a lightly floured surface. Make four 6 inch logs. Roll them into bagel shapes & brush with egg wash + toppings of choice. Bake in Air Fryer (make sure you sprayed cooking spray or something!) for 12-14 minutes or in oven for 25 minutes on a lined sheet until puffy and cooked through. Let sit till cool.
Now, a thought.
On a podcast I enjoy—Critics at Large from The New Yorker—the writer and critic Vinson Cunningham answered a query regarding a listener’s guilt over the unread books on their shelf. Cunningham offered that even if books remain unread, one’s personal library is an archive of one’s interests at different times in their life. Something draws us to the book at a certain time, thus we buy the book.
As someone who comes from a family of bibliophiles, this resonated. My maternal grandparents were literature profs, and my mum (a former librarian) inherited theirs and many of my paternal grandparents’ books. She recently remarked on how happy it makes her to have such a library to browse.
There is a well-known adage in modern dating: one should not [go home] with someone who does not have books in their apartment.1 The books one keeps can say a lot about a person. When I moved to Montreal, I culled my library, curating it to a perfect selection of favourites/important books to me/scores&music books to help with my doctoral studies. When I first saw my partner’s bookshelf, I considered it a green flag: a perfect balance of books about his professional interests, fun reads, aspirational reads, and a few Yodas for good measure.
What do you think about this library cultivation concept? It’s the same way I feel about my journals. I can’t imagine throwing them out, even if they’re completely disinteresting. They constitute an archive of my turbulent inner life from age 8 onwards (call me narcissistic for keeping them but I promise I wouldn’t make anyone else read them!). But even if I did, author Sheila Heti spent decades alphabetizing sentences from her diaries to create a poetry/novel hybrid. (“Everything is copy,” the wise Nora Ephron once quipped)
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
-Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
A few more recommendations…
On the train from Montreal from Toronto I finally read Jia Tolentino’s new piece for The New Yorker, “My brain finally broke,” which brilliantly sums up the insanities of our current day and age (my big takeaway among many others: AI is gross).2 While Tolentino’s book of essays Trick Mirror (2019) can feel a bit dated in 2025 (our culture changes so fast!), there are some essays in it which are timeless, must-reads. I read it at an important time in my personal life & it will thus remain on my shelf in perpetuity.
I also enjoyed Ocean Vuong’s recent interview for The Daily, as I loved his first novel and books of poetry. When I first started listening to this most recent interview, I was struck by his intense earnestness, which at first I found hard to pallate. Perhaps sensing the bristling of his audience regarding the counter-cultural way he engages with the world, Vuong addressed this directly. He noted that a Buddhist Sutra says, “Engage the phenomena of the world with earnestness.” I loved this.
Anywho there’s a few thoughts for your Wednesday morning. Bonne semaine & happy fortieth issue. I appreciate you reading all my various musings. ♥️♥️♥️
This does not apply to my bestie—a former bookstore manager—who specializes in cultivating a mysterious personality and got rid of her books before moving in with her partner.
I then read her new excellent short story “I would be doing this anyway” (which is available for free).
Loved this entry- books bagels and poetry. Lots to chew on and appreciate.