01.23.23

CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.

fancy soap (late-stage capitalism).
duross & langel chai madness: vegan, long-lasting, a spicy scent that primarily perfumes one's shower and doesn't linger. i load up on this stuff at the brick and mortar store when we go to philly. their candles are understated and lovely, too; we're burning this one right now and i'm already excited about what i'll plant in the vessel once it's kicked.

goatboy soaps irish tweed: like a benevolent old librarian, the kind with fantastic eyebrows. the folks at the union square greenmarket who sell ultra-local honey also sell this goat's milk soap, and i imagine i'll test-drive a bunch of scents over the next few months.

kalastyle halló iceland moss: our all-time favorite, and that's not just the iceland fetish talking. it's made with (and smells like) hand-harvested moss! i also appreciate the halló iceland volcanic ash and kelp soaps; haven't tried the angelica. moss is the absolute banger, though.

wonder valley hinoki: at the far end of the fanciness spectrum, and a good gifting choice; the packaging is exquisite. the hinoki is subtle but there, and the super-high-quality olive oil gives the bar fantastic texture. good lather. is it three times better than our icelandic standby? no. can cleansing ourselves with the finest things before the sea takes us make a difference, in the final analysis? maybe.

our country (play). i have now had four live theatre experiences this year, three of them today (the fourth was that participatory thing at the library two weeks ago – also, like today's hat trick, part of the public's 2023 under the radar festival), and i've never felt so alive! i haven't felt so alive recently, anyway; it also helped that joe and i ran through the rain to dinner between today's second and third shows. this wonderfully experimental performance combined ancient theatre, recorded interviews, choreography, shadow puppetry, sleight of hand, feats of strength, audience interviews and even blanket forts to create a composite portrait of a sibling dynamic that was genuinely exciting; the shared and individual histories co-creator/performer annie saunders and her acting partner shared were interesting, but i mean that the way all of those things developed that history got me excited about telling stories of my own. our country is sort of about individualism and the frontier; it's also a wild mishmash of antigone and girl, interrupted, and it's one of the most vivid explorations of sibling interactions i've seen in a long time. "my brother has a criminal history. he’s actually great now. but for many, many years, that was the dynamic. i spent a few days with my brother in the summer of 2016 and made about 10 hours of tape of us talking to each other about 'antigone,' our childhood, criminality, the law. that became a major part of the show," saunders told the times at the beginning of the festival. she told us at the beginning of this performance that it might be the show's last, ever, and i really, really hope that it isn't; it's the most interesting theatre i've seen since the first time i saw annie baker's the flick a decade ago.

skinamarink (film). joe says that a couple of people walked out of our theater when we saw this, but i didn't notice; i was clenched in my seat with my hand hovering over my face and an obscure, ashy taste in my mouth. if you were a certain kind of lonely child, the kind that spent a couple of years or more than a couple of years desperately scrabbling around for other humans to sleep beside, i suspect this movie will scare the piss out of you, as it did me. it doesn't depict children experiencing a waking nightmare; it recreates the feeling of having a waking nightmare as a child, the unspeakably terrible architecture that reveals itself in certain stretches of the dark. i used to eat ostensibly poisonous things to call adults' bluffs and knock my wind out on the regular for the chance to be the youngest or first kid to use the high dive or fling herself from a jumping rock... and after dark my bravado shriveled into nothing and i used to sneak into my little sisters' room and cower on the floor next to their bunk bed. i still sleep best on my stomach with my head turned to the right and my sheets over my head and pursed around my nose! it's just old habit now, but skinamarink was a spicy meatball for me. if you're the type of horror fan who watches things to sound your own depths, to yell and see what echoes back, it's worth seeing. in other horror news, here is what happens when you look for wasps in figs from trader joe's.