work, place, tragedy, comedy or: dubious canapé

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The careers that populate my social world in Philadelphia, I joke but not really, are quite medieval. An impressive (to me!) proportion of the people I know have jobs-vocations-professions that would be legible to my distant ancestors. I have friends who are: farmers, bakers, midwives, sex workers, layabouts, musicians, doctors, part-time herbalists, ceramicists, town gossips, child-wranglers, carpenters. My friend Dayna (who is a baker!!) has referred to it as Richard Scarry’s Busy Busy Town.

I don’t have a career that would be legible to the ancients. I have a Modern Career and I envy the satisfying earthly grounding importance-conferring status of ancientness, a job that has always been and will always be. This is one of the only complaints about my job that I find interesting to myself, most of my complaints are too boring and regular to lodge explicitly even in my own brain— but I found many of them articulated so sharply in Discontent by Spanish author Beatriz Serrano, translated by Maya Faye Lethem and published last year, and so now I don’t need to.

It’s a novel with many merits: a punchy compressed time frame, a lot of physical comedy, little gemstone observations, vague parent dissatisfaction, the blandness of pseudo-luxury consumerism, a mesmerizing plastic-surgery-constructed character from the past, and a work retreat gone awry. It’s got Halle Butler’s uneasy cynicism, but it’s set in Madrid, so that was cool. And a [SEE BELOW IF YOU LOVE TO SPOIL YOURSELF*!] ending.**

• I really liked this bossy warm celery salad recipe that said to absolutely not leave leftovers of this dish because it would be mushy to the point of inedibility. The leftovers were actually creamy-dreamy, but I love a recipe that tells you its limitations. Even if they are wrong!

• I had a couple stories in the New York Times Style section a few weeks ago, one about Lola Kirke, for which I got to eat tea cakes and stomp in the snow in unreasonable shoes, and one about Tanya Bush, for which I got to befriend two gorgeous silvery cats and eat pavlova!

• Just decided I prefer droopy-drop last day tulips for their drama, even more than I like the fresh good posture tulips!!

* There’s a comedic (and happy?) Anna Karenina ending, which is possible!! I didn’t know!

** I also love to spoil myself.