what's good : more love

(Not necessarily the Hallmark kind)

In poetry: In a tiny departure from my last couple of shares, I’m not technically real life friends with Mary Lambert. HOWEVER, I did get to have breakfast with her in Portland a few years ago because of a real life friend’s hugely generous invitation. So essentially we really might be almost-besties now considering how startlingly kind-hearted she is about literally everything in the world, as evidenced in her book of poetry Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across. This poem is featured in section Two [the good things are still flawed/and/i think i got intestinal problems because/farting is really hard to do when/you’re in bed with a hot person] and I hope you adore her bouquet of love metaphors & similies as deeply as I do. My favorites: “my heart is a camp counselor - first day” and “beach day” and feeling “like someone just paid for my groceries.” If I hadn’t actually met this person and laughed over French toast with her, I’d be profoundly dubious of her sincerity. But she really does relish life and it is beautiful even when it’s devastating.

If I were braver and didn’t feel like weeping so goddamn much, I’d write & breathe joy like this more often.

Valentine's Day by Mary Lambert
"relationships are just little cults" - Sam Sax

every day i want to write a new poem to you
because my heart is SO LOUD. so loud, all the time.
my heart is a pack of puppies
wagging their tails at each other
my heart is a camp counselor - first day
my heart is a boat, full of smiling people
in bright shirts dancing the cha-cha
my heart is beach day. no shoes.
i mean to say you make me feel like
the sun isn't trying to kill me
you make me feel like someone just paid for my groceries

the flowers you bought me two weeks ago
are still yellow and bursting
I forgot to tell you
my heart is still yellow and bursting too
sometimes after we kiss I want to crawl 
underneath the floorboards
and giggle to myself

i think: "this person keeps kissing me on purpose!"
i also think: love is a delicious weapon
i keep hurtling myself into the sky & sand of it
when you are gone, i sleep with your
hologram in a pillow dream
and i say goodnight from the aquarium of heavy eyes
smiling lazily ear to ear
I can't believe I'm the one you tell your good news to.

---

In food: You might have heard of a Portland-based place that offers gimmicky doughnuts in cool pink boxes to people willing to wait in line for hours; they also sell 3-gallon buckets with daily leftovers literally dumped in, which I think is a pretty telling message about their quality. I’m not linking to them because they are clearly not about love. (To be fair, their offerings aren’t terrible, but I can get the same basic taste at any grocery store bakery for a lot less time + money + hipster attitude).

Pip’s Original Doughnuts & Chai is about love - of the deep fried treats, obviously, but in six truly yummy variations; of housemade chai (5 flavors, possibly delivered by the gods’ doves on Mount Olympus); and of community, which from a pic posted on their homepage might include Mr. Tumnus so it can’t get much better than that. They are a family-owned business employing local artists for logos & signage; they offer a free dozen doughnuts on your birthday (it’s one of the first things on my To Do list every year); and the waitstaff is preternaturally attentive, making eye contact and actually listening to your response when asking “How are you today?”¹

Planning a trip somewhere just to visit one place is maybe a bit silly² but if you’re in the market for doughnuts…

BONUS: My second favorite³ choice is Blue Star Donuts: woman-owned & operated, hyper-attention to unique flavors + ingredients, local sources/collaborations, AND they have a kiosk at PDX (which is also an award-winning airport with other good places to eat + shop, and a corridor of soothing sounds & smells. You read that right). Winning all the way.

Don’t you dare choose the pink box over this.

In music: For our 29th Valentine’s Day as a couple a few years ago, I made a playlist of 28⁴ songs for my husband that have some kind of meaning to us. And when I say “us” I mostly mean me. I threw in some lovey/sexy Judas Priest, Metallica, and Scorpions to keep him from skipping all the sappy stuff.⁵ Plus there’s the added bonus of watching his potential 2nd wife, the young Jennifer Connelly, in the video of “Space Age Love Song.” Oh and I added our wedding song, “When I’m 64,” which seemed like a quaint long time away when we danced to it in 1993 but is now peering around the corner, making us [me] weepier by the minute.

---

In pictures: If a goofy skittish orange cat and an aloof grey lady can find love with only one eye each, so can you. That really should be on a bumper sticker, I think.

1. A few years ago, my son & I stopped at Pip’s on our way home from one of his chemotherapy sessions. I mentioned we were getting my free birthday dozen and also celebrating the end of a long day at the hospital; the clerk paused mid-checkout to look me in the eye for a moment then said “Well I’m glad we can be a good part of your day. Thank you.” So of course I almost cried in a doughnut shop.

2. According to boring people…

3. Second partly because of their spelling choice but also because, and this is going to sound weird, their doughnuts are so big & rich - in general I prefer the tininess of Pip’s so I can enjoy all the flavors and not give myself a debilitating stomachache.

4. Obviously 29 would have been better symbolically but 28 is my favorite number so…#VirgoBrain

5. He likes the sappy stuff, too; I wouldn’t have married him otherwise. #Standards