Odessa's Oddities & Curiosities | Week of 11/11/2024

Dear friends,

I don’t have words. Even though I knew the polls indicated a toss-up, I didn’t realize how much in my heart-of-hearts I believed she would prevail. Deep numbing shock. I hope soon I will have the words and the path for moving forward. But all I can offer in this newsletter are distractions.

Some meditations from Halloween.

First, did you know that Halloween is a Catholic holiday? All Hallow’s Eve or All Souls Day is very much an innovation of the Catholic Church in absorbing a pagan holiday—specifically, Samhain in Scotland. But we were discussing in my Occult Science class how Halloween and Día de Los Muertos are about these times of the year when the dead come near the living. So is Yom Kippur the Jewish Halloween? (Okay, ignore Purim, I’m not talking about costumes). But on Yom Kippur, we are inundated with liturgy where the living come near the dead. Or is there a big conceptual difference between the dead near the living or the living near the dead? Let me know your thoughts.

Also, I’ve continued my tradition of wearing a plainly ridiculous felt pumpkin costume to all my classes on Halloween. I had strangers grinning at me all day. Pure serotonin. I love Halloween and how it forces us not to take ourselves too seriously. Also, I thought the Yale Symphony Orchestra’s Halloween show was magnificent — and weirdly prescient. In terms of life mimicking art, we’re definitely starting the Great Yiddish Bake-Off.

My Halloweekend had many highs and a significant low. On a mushy note, after a rather rough Sat of Halloweekend, I felt so deeply loved by my friends who took care of me, thus not so bad after all.

I have poems for you:

“Meditation on A Grapefruit” by Craig Arnold. Beyond being a superb poem, this poem has inspired me to start eating grapefruit in the morning, and each time I consider “a discipline / precisely pointless a devout / involvement of the hands and sense / a pause a little emptiness”.

“Temptation” by Nina Cassian. The line that drew me in was “you’ll feel light gliding across the cornea / like the train of a dress” – so fabulous and uncomfortable. Every time I read it, I must resist the urge to scrub my eyes. What a successful visceral experience.

“And I was Alive” by Osip Mandelstam just startled me through and through (translated by my Prof!). My only annotations are in all caps: DELIGHT and WOW. The poem held special resonance right now as all the final Fall leaves flutter down to the ground. I want to stand on Cross Campus under the trees and declare “And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear”. It’s a combination of the full-bodied awe, the chest open, mouth agape hereness, and the wordplay that captivated me in this poem. I loved “rupture and rapture”, “raveling rot”, “leaflife and starshower” and “flowering fleeing”. The mouth experience was as delightful as the probing intent of the poem – situated temporally and physically, but blown open by lines like “What is being? What is truth?” This mix of trying to expand your mind to take in the world as in, but also the indomitable march of time. Nothing lasts. Everything ends. This was Mandelstam’s last known poem before sent to the Siberian Gulag.

Branford hosts a monthly Drink of the Month for Branfordians 21+, a chance to teach us how to make cocktails and get delightfully tipsy with our Head of College at 7pm on a Wednesday. This month was the Kyvian Mule - a contemporary Ukranian twist on the Moscow Mule. Our Head of College was careful to source Ukrainian vodka. We learned about the drink's history: how Russia sent vodka to the USA as a thank-you for American military support during WWII. Americans hadn’t drank vodka before so they didn’t know what to do with it. Perhaps, apocryphally, a bartender in LA ended up with a warehouse of vodka and coincidentally copper mugs…and so from the military-industrial complex, we get the Moscow (Kyvian) Mule. On that note, learn how vodka is distilled in this distillery that has been operating since 1896.

Some other media I enjoyed:

You’ve seen Nerds Gummy Clusters invade the candy aisle — here’s the backstory. Personally, I can’t get behind this texture combination. The stickiness of the gummy with the crunch of the nerd— no. I do love Nerds though.

Also on another vaguely Halloween note, Spirit Halloween! I’ve always wanted to know the history and finally satisfied my curiosity in this 99% Invisible episode. Really interesting economic phenomenon.

And this podcast episode on the Library of Alexandria — I love how seriously they took knowledge. They would board any ship that docked and scavenge it for books, make copies of the books, then return the copies, not the originals. Nothing makes me want to time travel more than listening to histories like these.

This informative Instagram reel on why Jews put an excessive (read: normal) amount of cream cheese on our bagels.

And this wild review of the new Martha Steward documentary — it definitely succeeded in that I’m dying to watch it now.

I’m a sucker for travelogues, and I loved this one from a pilot in Mumbai.

And this lovely reflection on growing out your grey hair, and this touching piece on the final finishers of the New York City Marathon.

Oh! Miriam recommended the best new podcast: Unexplainable. I binged quite a few episodes, and I’m barely holding back on recommending all of them to you. This incredible episode on how psychedelic therapy has broken the double-blind randomized control trial format (the gold standard of research), because it’s hard to have participants remain blind to whether they’ve consumed psychedelics. The latest studies are finding that participants with treatment-resistant depression tend to improve regardless of condition. Turns out the human connection, feeling seen and cared for in a clinical trial is the best treatment we have for treatment-resistant depression.

On that note, the physiology of hugging! Hugging as opposed to other forms of physical touch was linked to higher baseline oxytocin levels (from my Hormones Class). My professor hypothesized it had something to do with the act of pressing torsos together.

I’m in the middle of some superb books. Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell — I think it’s been 8+ years since I read Fangirl and Eleanor & Park, but damn Rowell knows how to tell a story.

I’m also delighting in the writing of The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya. There’s just this elegant beauty to the text. One line for you: “By that time, he’d had seven novels to his name. He had written them because he had, with a measure of safety induced by the barrier of fiction, wanted to show the world some of his selves.”

And also Creation Lake, which I’ve been looking forward to reading for forever now! Another teaser line: “The rain had left enormous puddles that were the tint of milk chocolate, their surface silk-screened in sky.” And the philosophical musings make it an addictive read. Crossing my fingers that it wins the Booker Prize.

This weekend, we had Branford Swing & HSB Formal, and what joy after this week to dance into the night with my dearest friends. Orah managed to DJ this perfect mix of more traditional Jewish music & modern pop.

And happy birthday to my Bubi! And Aunt Adele! And Aliza!

With love & curiosity,

Odessa