Odessa's Oddities & Curiosities | Week of 2/24/2025

Dear friends,

My mom keeps telling me to stop apologizing when there is an ever-widening gap between newsletters, and it is not that I think you all are waiting with bated breath, refreshing your Gmail accounts, but rather, a disappointment in my own time management. And also, how I miss getting to write these installments.

Let’s catch up. Some general and particular joys from the last couple of weeks: my dad visiting and watching him bond with my friends, walking along the snowy lake with Mia and having a perfect magical moment of silence, Ava pulling a bobby-pin out of her hair in order to break into our room on Slifka Retreat at around 1 in the morning, sampling homemade wine, getting 10 hours of sleep last night (!!!!!!)

Senior Masquerade was this past Saturday, and I relished the gussying up of it all. My high school junior and senior year proms were canceled because of COVID (although we did have two quasi-senior proms on boats), so I delighted in getting to feel like a princess in my dress. And of course, wandering around and complimenting everyone on their fabulous dresses.

After a sleepover at Glamma’s house over the break, I’ve taken up knitting again. I’ve been knitting in long stretches of class, at Mellon forums, bios…anytime where my attention is aided by the small steady movement of my hands. I’ve been considering knitting as this attention medium, or perhaps attention container—knitting allows me to focus deeper on whatever’s being said. From a little Google search, I’ve learned that engaging in fine-motor movements like knitting, helps activate the same part of the brain involved in focus. And it’s also an excellent reminder to be committed to the process rather than the results — how nice it is to see my scarf progressing, but also I am not doing it for the scarf.

As always, a collection of pieces that brought me joy and cultivated curiosity:

A darkly delicious foray into guilt and that high-falutin world of the art market in this exposé.

This fantastic review of a Madonna biography by Joanna Biggs (who visited my literary production class). I was particularly drawn to this paragraph where Biggs describes Madonna’s look as “the look of a bad girl applied with the discipline of a good girl.” She details how Madonna ended every evening of her Virgin Tour dates by reading (Joyce, Fitzgerald, Salinger) and eating sorbet. I just love that image of Madonna curled up in her hotel-room bed, perhaps in a robe, reaching for her sorbet as she thumbs through a book.

For that same class, we read a review of Rachel Cusk by Patricia Lockwood, where I loved Cusk’s line: “At every event, you meet one boor and one magical person.”

And one more by a fabulous writer, Olga Tokarczuk, who when interviewed in The Paris Review by my professor, said that she needs tea and a game of solitaire before she begins writing —”it’s like running a comb through my brain.”

Speaking of The Paris Review, I did a whole presentation on that magazine last week. And did you know that one of the founders, Peter Matthiessen was actually using the magazine as a front for his CIA activities?

On a fun note, they’ve discovered another Pharoah’s tomb! I don’t know why we’re not talking about this all the time. The nine-year-old-Egyptologist in me is freaking out!

I audited a class Renaissance Bodies, recommended by Mia. And learned from Prof Bass about the transness of Jesus — apparently Christ’s wound is incredibly yonic. (I was relaying this at a party, and someone nodded enthusiastically, yes yes I’ve known about this).

I got to hear Rep Katie Porter speak at a law school event. She bemoaned the inequality between academia and Congress: In academia, there are so many good ideas, but none of them are going anywhere. In Congress, there are no good ideas, but everything is going somewhere. She also derided Republicans for claiming the idea of governmental efficiency — a long-held Democratic idea.

And an embarrassing admission. My dad sent me this New Yorker piece about the attention crisis, and I didn’t even have enough sustained attention to finish reading it. However, I did get the gist of the argument, which makes the contrarian case (my dad’s favorite) that the attention crisis is just another example of liberal hand-wringing or an “elite anxiety in the face of a democratizing mediascape.” Oh well, I’m sure I provide a steady counterargument, Mr. Immerwahr. On that note, this great piece on the long documentaries of Frederick Wiseman and the delights of observing other humans

I have two poems for your pleasure. One is “Bear in Mind” by Bernadette Mayer (located at the end of this review) — I’ve been thinking a lot about language play and language experimentation. Reading Ulysses has made me feel particularly playful and free with language, and I want to challenge myself to engage in these language experiments more often (ask me about the homophones “mourning/morning” and “novel/novel”).

The second is “In Those Years” by Adrienne Rich, because I’ve been considering how one can survive in these times and remain agile with awe and beauty and hope. And it does feel like one path is just to burrow inward and get fanciful with self-indulgence. “we were trying to live a personal life / and yes, that was the only life / we could bear witness to” And I’m trying to figure out what I can bear witness to in a way that is meaningful and important. Sarai recommended cordoning off my news consumption to just a prescribed 30 minutes a day. In that search, I’ve been trying to consume non-political podcasts to start my day. I’ve been loving her recommendation: The Critic and Her Publics, where Merve Emre invites critics into conversation and enjoins them to perform criticism on the spot. A wonderful way to think about language and criticism.

I’ve been thinking a lot about high brow / low brow, and how this distinction often exists at the fulcrum of what young women enjoy. And perhaps in my particular array of classes, this becomes particularly apparent. In Ulysses, ultimate high-brow-snobbery, we dissect the significance of flatulence, sexual pleasure, and defecation. Yet, in my literary production class, my classmates term “romantasy” novels as purely self-indulgent. In contrast, my Young Adult Writing class treats each YA novel with the respect and gravitas they deserve. This was also top of mind with the 25th anniversary of the Sims and the competing descriptions of the game. Is it a doll-house-like game for users to live out self-indulgent fantasies or are “players to feel like they were gods controlling stupid ants when, in reality, they were actually ants pretending to be gods.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about my own use of AI as I feel out my ethical and creative boundaries. I do feel that AI has supercharged my growth mindset—nothing feels beyond my reach with the help of my trusty sidekick: ChatGPT. But I’ve felt my use-cases become murkier, I’ve found that I want to use it for silly things that I know I can write myself. I’m offloading more and more to ChatGPT. And I’ve always known that this was the slippery slope, but it’s eerie to watch my own descent. Especially after reading this essay by Margaret Renkl. Hoping that spending some time considering my usage will slow my fall. Insert some Dante quote here.

Also, a final thought on running. I’m trying not to become one of those people who cannot shut up about their running habits, but I might be failing. It’s interesting how all-absorbing running becomes, compared to my long-held strength training regimen. There’s a lot of joy. And dread. And hunger. I’m not so sure this running thing is actually good for my body (lots more aches and pains than I’m used to), but then there’s the glory of my two legs guiding me up East Rock to watch how the sun lays claim to the horizon and how all the snow glitters into ice. God, it’s beautiful.

And in big news, Athena comes to visit me in T-4 days, and I can’t freakin’ wait! Big worlds collide moment for me. A lot of my favorite people in the world in the same place.

With love & curiosity,

Odessa