Odessa's Oddities & Curiosities | Week of 3/10/2025

Dear friends,

A small admission of bliss: I write to you from a serene oceanside home where I watched the sun set over Vineyard Point down the Long Island Sound mere hours ago. The smell of vegan chocolate chip cookie dough from Bishop’s Orchard is wafting from the oven. I am cozied with two friends to work on our theses, intermingled with trips to the lovely Guilford Green, going for runs along the gorgeous jagged coast, and homemade meals. Life is pretty damn good.

I’ve been trying to put my finger on it—that feeling of being so close to the water. Maybe it is incidental to the fact that I tend to be close to the water at times of vacation. But I’ve been romanticizing about the horizon and how the act of casting my eyes far off conjures a deep calm.

The first week of break is a work week for me, and I’m savoring the ability to move deeply into my various projects. I spent the weekend immersed in my Jewish pirate novel. (I was considering, on a run, that I’ve spent more than half of my life in the process of novel-writing). But I had forgotten that joy of total immersion. Creative work is latent with water-metaphors. We dive in. We let our creativity flow. We skim the surface of an idea. And I’ve been imagining that process of getting out of my novel, out of the water like that damp, skin prickling, gotta-blink-a-few-times feeling. How delightful to let my imagination take the reins so thoroughly that I then struggle to catch up.

I’ve been moving into the literary podcast world, which feels like a slightly obnoxious thing to say, but here we are. I really enjoyed this interview with Kaveh Akbar in Novel Dialogue. To paraphrase Akbar, “language cannot capture the ineffable, indelible parts of my algorithms of consciousness”, thus the idea of writing is to “gallop again and again into failure.” Did I hook you? Good.

If you need a good cackle and grew up watching or adjacent to the High School Musical movies, here’s an excellent comedic YouTube commentary (?? feels too Talmudic-coded to be what I’m referencing).

Side thoughts on the word "cackle”: if you text with me frequently, you know that this is my preferred way to convey laughter. I just like how full-body it is. A cackle involves a head thrown back, a touch of abandon. It’s sort of ugly. It’s honest. I love a good cackle.

Some thoughts from running (I guess this is a series). First, I love saying hi to people on the trail. That’s the Californian in me. And smiling at babies, and dogs, of course. Also, I love when I can tell people have a favorite color. I ran by this one man who was wearing this neon jacket—okay, plausible that it could just be for safety. But then he pulled out his phone—and he had a neon phone case! I love some good color synergy.

Mia invited me to see her perform in the Yale Jazz Band. And holy fucking shit. Full body shivers. To hear a big band perform in a real concert hall. Wow wow wow. I really got it. I got some good gaped-mouth awe. Mia on the trumpet >>>

I feel very lucky to be becoming an adult in the age of vibecoding. Nothing is beyond my reach. Think it. See it. Make ChatGPT code it for you. Perfection. Tetsu and I are founding a start-up. We’re working on the pitch deck and the Figma now…keep an eye on this space (was that tech bro enough?)

I’ve been thinking a lot about vision and sight. Both on a physical and metaphysical level. I’ve been having a lot of eye strain. I’ve found that on Google Docs, I need to adjust the zoom to 150% instead of 100%. Also recently, I’ve been struggling to read in low-lighting. It’s not that anything’s blurry, but my eyes grow so tired that I need to close them. Often, massage my forehead. It’s bewildering. I’ve been going around asking people how they knew they needed glasses. My dad relayed a story from his junior year abroad, where he repeatedly asked the professor to adjust the projection screen until a classmate shushed him: I can see it just fine, his classmate whispered.

From 23&Me, I know I have the gene for age-related macular degeneration, cue a lot of angst. And I know this is incredibly dramatic train of thought for some slight eye strain, but sue me, I’m Jewish. Anyway, I’m going to get my eyes checked on Friday. I’m feeling a little silly about including all this before I know for sure. But it’s just been weird. Thinking about my own vision forces this hyperawareness of the facade of my vision, and how different the world may be than I perceive. Makes me think about my solipsism phase in seventh grade. Also, I’m excited to pick out glasses.

In an oblique way, here is a poem on vision and truth: Dust by Dorianne Laux.

Side note on vision: I’ve been wanting a digital camera. Partially for the irony of longing for camera regression while my phone has a camera 1000 times better. Partially for Instagram. (If anyone has any recommendations, let me know.)

And this is one thing I forgot to include in my last newsletter, but I’m very excited about this one Democrat who I want to run for President: Jake Auchincloss, interviewed by Ezra Klein here. He has great ideas and he’s Jewish. Some good news in a sea of terrible.

Also after my last newsletter (re Matthiessen in the CIA), Gracie taught me that the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and the American Studies major at Yale were started as FBI agents — cultivating creative thinkers to become FBI & CIA agents. Read more here.

Also, one interpretation of the Jewish prohibition against tattoos is that it was originally intended to ward people off using any sort of self-harm to summon demons. So look at your tattooed friend closely—who knows what kind of demons they’ve summoned. (Learned in this great episode on Jewish Magic & Mysticism from the What Magic is This? podcast).

I have two invitations for my Yale-adjacent readers. One, my Mellon Forum will be on Tuesday, March 25th, 6-8 pm in the Branford Common Room. You will finally understand what I mean when I say “Sorry, I’m at lab.” There will be food.

Two, I plan on hosting my own Salon before the end of the year. I very much wish to be a part of bringing back literary salons. But this will not be a literary salon, but a Curiosity Salon. Here is your charge. You must bring an item that interests you and present on it for (strictly) 3 min time limit. This item does not need to be tangible; it can be a poem, a story, news article, video, art work, any sort of rabbithole. Invitations & timing forthcoming.

I just relished every moment of Athena’s visit. I had some worries that I would feel discombobulated with my worlds colliding, but it was so easy. I almost forgot Athena wasn’t with me here all the time. We danced. We gossiped. We giggled. Such joys of growing closely with someone for almost 17 years.

With love & curiosity,

Odessa