Odessa’s Oddities & Curiosities | Week of 1/1/24

Dear friends,

Happy New Year! 2024 is now upon us.

I feel intensely ambivalent about New Year’s Resolutions. I used to hate them — these capitalism-propelled resolutions that want to have you diet and pick up some ridiculous new exercise routine. But Dr. Katy Milkman at Wharton has done an excellent series of studies looking into the behavioral science of resolutions at any turning point in life (she gives some good tips on keeping resolutions here; her podcast Choiceology is also superb, as well as her book: How to Change). Basically, given a new beginning and erasure of past failures, we are more likely to pursue our goals, especially if those goals are concrete, small, and include a penalty for not following through. Maybe, it’s just my contrarian spirit, but I do not have any resolutions to share this year.

If one of your resolutions does involve more exercise, I have an app for you. I’ve long had a love-hate relationship with exercise. I’ve never thought of myself as athletic — remember, I’m Jewish!!! I was taught Judaism and exercise were diametrically opposed — after all those years of running for our lives, now we are supposed to run for fun?!!? Scandalous. This intuition was confirmed by coming in last every time we ran a mile in PE and years upon years upon years of losing every single soccer game (which was actually a terrific life lesson on how to care deeply about fun and not winning). In about 8th grade, I decided to exercise on my own terms. I started with YouTube dance workouts, then strength videos with some small free weights (highly recommend Sydney Cummings). Then, I gathered the courage to go to the gym. Sometime, over all those years, I learned to love exercise, love moving my body, love getting stronger. I know I need, I crave that gym time — not for any aesthetic purpose at all, but for my mind, for the strange solitude of being surrounded by strangers yet in my own little world. My strength training was kind of slow-going though until I got this app called Fitbod — gosh, what a terrible and mortifying name. For a small monthly or annual fee, Fitbod builds workouts for you with AI, customized to your available equipment, goals, and experience. You can try it with my referral link here! Since March, I’ve logged 140 workouts with the app. I tend to switch up the workouts it recommends, but I mainly treasure it for pushing me to progressive overload and I’ve gotten so much stronger! I now think of myself as athletic (?!?!?!?!?!)…at the very least, I feel strong.

I spent the last week in Mexico: four days in Mexico City, three days in a beach town near Puerto Vallarta. I have a few observations and curiosities for you that I gathered in Mexico City.

First, I was in awe of the historical breadth and depth. Mexico City is known as the city of palaces, but also pyramids and canals and murals and tacos al pastor and hot air balloons and the best cardamom pastry I’ve ever had (thank you, Rosetta!).

Fun fact: I imagine many of you have heard of the Aztecs. But once the Aztecs established their home in the area of Mexico City (where they saw the eagle eating a snake, perched on a cactus — Tenochtitlan), they called themselves Mexica — which means the place of the belly button of the moon in Nahuatl.

Second, I’ve never met a city more in love with speed bumps than Mexico City. There are speed bumps everywhere. I was curious so I did some digging and apparently, this is an across Latin America phenomenon.

Third, one can attend the National Autonomous University of Mexico for the astounding price of a singular Mexican peso a year. Maybe, I need to transfer…

Fourth, I will never ever ever get tired of tacos. Did you know that cheese is not a part of the indigenous Mexican diet? It was introduced by the Spanish. Speaking of food, did you know that all tequila is mezcal but not all mezcal is tequila?

In Mexico City, we went to Xochimilco — a beautiful canal-laden area of the city, home to many floating Mariachi bands, elote boats, many many tourists, and axolotl — a key amphibian for studying tissue regeneration, featured in a recent NYT article here.

My brain was working in overtime detangling Spanish and Hebrew. I took Spanish for five years in middle school and high school, then Hebrew for the first two years of college. My brain has marked both languages as our proficient second languages with absolutely zero desire to differentiate between the two. I would withdraw my Spanish vocabulary then accidentally apply Hebrew grammar…OY VEY. As the only semi-Spanish speaker in the family, I was tasked with translating. I was trying to tell the cabdriver that we would walk the last block to our destination. Nosotros caminamos I managed. He responded to me with something about stopping. Ken! I replied in Hebrew. Shit! Sí. He stops the car. Todah. Fuck! Gracias. [A peek into my brain for the whole trip].

We went to a variety of museums including the remarkable contemporary art museum: Museo Tamayo. They had a solo exhibition Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson — so incredibly inventive and playful. Google him! Other art highlights included the Rodín floor at the top of Museo Soumaya, the post office, the Church of San Francisco, and Frida Kahlo’s easel set up.

Then, we went to the beach, and the downtime was much appreciated. One thing I noticed is that the pool/beach is the last true frontier of the physical book and a type of deep reading that consumes hours, not minutes. I read three books in three days while lounging in the sun, two borrowed from the hotel bookshelf (The Maidens by Alex Michaelides, Alone With You In the Ether by Olivie Blake and Stranger Than Fan Fiction by Piper Sheldon). Even as a kindle lover (my reading habit would otherwise be extremely expensive), I loathe to bring my kindle out on to the beach or pool deck aside from the risk of sand/water damage — it feels just thoroughly wrong to read that way in those settings. So I submit to you all a thorough gratitude for physical books.

For some more quick recommendations…this heartfelt essay on Medical Aid in Dying made me cry, so did this essay urging a rewatch of Spielberg’s Munich. This analysis of Hallmark holiday movies amused me…faithfully, waiting for a decent Hannukah romcom.

Wishing you all deep renewal in this new year!

With love & curiosity,

Odessa