Voice Note #22 - Morning Ritual
Make a mess. It's okay.
Here’s a funny little thing I do every morning, when I make my daily matcha latte. The matcha has been whisked into a smooth paste. A little more hot water is added so the paste yields to a thick fluid, not a clump in sight, no leaves wasted. My alt-milk of choice, either hot in the pan or cold in the carton, has been poured and mixed with the matcha in the bowl. Zigzag motions from the wrist with a steel whisk because I don’t have a bamboo one. I hold the bowl over my mug (or a glass with ice in it) and get ready to pour.
I tell myself, “It’s okay to fuck up.” Silently, every morning, holding my bowl full of matcha over an empty cup. “It’s okay to fuck up,” sometimes even aloud. I brace myself and genuinely make peace with making a mess out of things. Back when I didn’t — when I had just started to learn about how to make matcha lattes, when I felt nervous about missing my mark and wasting good pistachio milk — the matcha would somehow go splattering all over the place, spilling over my hands, splashing out of the kitchen sink and onto the counter.
I drink out of a smaller-than-usual mug because it’s my only mug and because it has a lot of sentimental value to me. I painted it when I was six or seven and it’s probably the most beautiful thing I own. It’s one of my favorite things about the morning. The day can be off to a bad start, I can be coming off of an inadequate night’s rest, or worse, intercepted in the placid moments between climbing out of bed and getting to my morning pages, moments I pray to remain unperturbed but am ruffled, ripples disturbing the clear lake of my attention—but drinking out of my childhood mug will always bring me solace.
Telling yourself “it’s okay to fuck up” is a comfort. It lets you feel free to make mistakes. And feeling free to make mistakes helps you approach your target with ease—because you want to make it, not because you’re afraid you won’t. (I guess I’m not really talking about matcha anymore, but you knew that.)
One morning last week I did the “It’s okay to fuck up” and the matcha splattered a little bit out of the bowl, streaming down the sides of my mug, before the liquid regained momentum and began to pour steadily again. I laughed a little. It was only the second time it had happened since I started this little exercise. And I could have chalked it up to a bunch of things: feeling like a ball of nerves in general, anxious about a deadline I couldn’t meet, agitated by a sudden buzz from my phone, yelping from inside the closet where I’d stashed it away so as not to look at it… But really, I just made a mess I didn’t want to make, that’s all there was to it. Most of it had poured back into the pan under which I had been holding my cup. And it was okay, it was really okay. I set the bowl aside and poured all the spilled matcha from the pan to my mug. And then I cleaned up.
Yesterday morning I thought I’d do it again. I woke up with a lot on my mind, feeling agitated and upset and tired because somehow I’ve been tired for weeks and I thought, you know what, fuck it, if I spill this all over myself, it’s fine. I was almost preemptively angry with myself for the trouble I already anticipated I’d make and I poured fast, daring things to spill over. And you know what, nothing happened. The matcha flowed straight into the mug, steaming as it cascaded, not a single drop lost. My hands were steady. It was fine. It is absolutely lovely when I surprise myself. It happens all the time.
Small Good Things
This lovely tweet my friend Adela sent me after reading my last newsletter, a Georgia O’Keefe quote:
“Why am I always the last to leave a party” from Elena Ferrante’s column in The Guardian:
“Maybe the truth is that saying goodbye seems to me a rejection of human warmth — even the minimal warmth that makes us feel solitude less. I mean real solitude, which rises up by surprise and lasts a few seconds, the solitude that derives not from lack of company or affection, but from our innate separateness from one another.”
Animal by Lisa Taddeo, which knocked the air out of my lungs. I posted a little book review for it over on Instagram! (I miss doing book reviews and might continue doing them but can’t for the life of me think of a proper hashtag. Ideas? Suggestions? Do I even need one?)
I don’t know why, but I really loved this:
… and ended up going down a whole rabbit hole on the internet about Frank O’Hara and James Schuyler. Some stuff to check out if you’d like to dive down the rabbit hole with me.
A delightful website full of adorable illustrations called The Great Showdown, which I found completely by accident (I just typed “gre—” into my browser and it led me here! I was so enamored by the drawings that I ended up getting completely distracted admiring them, and now I can’t even remember what it was I was initially looking for.) Coming across this site reminded me of the hours I used to spend, in my teen years, admiring illustrations on Tumblr and DeviantArt (remember the days!!!)
My friend Marla’s new Substack, Sunday Morning, a weekly missive of poetic content. I wish I had the words to describe the way Marla writes but I’m afraid I won’t be able to do her justice. Just read it! She’s brilliant. An excerpt from her last one:
“Always there is a seam from yesterday I’d failed to sew shut promptly or meticulously enough. Everything can be undone in a single, casual tug. By now I know there’s no other solution than to pick up the needle and thread and close the gap. Try not to worry that something will end up unraveling anyway.”
“For when you reach rock bottom” by Matt Haig:
Another lovely tweet, also from Adela, framing heartbreak in a way that is comforting and sweet:
Baby Queen’s debut album, “The Yearbook.” Honorable mention to my favorite track on the record, “Raw Thoughts”
“Failing and Flying,” a wonderful poem by Jack Gilbert (it’s famous, perhaps you already know it)
“I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph”
That’s all for now, folks! May the rest of your morning (or evening) be joyful and gentle and full of surprises. To letting ourselves mess up this week, and all the weeks to come.
Love you, Niki! I appreciate this so much 💓
I love your posts ❤️🔥