Voice Note #23 - Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

Field notes on feelings

Hi friend. Welcome to Voice Notes, a free weekly newsletter. Today I have a cover of a cover for you (Joan Baez’s take of my favorite Bob Dylan song). I couldn’t get it out of my head this week. I opened my window to let you hear the sounds of my city outside.

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Nothing too profound today, I’m sipping chamomile tea at my desk, trying to work through bleary eyes. The dreaded monthly dip in hormones is coming around the corner and I’m feeling exhausted in the middle of the morning. Isn’t it crazy how much our body chemistry dictates the way we feel? It’s all down to the cocktails in your cells sometimes. Back when I worked an office job, a short walk in the sunshine served as an instant battery charge on a bad day, an energizing boost of serotonin and endorphins and who knows what else to conquer the mid-afternoon slump.

Some big feelings, a cocktail of chemicals:

• The small luxury of being in a cafe, having an extravagant drink at a table for one. Watching people be people all around you, being a person around them. Maybe you miss this feeling. I guess it depends on where you are in the world. Maybe it’s a rarity! Maybe you go for it, just this once. For an afternoon it will make you feel like a human being again. To be typing away at some outdoor table, in charming surroundings unfamiliar to you. You will quietly come alive, amongst strangers who are also making this place home for however long they stay.

• Storming out of the lobby, incensed, on fire, baffled, in a rage. Listening to dark electropop like if you could turn the volume up loud enough you might be able to wring this indignation out of your chest. Every blaring synth grating up against your anger like a punch to the gut in exactly the way you need. Turning the corner in fumes, every step cathartic, crossing the street fast and daring motorcycles to run the red. Hit me, why don’t you. There is something satisfying about letting yourself be this upset. 

• Working out with gold hoop earrings on, texting your friend, I feel like a divorced ex-trophy wife trying to trap a new man at her aerobics class. You’re being ridiculous and it’s a joy to be silly with someone who gets it.

• Skräckblandad förtjusning: “The thrill of experiencing fear and delight at the same time, like when your stomach drops on a rollercoaster.”¹ You are simultaneously floating and falling and there is nothing you can do about it. So you’re bouncing down the street, feeling wonderful, every cell in your body shimmering in vibrant color. Heart cracked open to enchantment. You’re wide awake and thrilled to be here. When heartbreak or disillusionment comes later, it will still have left this souvenir. The catalyst is inconsequential. Everything is beautiful and you’re madly in love with the whole entire world. The sun is setting and the streets are quiet and you want to hold this magic in your chest forever. You’re soaking up all the glitter until it’s gone. You’ll be the last to leave the party and you know it but the music’s still on, there are guests at the door, it’s the height of the evening and you know you still have time. You want to milk it for all it has to offer, and you will. Later, you won’t regret all the trouble you made. When it comes to an end, with a crash or in a haze. You’ll be glad you indulged. You couldn’t have helped yourself. Fear and delight—you are jumping in feet first. Everything is golden and nothing hurts.

• How a cup of tea can feel like such a treat when all it really is is boiled water and some dried leaves and a few extra minutes of your time. When your mug is empty but still hot, hold it in your hands until the warmth fades and the cup is just a cup. While it’s warm, it somehow seems like a living thing. To release it feels like a betrayal. Remember the habits of childhood, how we regarded inanimate objects as though they were alive, gingerly placing toys back on their shelves because jostling them into a box would hurt their feelings. The dolls you made out of handkerchiefs and cotton balls and rubber bands were the most precious of them all. How you once revered everything as sacred, how reflexive that instinct comes to an innocent mind.

• The kinds of afternoons where it all feels too much, where your heart hammers like a turbine in your throat because there’s all this ahead, there are decisions you are not ready to make, there are matters you must part with now, there are things that need to be said that you don’t know how to say. So many words and you can’t find a single one. So many steps to take and you don’t know where to start.

• Grateful tired grateful tired grateful tired grateful tired grateful grateful grateful grateful

• People rooting for you. A glance back over your shoulder to a crowd of everyone you love cheering your name. How big it feels, like you don’t deserve it, but you do. You do. Breaking bad news sucks. But it’s a generous mercy to know you have people to break bad news to, people who care about the outcome. Your friends are going to ask, because they’re wonderful.

• Stifled, smothered, paralyzed on standby. All the time, like a low-humming buzz. You hope this will push you to finally be brave.

• Chopping an onion, three garlic cloves, two tomatoes, a third-cup of olives, half a bottle of sardines. There’s a woman on your phone talking about a murder that happened a hundred and twenty years ago. You listen, amused, glad for the chatter and the good story. The stove lights cast a glow on your raw ingredients. It’s a cool night and the air is still. She makes funny voices and slathers on mascara in front of the jar of capers. The pasta will clump and the onions will burn but the dish will turn out greater than the sum of its parts, and thank goodness for that.

1. My friend Nikita’s words — she taught me this Swedish phrase and now it’s my favorite expression, in any language.