Sometimes in the Evening

Middle-aged wisdom and joy

Andie

Sep 11, 2022

Dear Reader

This newsletter is all about how happy I am to be middle-aged. It’s the best.

the past splits in two

the longer you live the more these lies

come alive

so the past splits in two:

one stays in the past and dies

one past shape shifts walks with you

- Camille Rankine1, Incorrect Merciful Impulses

My Newsletters

The other day I read a lovely recommendation for my newsletters which described me as worth reading, but not writing very often. I was kind of charmed by that. I try to stick to monthly publication for these newsletters, figuring more than that could be overwhelming to your inbox. But this month I am putting out two newsletters because I have too much to fit into one newsletter - so, shout out to that particular reader.

The Culture Changes

You can dismiss young people as “too woke” if you want. But culture changes, and you can’t stop it.
Turning this around, it is often hard for younger people to understand how getting older is at times deeply disorienting. It often feels as though the earth is shifting constantly under your feet; things that were once perfectly acceptable can turn harmful. Getting older, I’m learning, can often seem as though much of the world is trying to push you out. You can feel the ground you once knew slipping away.

Brian Broome2 in The Washington Post.

How to Make the Best Vegetarian Spaghetti Bolognese3

From my Instagram

(See how relaxed this meal is4? I didn’t even have spaghetti in the pantry this time and I forgot to keep some basil leaves for the end, so I used a bit of parsley. And it is served in a chipped bowl. It’s all going to be ok).

I am sharing this recipe because the vegetarian in your life wants hearty comfort food, too, and should not miss out just because this dish is normally made with beef. And honestly, this is so delicious that the meat eaters will also like it. Don’t be fooled by the ingredients list, this is an easy meal to make, but the combination of flavours is what really lifts it, so try not to skip them.

Ingredients

olive oil

onion (or two)

couple of carrots

couple of celery sticks (such a taste-enhancer)

handful or two of not-overpowering vegetables and preferably green5 ones (eg. squash, zucchini, English spinach)

couple of big garlic cloves

couple of sprigs of rosemary (another amazing taste-enhancer)

tin of lentils (425g)

bottle of passata (700g) (if you make your own passata then even better, but I don’t care if you don’t)

handful of basil leaves

dried oregano (1 tsp)

couple of bay leaves

couple of tablespoons of tomato paste

1 red chilli (de-seeded if you’re scared)

red wine (125 ml or as I do it - a nice big splash)

Worcestershire or soy sauce (nice splash of it)

handful of cherry tomatoes for aesthetics (if you want, and if you happen to have them on hand, but not essential)

spaghetti

grated parmesan + remainder of basil leaves torn for serving

Method

Step 1

Heat olive oil in a big pot or pan and add chopped onions to it. Put garlic, rosemary, the handful of chosen vegetables plus the carrots and celery, most of the basil and the chilli in a food processor and blend. (Don’t make it mush, but don’t make it just roughly chopped either).

Step 2

Reduce the heat. Add the vegetable and herb mix you made to the fried onions and stir through, so it gently fries and softens.

Step 3

Add the passata, drained lentils and the red wine and increase the heat. Stirring for 3-4 mins. Put in the bay leaves. Simmer for a bit of time. Pop in a handful of halved cherry tomatoes if you want - for the aesthetic.

Step 4

Splash in the sauce (Worcestershire or soy or a little of both) and once stirred through add the couple of tablespoons of tomato paste (it brings up the red). Twist of salt and pepper or more, to taste. Turn pot down. If too dry, then add a little bit of water. Then separately, water on to boil for spaghetti. (When adding the pasta to the water make sure you put salt in with it, and do not break up the spaghetti or add olive oil). Check on your spaghetti, it must be removed and drained at the point of al dente so don’t miss that moment. This is the only bit you need to stress about, and otherwise, relax. This meal needs to be relaxed - never cooked quite the same way twice kinda thing.

Step 5

Serve the Spaghetti Bolognese to your loving guests with the grated parmesan and basil leaves to tear over it. Now, it is their turn to repay you with good conversation.

Parentification

As a consequence of always tending to others, very little space is left for the child to know or express her own needs. The only legitimate needs seem to be those of others. Expressing her own needs is met with frustration, anger or other parental emotions that link her needs with fear and shame. This leads to the development of what the paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in 1960 called a ‘false self’.

This article by Nivida Chandra6 is for those who were a ‘parental child’ growing up, and it is about how to recognise it, heal it and not repeat it with one’s own children. It comes with a very interesting Indian cultural lens over it, too.

The Antidote to Shame

..the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. The less we talk about shame, the more power it has over our lives. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees.

- Dr Brené Brown7

Do Less of This

Work less. Or rather, work over less days. Professor John Quiggin8 (one of Australia’s best economists - hi John!) is part of the international research team, headed by Professor Juliet Schor, that is working with the 4 Day Week Global for this campaign. I was never happier about balance in my life than when I was working part-time. I love this!

Do More of This

I love this. Working with mules in the wilderness. This is such a nice read from Jessica Reed9.

“Romantic comedy is the only genre committed to letting relatively ordinary people figure out how to deal meaningfully with another human being”

This article in the New York Times by Wesley Morris10 is really interesting. (And I will suggest, again, that you watch Moonstruck, and this is why).

I was most struck by the two cultural planets these people seemed to be coming from: not Venus and Mars, but romantic comedy and porn. There has been lots of research into what an endless supply of pornography, starting at a young age, has done to men — warping our judgement, patience, sympathy and imagination. But I’ve yet to find any comparable exploration of what we might get out of romantic comedy — an entire genre about people coming together, as opposed to one that prefers your coming alone. The stereotype was always that these movies were for women, but some of their value surely came from the fact that men and women both watched them, often together, everybody absorbing images of what it looked like to engage with each other.

We are All Better Off if More of Us are Happy

This is a fascinating interview with psychologist and neuroscientist, Dr Carl Hart11 on why drugs need to be legalised (25:16), and that you can’t just “throw people in the wild” either (29:00) because, as he argues, we also need education, standards of product, and the building of skills in individual responsibility. But the point is that addiction is about the psychosocial environment, and not particularly about the substance. (Lex Fridman comes across as being as dumb as a post, though he isn’t, but regardless, it gives Hart the chance to really establish his arguments).

Apart from daydreaming about what a world would look like where public policy was designed for living and not punishing, the bit I found most useful in this interview is a particularly profound moment towards the end of the interview (1:07:00), where Hart talks about going to Europe to decompress from the US. It was meaningful for me because it describes a similar feeling I have about work, though I am not also contending with racism the way Hart is. It reinforces for me how to live with this. (My use of bold below):

I really love my life now… The thing about coming back here is you have to be ready to fight and I don’t want to fight anymore. I just want to be able to help a society and people. So, I will have to keep a place in Europe to go and decompress and then come back to be able to tolerate the situation. Life for me has a lot of meaning, I am enjoying life, this is the greatest, best part of my life ever, right now at this moment.

Here’s a second interview with Hart by Prof Janna Levin where he covers some of the same ground, but also addresses the question about what if the world isn’t responsible enough.

Holding Multiple Truths

This New York Times piece about Caroline Mazel-Carlton12 stopped me in my tracks. Given the outcome of biological treatments for serious mental illness is not always impressive, what if treatment options included practicing radical acceptance?

She began leading Hearing Voices Network support groups — which are somewhat akin to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings — for people with auditory and visual hallucinations. The groups, with no clinicians in the room, gathered on secondhand chairs and sofas in humble spaces rented by the alliance. What psychiatry terms psychosis, the Hearing Voices Movement refers to as nonconsensus realities, and a bedrock faith of the movement is that filling a room with talk of phantasms will not infuse them with more vivid life or grant them more unshakable power. Instead, partly by lifting the pressure of secrecy and diminishing the feeling of deviance, the talk will loosen the hold of hallucinations and, crucially, the grip of isolation.
Mazel-Carlton also worked as a sometime staff member at Afiya house, a temporary residence run by the alliance as an alternative to locked wards. The people who stay at Afiya are in dire need; many are not only in mental disarray but also homeless. Many are suicidal. There are no clinicians on staff, no security personnel, only people who know such desperation firsthand. In the living room, a homemade banner declares: “Holding multiple truths. Knowing that everyone has their own accurate view of the way things are.”

Post Script

I just happened upon this quote, which is perfect for describing the mood of my last newsletter.

My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse: I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood. Only that seems large enough to hold all my rage and grief. I want the world overturned like a bowl of eggs, smashed at my feet.

- Madeline Miller13, The Song of Achilles

Reading My Links

I am a believer in subscriptions to publications and I pay for several. Having said that, I don’t want you to miss out on a conversation that you think might be important to you. So, if you are ever having trouble reading an article I refer to because it is behind a paywall, you can try this. In the URL type ‘archive.is/’ before the ‘www’ and then hit enter.

Share blue milk

Friend I

This is the best of social media - where strangers share lovely, intimate things with you as though you were close friends. Brian Broome’s Facebook is a delight. He is the author of the much-celebrated memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods.

Friend II

Richard E. Grant14 reminding you that, this too, shall pass. این نیز بگذرد

One of those days.

Frisky as a whippet.

Really, really grateful.

Friend III

Isaac Mizrahi15 sending you little irreverent, happy messages.

Cackle.

How to Make Iced Coffee.

Dog.

Recommend

I bought a necklace from Jane Pollard Jewellery when I had an event to attend and I wanted a statement piece. She uses recycled products and her jewelry is amazing, and she’s lovely.

blue milk

Sometimes in the Evening

Middle-aged wisdom and joy

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