A few months ago, I asked my childhood friend Justin Claravall, who had grown up to become, of all things, a Jesuit priest, if he was willing to sell his painting of a religious icon I saw he had posted to his Instagram.

It depicts the Annunciation: Angel Gabriel telling the Virgin Mary: “Hail full of grace, the Lord is with you.” I was astounded by the technique, the rich blues and reds against the gold leaf, and the masterful writing bordering the work, written in the style of Armenian calligraphy.

It was his final project for his MFA program at the School of Traditional Arts in London, where he had taken a sabbatical from his work as a priest to attend.

I asked him how much it would cost. $650, he said.

I was taken aback. I had never spent so much money on art before. But it made sense. The workshop he took to make the piece cost as much, he said, so essentially he was breaking even.

Was there anything similar he had in a lower price range, I asked?

No, he said — and anyway, this was the piece he wanted me to have. Maybe I could pay for it in installments, he said.

And what are the terms of that, I asked?

His answer moved me to no end:

$100 a year for 6 years,

$75 for 8, or

$50 for 12.

That we’d be friends for that long, that he trusted me to keep my end of the deal, that he was steadfast in the value of his art, that he was willing to delay payment just so I could be the owner of this work, these were the terms of his agreement.

After that, there was no question. I’d buy the piece on the condition that I’d pay him $50 a month for the next 13 months.

The painting arrives on Monday. Beyond the artistry of the painting, I think about why I wanted the piece in the first place.

For one, it is a crystallization of how far he has come in his artistic career. When I reconnected with him as an adult about a decade ago, he was painting religious murals and writing calligraphy as a hobby. Now, after years of practice, he is a skilled artisan.

If I’m being honest, what caught my eye first was not the piece itself. It was the expression on Justin’s face as he is holding up the painting in his Instagram photo. He is gazing directly into the camera, the piece squarely in front of him. In the corner of his mouth, the thing in which I am trying to keep: the unmistakable look of someone acknowledging their own accomplishment.

Watch a video of Justin explaining his painting process here.

• Objects of my desire.

• One of my favorite cartoonists, Jordan Bolton, has a new book: Scenes from Imagined Films. It has one of my favorite comics in it, To The Substitute Art Teacher, about finding beauty in a humble shopping tote.

• I just finished Demon Copperhead, one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It opened my eyes to America’s opioid crisis and failed foster care system. I love it even more knowing that author Barbara Kingsolver used her royalties to establish a house for women recovering from drug addiction in Lee County, Va., where the book was set.

• I learned a lot about life just by watching this candle burn.

• A spellbinding interior in old Cairo. Don’t you just want to have a cup of mint tea on that balcony?

• This poem by the Palestinian performance artist Fargo Nissim Tbakhi left me with tears streaming down my face before I could even comprehend it. It’s such an intimate look between an aging parent and an adult child, the adult child acknowledging that they both fear death, that it’s inevitable, but they will, in death, meet again.

• Inside The Met’s copyist program. (via Kottke)

• 18 life lessons from one of my favorite blogs (yes, blogs). This insight got me: “Everything is eventually recompensed, every effort of the heart eventually requited, though not always in the form you imagined or hoped for.”

• A brilliant tutorial on how to draw clouds. Let me know if you try it.

And some little things from me:

• I drew a comic about going to Paris and my family only wanting to eat Chinese food.

• I wrote some short fiction, from the perspective of an Egyptian porter.

• Well, this poem by Nikki Giovanni just sums up summer exactly: I always like summer / best / you can … go barefooted / and be warm / all the time / not only when you go to bed / and sleep.

• How people who are visually impaired go sightseeing. Fascinating piece in The New York Times. (Gift article)

• “Why must our mothers be ninety-nine and long in the grave before we can come running home with the prize that will make up for all the trouble we have been to them?” This clip made me tear up.

• These have to be, hands down, the most luscious food illustrations I’ve ever seen (and as the former editor of a food zine called The Runcible Spoon, I’ve seen a lot.)

• On my reading list: “The Order of Time” by Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli. From the book description: Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to “flow”? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us?

• Currently reading Austin Kleon’s latest book, “Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again.” I loved the tip on copying. Sometimes it feels silly to do that as an adult, but I try when I can. (I recently made a copy of Matisse’s Goldfish out of felt, sequins and fabric glue, and learned so much about his color, form and technique.)

• In between watching Love Island USA and Widow’s Bay, my husband and I are watching all the works of Jacques Demy. I’d never seen any of his other work besides The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I thought was so visually transcendent, so I’m excited to dig in.

• This comic from Dionne Co was my favorite tribute to Marjane Satrapi.

And a few things from me:

• I’m teaching a virtual class in July on how to write and draw your own graphic memoir. Anyone is welcome to sign up. I’d love to see you there.

• I have a new memoir comic up at the Arab diaspora literary journal The Markaz Review. You can read it here. It’s about what it felt like to take my son to Egypt for the first time.

• I made a zine about what it feels like to cosplay being Muslim.

• I did a TEDxTalk about how you may be able to find a better version of your life story if you interview your family. Here are a list of questions to ask.

• It’s my grandfather’s death anniversary month and I’ve been thinking a lot about him. This is the lovely traditional Philippine song we played at his funeral. (You can also listen to it on Spotify)

• May you never, ever need to find the other person who lives inside you.

• What a pleasure it’d be to have this French contraption on your table.

• An object of my desire, by the Liechtenstein-born artist Vera Kamea.

• Sound ON. I am not sure what this Rwandan ritual is about, but it is incredibly healing and soothing to watch.

• “death is a picture we take in the future of the past”

• If you are looking for a short book that will challenge your perception of time, location and memory, I highly recommend Patrick Modiano’s 2007 book, In the Cafe of Lost Youth. Here’s a line I loved: “In this life that sometimes seems to be a vast, ill-defined landscape without signposts, amid all of the vanishing lines and the lost horizons, we hope to find reference points, to draw up some sort of land registry so as to shake the impression that we are navigating by chance. So we forge ties, we try to find stability in the chance encounters.” I also drew a little zine about it.

• A “truth window” is not what you expect

• “In the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?” from Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2017 Nobel Prize lecture

• I love children’s books that are actually for adults. Donald Hall’s 1979 book Ox-Cart Man, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, was originally a poem published in The New Yorker. It details our connection to nature, the fruits of our toil and the cycle of life. My friend Lauren sent it to me for my child and I fell in love.

And some little things from me

• If you live in Nashville, come see my TedX talk on Thursday, August 21 at 1PM. I’m talking about how I accidentally changed my personal narrative … for the better. A 30% discount on tickets for you here.

• Try writing a list of all the people who saw your talent before you did.

• How to teach your child to look at art.

• The loveliest dancers in the room.

• A different take on the Polly Pocket.

• A call to rethink how you might feel about fake flowers. “They express something deep and common and sad and sweet: our inability to fully face losing what we love.” (Gift article)

• “What does it mean to be so frightened by beauty’s power that it must then be plundered and removed, caged?” Photos from Cig Harvey’s book, “Emerald Drifters.”

• “What I learn from the hall of experience is that you are my vine” Lovely poetry from Prageeta Sharma (Gift article)

• Digital models of Frank Lloyd Wright’s unrealized buildings.

• Always pay attention to the chairs.

• Stayed up an hour past my bedtime watching these videos.

• Ambient music made from moths. “Moth data collected by scientists at UKCEH has been sonified into immersive soundscapes, with each moth assigned a different sound.” You can listen to the full version at hour 1:20 here.

• Why Japan counts 72 microseasons. (Gift article) “Here the seasons are not a metaphor. They are something to be lived through, and with.”

And some little things from me

• I’m teaching a virtual class on July 9 on how to write and draw a graphic memoir. Don’t miss it — I don’t do these often!

• If you live in Nashville, come see my TedX talk. I’m talking about how I accidentally changed my personal narrative … for the better.

• A little zine on a recent kindness that floored me.

• How Galileo depicted his little stars and constellations.

• If you would like to get in touch with your deeper self and are not sure where to enter, here are the doors.

• Japanese photographer Rika Noguchi uncovered decades of her father’s old photographs of her, and here’s what she found.

• Writer Timothy White always wondered what his father thought of him being gay, and finally found the answer after reading his old diaries. (Gift article)

• An Irish poet looks at her dying mother through the lens of an old photograph.

• “From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity.” Just read the first paragraph, it conjures such a delightful picture. Then ask yourself: What is your favorite time of day, in which season, doing what ritual? (Gift article) Here is a painting to go with that passage.

• Wow, this has to be one of my favorite films of the year. It’s about friendship, aging, memory, ambition and lost dreams.

• A newly discovered Robert Frost poem, published for the first time in The New Yorker’s 100-year anniversary issue, is short enough to memorize. Critic Jay Parini wonders about that last line. See the handwritten version of it here.

• “How strange! How ironic! Just because a man has been created on the Equator some mad people regard him as a slave, others as a god. Where lies the mean? Where the middle way?” From Season of Migration to the North, a thought-provoking book on empire and identity.

• “Unassimilability is a proposition to refuse to belong here altogether, together. [It’s] less about proving ourselves to Whiteness and more about holding it accountable while divesting from it altogether.” Thank you Bianca Mabute-Louie for giving me a new, radical way to think about my identity.

• Less common colors in Arabic. I love this one: ashhab. It means gray, dun, ashen, and used to describe the color of bears. The word sounds like the color.

• Yukiko Noritake’s acrylic paintings of Paris are a dream.

And some little things from me:

• I’m teaching two-hour virtual classes in March! Sign up now.

  • How to use journalism skills to write memoir, 7-9PM CT, March 4, $60

  • How to write and draw a graphic memoir, 7-9PM CT, March 25, $60

• Journal questions if you feel uncertain about your future.

• How to turn your emotions into action.

• I did the Proust Questionnaire with my 97-year-old grandmother.

• What happens when something is loved too much.

• “Is there any point in being alive without helping one another?” My friend gifted me this book and I think it makes a lovely Christmas gift: Claire Keegan’s short novel about love, justice and complicity, Small Things Like These.

• I just saw the Arab American comedian Nasser Al Rayess perform in Nashville and didn’t realize how healing it would be to laugh in a room with 150 Arabs.

• Another Christmas gift book rec: Patrick Bringley’s nonfiction gem, All the Beauty in the World. We did an event together in Dubai and I loved his book. A longtime guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bringley reflects on art and grief.

• Dissecting the celestial orb of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. Read it and let me know: Why did you think Da Vinci drew the orb this way? And what do you think he wanted its structure to tell us about the universe?

• Does anybody really know you? Loved this essay in The New Yorker by Joshua Rothman. “Every once in a while, someone snaps a photo of me, and I’m often surprised by how I look.”

• What writing is and does. “I am trying to make a picture of the whole world.”

• Teresa Wong’s stirring graphic memoir, All Our Ordinary Stories, captures the second-generation frustration of trying to get our parents to open up about their painful pasts. A must-read for all children of immigrants.

• It’s almost the holiday season, and almost time for me to play my favorite Christmas album: Beegie Adair’s Jazz Piano Christmas. It’s an upbeat and refreshing twist to the usual.

• “Next time is next time. Now is now.” Can’t wait to watch Perfect Days, a film by Wim Wenders about a Japanese toilet cleaner (you heard that right) in constant search of the poetry of life.

And some little things from me:

• I’m teaching a virtual class on how to write and draw a graphic memoir … and how to use journalism skills to write memoir … in March 2025. Preorder your tickets now for a discount!

• Questions to help you reassess your childhood relationships

• In a single day, my mind looked ahead 100 years

• How mothers feed the universe

• Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying

• Listen to my podcast episode on how to find lost objects

• On the bounty of slow days.

• A gentle reminder this summer as you encounter mosquitos, wasps, flies, rabbits and other fauna.

• I didn’t know Saudi Arabia was so breathtaking.

• Eye-opening: “If a person needs to portray a certain personality or suppress their authentic self in order to survive, then society actually has implicit rules on who gets to succeed.” From the Filipino decolonization writer Carl Lorenz Cervantes.

• “I don’t expect the light to save me, but I do believe in the ritual.”

• I could sit and watch this all day. Fanions et carillons, 2023, by the French art duo Pinaffo & Pluvinage

• “It is not until much later, that children understand / their stories and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories / of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, /beneath the water of their lives.”

• This has to be my favorite TV show I’ve watched in a really, really long time. I loved the acting, the pace, the storyline. I loved that it was created by Steven Zaillian, director of Searching for Bobby Fischer. And most of all, I loved the setting: coastal Italy. It’s the perfect show for slow summer days.

• Paintings of artist studios by Damien Elwes. I love Matisse’s the best.

• I’ve been obsessed with following this group of Brits as they travel from London to Cape Town by car, and this Egyptian guy who is traveling from Egypt to Japan without taking an airplane. They’re showing me a view of the world that I’ve never seen before.

And some little things from me

• I got to interview one of my favorite Egyptian photographers about light, history and nostalgia for NPR.

• I drew a cake-shaped zine that you can print out at home for a story on how to have a happy birthday.

• I drew a comic on how to make peace with your guilty feelings.

• How I learned to love my hair again.

• This is exactly the type of painting that someone named “Carducius Plantagenet Ream” would paint.

• What do dandelions do in the nighttime? They dance among their little seedlings.

• I wish all clothing tags looked like this.

• Small acts of consideration? Asking the question, “Do you want to join us?”

• A magical thing you can do with a faux fireplace.

• This may be one of the most moving comics I’ve read in a very, very long time. “And I realized that this is what you must have been trying to teach us, that image of beauty are all around us if you pay close attention.”

• “If you have the privilege to go through belongings from your past, it means someone cared enough to hold on to all of it for you.”

• Of course you want to watch Butterfly in the Sky, the documentary about LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow. Watch the trailer here.

• The weird and wonderful sensations of viewing a total solar eclipse. "It's like you've left the solar system and are looking back from some other world."

• Wow, this took me back.
  

And some little things from me

• Looking but not seeing

• It was bittersweet to see the duplex once again after so many years, but it was also an affirmation.

• My first zine

• On generosity

• On the people in our lives we used to love and know

• An interview on death and dying with my 96-year-old Nanay: “What do you think will happen when you die? My spirit will roam.”

The war on Palestine is very much still on my mind, but I would also like to take a moment to find things that inspire me and give me energy and motivation to keep paying attention and taking action. I hope you do that for yourself too.

• Nature is a privilege

• The Japanese art of yutori, or living with spaciousness. “It’s leaving early enough to get somewhere so that you know you’re going to arrive early, so when you get there, you have time to look around.”

• “When you’re in a very quiet place, when you’re remembering, when you’re savoring an image, when you’re allowing your mind calmly to leap from one thought to another, that’s a poem. That’s what a poem does.”

• “There are people I love, but if they feel that they need to go, I ain't going to be the one to stop them. I would only wish them wings, as it were.” — Sylvia Plath’s daughter Frieda Hughes in Vanity Fair.

• Absolutely fucking mesmerized by the art of Pete Mauney, I can’t believe I’ve never seen his work before.

• Ambient music where the pedal steel guitar is the star.

• This was delightful and I’m adding it to my Christmas movie cannon.

• “We didn’t ask for a fish. He … did it.” This 20-minute, thought-provoking documentary is full of delightful surprises (including the subject’s love for Ethan Hawke).

• The original version of “Carol of the Bells” is a Ukrainian folk song.

• “But I have to tell you, there’s a guy out there … combatting noise with birdsong.”

And some little things from me

• How to protect your mental health from disturbing images of the war

• An essay I wrote on creativity and motherhood

• A cartoon I illustrated for The New Yorker

• At long last

Note: It seems strange to share a newsletter like this in such a horrific time of suffering. My hope with this edition is to offer an insight to the war through art, poetry and beauty, which have an important role to play amid tragedy.

• “I wish children didn’t die / I wish they would be temporarily / elevated to the skies until the war ends.” A picture and a poem that says almost everything I want to say about the attacks on Gaza.

• “Bring your heart next to mine! Let me feel you, darling.” — what a Palestinian mother said to the body of her daughter, who was killed in an Israeli air strike. The idea of this woman putting her chest against her child in order to be as close to her as possible makes me cry every time.

• “Keep my stories alive so that you keep me alive. Remember that I wanted a normal life, a small home full of my children’s laughter and the smell of my wife’s cooking. Remember that the world that pretended to be the savior of humanity participated in killing such a small dream.” — journalist Tareq S. Hajjaj in a piece titled "This could be my last report from Gaza”

• A Palestinian artist’s 1994 work, a life-size baby crib made of glass, “threatens any child in its care with shattering collapse and inevitable injury.”

• Majd Arandas, a Palestinian photographer who was killed by an Israeli air strike, shares his last request: “I wish for the world to see the beauty of Gaza and Palestine.” Grant his wish and view Gaza through his eyes here.

• Two Palestinian musicians sing about the beauty of their homeland.

• “And now I would do anything / for a problem I could solve.” The final line of this heartbreaking poem by the Palestinian American poet Naomi Shihab Nye.

• And finally, a reminder: "Just because people are creating horror, you don't have to stop creating beauty. Both are human … It's part of human nature to dream." — Katell le Bourhis, associate curator for special projects in the Costume Institute at the Met, in a 1991 interview with The New York Times.

And a little thing from me

• I’ve been thinking a lot about parental love during this war — how much children mean to parents, how much parents mean to children and how love is transcendent. Here is a drawing of my mother “flying” to kiss me goodnight, as she has done every night since I moved out of the house 20 years ago.

• Obsessed with the uber-minimalist comics of Jordan Bolton: “The more I look for beauty/ the more I find it/ The more I share it/ The more it grows.”

• One of my favorite contemporary painters: Georgia Hourdas. Her work feels optimistic and meditative.

• Two pretty and simple craft ideas to try this fall: faux Spanish tile and a 3-D fold-up card.

• As someone who actively tries to make art in tight time constraints of five or ten minutes, I resent this slogan. But I also know that it’s absolutely true.

• This 10-minute film about the interior lives of Argentinian slaughterhouse workers is jaw-dropping.

• “Once again, I am trying to fall into the light.” The swing of emotions in this poem accurately describes for me what it’s like to be a parent: trying to hold on to joy while fearing the passing of time.

• "Friendship is a form of purposive idleness. The relationship is based on equality, not on power." Beautiful essay by Hanif Kureishi, via Kottke

• “As soon as somebody came into proximity of a tree and were just present and mindful, paying attention and appreciating the tree, their relaxation response in the body was increased.” A lovely podcast episode on forest bathing.

• This science fiction novel is my favorite book that I’ve read all year. It’s a page-turner, it’s inventive and it includes some of my favorite themes: space, memory and true love.

• Almost every Egyptian can hum the first five minutes of this song. A beautiful rendition of Umm Khaltoum’s “Alf Leila w Leila” by the National Arab Orchestra. I love it when that accordion hits at 4:12.

Some little things from me

• I visited a wind telephone for the first time and the experience left me speechless.

• My book, It Won’t Always Be Like This, turned one. I am offering a special gift to anyone who buys a copy this week: I will snail mail you a signed, handmade doodle. Details here.

• Nashville, I will be at the Zine City Fest on Saturday, September 30. Come by, say hi, buy some zines and books from me.

• On October 3, I will be doing a virtual talk with the incredible Filipino American YA writer Randy Ribay about the ways we can all seek out more inclusive stories that honor the complexity of identity, culture, history and tradition. RSVP here.

• Some comic journalism I did for NPR: In the ‘90s I survived summers in Egypt with no AC. How would it feel now?

• And lastly, an ode to my mother.

• This Egyptian filmmaker captures poignant little moments around the city. I love this one of two boys blowing bubbles and this one of a little old man sipping a glass of warm milk. (via @tahaabeed)

• As a memoirist I struggle with how much of my inner life I should reveal to the public. But there are some things in life worth keeping to yourself.

• Ugh I hate how much I loved this poem — the message is so basic. But as my maternity leave comes to a close, which makes me feel very sad, it’s a simple reminder to live in the moment.

• An Australian blogger contemplates the meaning of usufruct, a Latin word that means the right to enjoy the benefits of another’s property. In this case, they wonder if it’s OK to take a neighbor’s lemons (or apples, in my case!).

• The title of this work —“Will You Be the Same When We Meet Again?” — makes the image in this illustration all the more profound.

• Of course I need this bag.

• What you lose when you do your shopping online.

• Film recommendation as we head into back-to-school season: Where Is The Friend’s House? (1987) directed by Abbas Kiarostami. Set in rural Iran in the 1980s, this pretty and slow-paced film follows a little boy as he tries to find a classmate who forgot his notebook at school. It’s a humble plot, but there are deeper messages about morality and adulthood. Stream it on the Criterion Collection.

• This A24 book is marketed to children but I really think it’s for adults. It’s a poignant picture book about a summer house in the country, and the beauty of it is all the little details of the rooms and grounds and furniture. It makes me think of all the pleasant places I spent my time as a child — my bedroom, my grandmother’s garden, the balcony of my dad’s flat in Cairo.

• I thank the heavens that these past few months for me have been very happy — perhaps this is why.

Some little things from me

• I’m speaking at a virtual event next week. I’ll be in conversation with Rawand Issa, a Lebanese graphic novelist, and we’ll be talking about our memoirs set in the Middle East. RSVP here.

• The Filipino School of New Jersey is teaching a 6-session virtual class on Filipino American history, and they’re teaching my book. Sign up for the fall classes here.

• All is full of love

• Anti-capitalist affirmations

• A lovely lesson on the beauty of mediocrity, from Kermit the Frog. Pay attention to the lyrics and the puppetry — how did they get Kermit to show such profound emotion?

• Kurt Vonnegut’s writing assignment for a high school student is a lesson on how to make real art. Let me know if you give it a try.

• This 28-minute Netflix documentary about a Chinese teenager who dreamed of studying Romanian poetry broke my heart. Find some time this weekend to watch it.

• I spent a week thinking about this oil painting, The Hierarchy of Persistence, by John A. Sargent III. The tower of clouds is both optimistic and foreboding. There is a brewing storm below but also open sky above, with little daubs of colorful paint like confetti all around. I like to think of the painting as a metaphor for persistence. Pretend you are an airplane in a hurricane — keep flying through and eventually you will see the sun.

• In this five-minute documentary, a man shares how he found his true calling. Lots of good life lessons in this one.

• I’ve been trying to create a dupe of this bag all week.

• Herman Hesse’s “prescription” for “breaking the trance of busyness and inattention” via The Marginalian: “Accustom yourself every morning to look for a moment at the sky and suddenly you will be aware of the air around you, the scent of morning freshness that is bestowed on you between sleep and labor.”

• Ugh this comic is so good.

• If this isn’t friendship I don’t know what is.

And some little things from me:

• My motto for the summer

• How to make time move slowly

• How to disappear into the sky

• Mesmerizing!

• This is what my wedding cake would look like if I got married in the Italian countryside.

• If you liked My Octopus Teacher, you should watch All That Breathes — it’s a moving tribute to human kindness and our kinship to animals.

• A wonderfully delicate alternative to the memento mori, which is usually expressed with a skull.

• Turn the volume up to 11 on your best sound system and listen to this ethereal song from the Austrian band Molly.

• “Slow down where it hurts.”

• Loved, loved, loved the emotional arc of Episode 2 of Beef, which ended on Steven Yeun playing a stunning acoustic version of Incubus’ “Drive.” It was the scene that drove me to binge the rest of the episodes.

• This exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum looks so freaking cool.

• The last two lines of this poem destroyed me.

• J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan holds a very poignant truth about adults.

• Take 14 minutes out of your life and watch this Oscar-nominated animated short. I cried twice (the kind of crying where tears involuntarily stream down your face) and the ending floored me.

• May you never run out of ink.

And some little things from me:

• How to look at art.

• How to eat rice like a Filipino.

• It recently dawned on me that “I love you” can mean different things.

• Things I know now as a 37 year old.

• I gave birth to a healthy baby boy in February. His name is Gustavo, and he is a gift.

• Have you ever heard of hoar frost? It’s a grayish-white crystalline deposit of frozen water vapor formed in clear still weather. Here’s what it looks like.

• I would love to accidentally fall into this.

• It is amazing to me how four delicate pieces of cotton thread so perfectly capture the nature of streaming water.

• A very simple illustration of the reality of daily life.

• My friend Claire gave me this candle for my birthday, and the description is as scrumptious as it smells: “Old preserved castles and manor houses with epic tables of polished silverware. Plates full of oatcakes, eggs, smoked things, fishes, potato scones, toast.”

• Recordings from the Åland Islands is my new favorite experimental album of late. According to a Pitchfork review, it “recalls Terrence Malick shots — endless golden-hour sunsets, slow-motion leaves rippling in the breeze, the whole bit.” (via Chris Scott)

• David Erlich’s video essay roundups of the best films of the year always move me — I love the pop music juxtaposed with movie scenes of people dancing, laughing, crying, kissing. To me they capture the joy and heartbreak of being alive. I loved his No. 1 pick for 2022.

• How to flex your soft power: “Destroy the belief that intimacy must be reserved for monogamous relationships” and other wise words from the poet Lora Mathis.

• Can’t recommend this show enough: “This is a story about everything. It’s about life and marriage and how young love can become old resentment. And money. And dissatisfaction. And jealousy, ambition, career. Parenting, nostalgia and lifelong friendship.”

• I don’t like sports, but I absolutely adore documentaries about athletes. This one about Tony Hawk was delightful — and the interviews with the other skaters reveal so much about his grit, determination and his propensity for kindness.

And some little things from me:

• My book is being read by British students for their A Level English Language and Literature Exam.

• I drew a kid’s guide to climate change — and it comes with a comic you can print out at home.

• My Life Kit episode on how to make a meaningful connection to a work of art.

• I turned 37 this month. My birthday wish is for you to please buy my new book, “It Won’t Always Be Like This.” If you’re a fan of this newsletter, you’re likely to be a fan of the book — it’s a meditation on family, relationships and belonging, set in the Middle East.

• I’m giving birth sometime in the next couple of weeks. Here’s some art I made for my son Gustavo’s nursery.

• “if one day I completely disappear, I am not gone, I am just in a safe space somewhere, learning something new and touching the veil.” (via are.na)

• This was one of my favorite films of the year. A child tries to be happy on vacation with her father, whom she senses is suffering.

• “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.” The power of self-censorship.

• The gorgeous Korean word I learned from watching the reality TV show Single’s Inferno.

• I’m not Catholic, but I love the Ignatian principle of agere contra. It means to “change yourself intensely in ways contrary to desolation.” It’s the idea of counteracting any feelings of emotional despair or by enriching your internal life: meditating more, giving more to your neighbor, reflecting on your emotions, etc. It’s a wonderful concept.

• We’re just a “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Carl Sagan reflects on the photograph Pale Blue Dot.

• This painting, “The evening bowl - a tub full of stars,” shows how to capture the infinite.

• The average color of the universe.

• What a typical dining room in Egypt looks like: chandelier, lace curtains and tablecloth, faux flowers in crystal vases, 18th century French paintings in gold frames. Reminds me of my grandma’s house.

• In 2023, I hope you stumble upon a thin place, where heaven and Earth meet closest.
  
  Some little things from me

• asking AI to write me beautiful things

• my favorite films and music of 2022

• an extremely grounding exercise. if you end up writing a poem like this, send it to me

  
  From a newsletter reader

• The joy of obscure collections, via Alan Stamm

• Fall mist.

• Wouldn’t these be terrific as magnets or paperweights?

• ”If you move soft enough through the wind or woods, they say the sun will make a space for you.” On moving gently.

• "We often expect progress to be linear … It is not until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed." Great chart to keep in mind when you’re trying to get better at something.

• A comic about when everything just clicks into place.

• The key to success, according to James Baldwin

• “Erik Satie never used to open the letters he received, but he always answered them.” On the essence of dialogue.

• “Animals do suffer pain, loss and joy … the animal world is not just there for our consumption and pleasure.” Analyzing August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck’s breathtaking oil painting “Anguish,” (1878), one of the most popular artworks at the National Gallery of Victoria.

• Brian Eno on the purpose of art: “Culture — art, if you like — has an important set of functions in preparing us for the future.” It gives us a sense of what the possible might feel like.

• I’m such a sucker for these Christmas ads.

• Good lord this is sexy.

Some little things from me:

• I talk to Christopher Rivas, actor and host behind the podcast Brown Enough, about the hierarchy of Asians, the infamous “What are you?” question and what it was like to grow up in a predominantly Asian community in Southern California.

• I talk to Andy J. Pizza of the Creative Pep Talk podcast about burnout, how to projects done within strict time constraints and the challenges of writing memoir.

• How to use your old diaries as inspiration for newer works.

• Signed copies of It Won’t Always Be Like This are back in stock at my neighborhood bookstore in Nashville, Novelette. Give it to someone as a gift this holiday season!

• Too pretty to eat

• Pakistan is ethereal

• What a set of questions

• An amazing trick of the eye (here’s more)

• Intense

• Crushing

• Another planet

• “Let me be very clear. Europe is not my center”

• I love seeing what other people find beautiful

• I cried so much after reading this story

• This made me laugh

• The Mediterranean Sea is more blue than you can imagine

• This brought tears to my eyes, because I still don’t pronounce my own name correctly

Some little things from me

• My book came out! Order a signed copy from a local Nashville bookstore here

• What my family thinks of the book

• How to show your friends you love them

• My dog has radicalized me

• Watch a live panel with me at the Southern Festival of Books, Saturday, October 15, 3:30PM CT

• Or listen to a keynote speech from me on Tuesday, October 18 at 12PM ET at the University of Michigan, Flint (where my book this academic year was a common read)

• I’ll be in Boston for the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo next weekend! (October 22-23!) Come say hi!

• I’d love to get a note like this.

• I hope they never know the fate of our climate.

• The moon is not in this painting, but you can tell how bright it is in the night sky by looking at its reflection in the river.

• “When [happiness] wants to leave, let it leave. You can’t force it to stay.”

• I do not regret following this account on Twitter.

• This is exactly what it feels like to stand beneath the trees on an early spring day.

• What a profound way to honor your partner’s life.

• Stop squabbling over the right solutions. They’re all important.

• “I mean, just look at this thing. I can’t imagine a more beautiful thing.”

• I’ve never seen this before. Korean stained glass … cloth.

• Do something wonderful for yourself and make this at home.

• I scored an 8.5 on this quiz. What did you get?

• The final meeting of two lovers.

And some little things from me …

• On persistence.

• I interviewed a philosopher who weighs the ethics of caring about humans living in the very far future…

• … And a heavy metal rocker from Botswana who shares why metalheads in his country wear cowboy hats.

• Another way to ask someone about their ethnicity.

• My book tour schedule! See if you’re in one of these cities and come out and say hi.

• And lastly: If you preorder my new book, I will personally send you a little zine and a handmade drawing. Please consider buying it today. It comes out (and ships out!) on September 20.

• One-word poem

• Why you can know someone for years but never really “know” them.

• I love this advice so much

• “The first step in winning a new world is to stay around long enough to fight.” The case for staying.

• I’m very inspired by this man’s attitude.

• Grief, illustrated

• Growing up is not selling out

• Watch this in a quiet room, with headphones on — the sound is incredible.

• What’s really at the center of the universe

• I refuse to believe this is real

• Scroll to #22

• My college friend Emily made the leap to become a foster mother to 2-10 year-old girls. “If there is an injustice that you can't stop thinking about, I believe so much that it's because you're meant to do something about it … Run toward what gives you joy, but also run toward what keeps you up at night. All that's in your heart is there on purpose.”

Some little things from me

• What it feels like to step into a painting

• A little video preview of my new book (preorder now!)

• The breakfast