12: claire voon, queer food, flying cars, facial recognition for animals
Yesterday you might have read this story this story—absent a lot of the violence, including a car driven into one of those yoga studios(!) —about my former landlords, people who are such caricatures of Brooklyn gentrifiers that I wouldn’t believe they are real if I hadn’t lived through it myself. I really don’t know how I pick them. When I leave this current apartment, I’ll write about my current ones who are their own particular brand of hell.
These 1910 images on the art of ornamental orange peeling, I love them so much. In these swansongy last few months in NYC, I feel like I’ve been doing something similar, albeit less elegantly, peeling off little layered memories of the last 14 years in the city. This week’s especially delightful diary comes from Claire Voon, a journalist and critic in Chicago.
spiky bois
Carceral aesthetics. What happened in room 10? When high-class ladies wore masks that made it impossible to speak. How Feds and States make it impossible for tribal epidemologists to do their jobs. Mexico broadcasts school lessons on TV. The heat reporter. Covid gag rules at US companies are putting everyone at risk. Psychological torture: ICE deals with Covid-19 by putting detainees in solitary confinement. The Covid drug wars that pitted doctor against doctor. As colleges abruptly cancel in-person classes, campus dining halls scramble to pivot—again. Art supply companies contend with racism as ‘flesh tones’ come under scrutiny. How an intimate wedding in rural Maine led to the state’s largest coronavirus outbreak. How a new wave of Black activists changed the conversation. Post at your own risk. How the spirit mediums of New York are dealing with mass death. How the #WFH movement could reshape fashion. A grim reality of reopening: more mold. On witness and respair: a personal tragedy of the pandemic.
glouglou and snackchat
Queer food is hiding in plain sight. Thambali: the king of all coconuts. Paneer has sadly eclipsed other native Indian cheeses like kalari, chhurpi and churu. My totally racous, très French, super wine-soaked weekend in the Loire. Fried fish is a fixture in Black American cuisine. The dirty secret behind the West’s coconut fad. How the ‘queen of vegan cheese’ uses old-school cheesemaking techniques. In Goa, one sausage to rule them all. Black chefs are landing more cookbook deals. Is that enough? Is this the bottle that will finally convince Americans to drink a classic Chinese spirit? ‘Black Girls in Trader Joe’s’ is shedding light on food’s inequality problem. The state fair is cancelled. Deep fried oreos are not. The researchers bringing ‘uniquely Australian’ foods to you. In the popularity of Delhi food, the far superior Dehli food is being forgotten. Our food for the many rainy days ahead. The butcher shop that lasted 300 years.
language and literature
Living in translation, or why I love daffodils, an unpopular postcolonial flower. The literature of white liberalism. On streets and subways in South Korea, poetry hides in plain sight. What’s in an author name? Modern Urdu canon ”We’ve already survived an apocalypse”: Indigenous writers are changing sci-fi. Has self-awareness gone too far in fiction? How Kashmiris are resisting linguistic exclusion. Glitching the master’s house: Momtaza Mehri and Legacy Russell in conversation. Reading Elena Ferrante in English? You’re also reading Ann Goldstein. So what’s your name, Sandra? Donald Hall’s Amanuensis. A life in translation: how Mini Krishnan opened new worlds for readers. Printer jam: serious supply issues disrupt the book industry’s fall releases. Germany finds it hard to love Hegel, 250 years after his birth. Kinship, community, and consciousness.
harvest
In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been suspended. Storing carbon in the prairie grass. The weird magic of eiderdown. Hi-tech harvest. The harsh reality of food for ‘Little House’ pioneers. A flavorist explains how pumpkin spice took over the world. Your apples may soon be picked by laser-shooting robots. In a battle fought in mythology, RSS attempts to rewrite the tale of Onam. Mexico city, struggling to provide clean water, tests a new method. Mmm, fungus: it’s the next big thing in fake meat. Onam, Mahabali, and the narrow imaginations of the right. The church forests of Ethiopia. Qualities of earth. Orwell’s nightmare? Facial recognition for animals promises a farmyard revolution. Harvesting in the park. Fake meat alone won’t save the world. A grain of wheat. Women of the wool.
☞\( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞ yeehaw
The eco-yogi slumlords of Brooklyn (aka my former landlords). How the ‘yeehaw agenda’ disrupted Texas country culture for good. The prince of Georgia is big on Instagram. BP INVENTED THE PHRASE “CARBON FOOTPRINT” Stay to play: inside Trump’s DC hotel. Giant swamp rat colony takes over Texas park. Trafficking in teachers. The land before modern APIs. Inside the world of New England pigeon racing, where a win can bring $100000. Migrants from another world: Part 1. When Botswana farmers paint eyes on their cattle's butts, everybody wins. Japan successfully tested a flying car. A brewery accidentally named its beer “pubic hair” in a different language. They know how to prevent megafires. Why won’t anybody listen? “Wet Ass Postage:” sexualising the post office to save the USPS.
quarantine culture diary: claire voon
monday
My cat Juicebox walks on my face, awakening me earlier than usual. This is fortuitous because I’ve forgotten to wrap up edits for an article scheduled for publication today. I resolve them in bed, anticipating most of my points getting axed anyway.
72 Seasons, an app that divides the year according to an ancient Japanese calendar, tells me we have entered season 39: Thick Fog Blankets the Sky, which feels like a whole mood for the year. I don’t use a ton of apps but am deeply fond of this one since it helps me process time according to the natural world. This is a period of “harsh heat” but also “welcome cool.”
For lunch I make cold soba noodles with tofu, ginger, and scallions. I accept a writing assignment I feel lukewarm about, then work on a short commission I also feel lukewarm about. Most days I feel insane that I am able to outwardly function somewhat normally, at least when it comes to work. My inability to take breaks has worsened, partially because I have nowhere to go but online, but also because it’s especially hard to say no when being a freelancer is more precarious than ever. Mostly, I’m just grateful for any opportunity that allows me to keep working from home.
A moment of strange wonder: My friend Danie sends me a tweet about Chinese online cemeteries—presumably because we’d been chatting about sustainable death care and the launch of a human composting service. It leads me to waheaven.com, which is like the Chinese version of FindaGrave except with supercharged graphics and audio autoplay. Sucked into this surreal landscape, I browse memorials and read about digital tombsweeping during the pandemic. I end up at the grave of Tang dynasty general Guo Ziyi (697-781), and the page says I am the 47,473rd person who has “come to mourn.” There’s even a web shop to buy virtual offerings; I could build him a digital consumer’s paradise with tigers, a grand piano, entire castles.
My partner returns, washes off his hour-long train-to-bus commute, and makes us phat kaphrao but with tofu instead of meat. We begrudgingly watch the DNC, neither of us with voting power, and wonder why Bernie is speaking in front of so much chopped wood. For a palette cleanser, I eat strawberries and watch Selling Sunset, a reality show that impressively marries my obsession with grossly unattainable real estate with my intrigue of self-absorbed chaotic white girls.
tuesday
It’s vet day, which happens monthly because Juicebox has IBD and needs B-12 shots to curb vomiting sessions. I feed her gabapentin, a small anti-anxiety pill, which prepares her for an otherwise stressful event. As she drifts into an enviable deep sleep, I learn that the museum in yesterday’s published article has, predictably, sent the EIC an email admonishing us for not making them look good.
At the vet, I have to stand outside as the cat goes in. There is a metal tray by the entrance with a sign that reads “FECAL SAMPLE DROP-OFF,” and I count five bags of assorted sizes as I wait. On the walk home we pass one of my favorite neighbors, a blue and yellow macaw in a bay window that’s always on a stick. Macaws can live upwards of 50 years, and I always think about how this one might outlive me.
Motivated by a Hokkien pop mix by Suki Sou, I move onto copywriting—the stuff that actually pays :) An editor from an arts publication asks if I want to take on an assignment—another report on museums. Drained from this last one, I decide the rate isn’t worth the work, and say no. It feels good to momentarily fight my internalised capitalism!
The cat is snoring as I prep for an interview with a teen council tomorrow. Teens intimidate me, so obviously I am already nervous. When Jake arrives, I’m still in a foul mood about the nitpicky museum press officer. We collaborate on Japanese curry, updating boxed Golden Curry with sweet potatoes, stew meat, and banana ketchup. As it simmers, I tune into the DNC to watch the virtual roll call, which is honestly wholesome and endearing political performance.
This evening’s fruit is pluots, which I learn were developed by plant breeder Floyd Zaiger who crossed plums with plumcots—themselves originally bred by horticulturist Luther Burbank. My Korean grocery store simply labels them “dinosaur plums.” Jake, who is brewing another round of kombucha (this week’s flavor is mandarin and Thai basil), shows me how big the pellicle is getting. I read discomforting poems by Kim Hyesoon before bed.
wednesday
What do I do all morning? I don’t even know. Some odd, polite emails; some forgettable writing. Lunch is leftover curry, which I eat while exploring a digital care package published by Wing on Wo, a Manhattan Chinatown store I sorely miss.
My interview, miraculously, goes smoothly even though I’m anxious and there are four of us speaking over Zoom. It leaves me feeling buoyant about youth activism but also embarrassed about how I lived my life at 17.
I sweep my porch, which still has debris from last week’s derecho, and migrate outdoors to write; it’s an incredibly cool Chicago evening. Jake comes home with beer, and we bask in the simple pleasure of a summer breeze. My neighbor descends with a gift: one-third of her CSA cabbage, which I use in my attempt to replicate a maggi mee recipe my aunt frequently makes. My ratios of soy sauce, gochujang, and ketchup are way off, but there’s still a subtle taste of home.
As DNC night III (ugh) unfolds, we do laundry before realizing too late that both building dryers are broken. Drying rack filled up, we go to bed with socks and underwear hanging precariously from furniture.
thursday
Sunshine jolts me awake at 6:45. I spend some time doomscrolling in bed, which is a healthy way to begin one’s day. Jake has made me cold brew even though he believes it kills the flavor subtleties of beans (or something like that). Today is a big copywriting day, but I also have to prep to interview a second group of teens tomorrow (eep). Nabihah Iqbal’s South Asian Artists Special provides phenomenal tunes for focus. As part of a project I’m managing for Red Bull Arts, I watch a video by Holly Bass that is euphoric and otherworldly; it makes me want to run away.
I whip up a lemony avocado dip for lunch then walk to the corner grocery store to pick up paper towels and coconut milk for a cake I’m making. They keep ripe avocados behind the counter and sometimes offer samples of heavenly carnitas. Pandemic days, though, seem to have cancelled that tradition. At home, I receive highly anticipated mail: Ruth Asawa stamps!
Cake-making is tricky. I am a poor baker but have been attempting to master pandan chiffon cake, which calls for a meringue. Jake and I think we’ve achieved stiff peaks but the cake—a radioactive green because I am using extract in lieu of fresh pandan leaves—fails to fully rise.
We hop in a car for a socially distanced dinner with our friends who live with a menagerie of axolotls, salamanders, frogs, and a recently adopted dog. It’s the first time I’ve left my neighborhood in a month, and I feel uneasy in this vehicle with a stranger, warm cake balanced on my lap. When we arrive, something terrifying happens between Jake and the dog that results in a torn T-shirt and shot nerves. The moment casts a pall on the evening but we manage to have a good time, catching up over spicy lollipop wings from a nearby Chinese restaurant and our imperfect pandan cake, which tastes a lot better than it looks.
saturday
Wake up groggy from the night and perturbed by a dream, in which I was on an impossibly large plane that fell from the sky because first class passengers had partied too hard with the crew. Can’t remember which seating tier I was in...
Work is especially frustrating today, and I feel suffocating anxiety about mounting deadlines. I resurface to water plants and cleanse my scallions, which are growing long and lovely in an old one-cup sake glass. I wash dishes while listening to the podcast Nice White Parents, which is also about self-absorbed, chaotic white people. I have another Zoom interview with more teens, who again leave me inspired and energized. It’s fun to see snapshots of their bedrooms, and I reminisce about my own poster-covered haven.
Jake is understandably still distressed from last night so I order us sushi for dinner to try and lift spirits. Our regular spot serves pretty mediocre sushi (we live far from the coasts, after all) but it’s the good, or at least not bad, kind of cheap mediocre sushi that satisfies in its own way, like when you eat subpar American Chinese takeout while massively depressed or hungover. We finish Selling Sunset, and I go to bed deeply unsettled about how evil and boring people can be.
saturday
Lethargy has fully overcome me; I gulp coffee while watching Ziwe’s latest episode horizontal on the couch. Her interviews are probably one of three things that can make me laugh out loud now, and for close to an hour I feel somewhat emotionally stable.
I transcribe interviews while Jake visits his doctor, a British Chinese World War II buff who is deeply skeptical about the American healthcare system, to get documents for his green card application. We’re five months into the process, which weighs heavy as another cloud of constant dread and uncertainty in the shitstorm of 2020. In one week, USCIS will furlough 13,400 employees, or 70 percent of its staff, which only means things will move much more slowly. More months of waiting for his work permit, more months waiting for our interview, more months of feeling like our online presence is being monitored more closely.
In the park, city workers remove trees around us, perhaps fallen by the derecho. We eat sandwiches on patchy grass and read fiction as micro caterpillars wiggle on the pages. I’m supposed to get ice cream with my friend Phoebe, but she gets called into her census job, which has unsurprisingly been messy and unpredictable. Predictably, I instead go home to finish transcribing and fastforwarding through the ghastly sound of my own voice.
For dinner, Jake makes miso butter pasta with tuna and cabbage, which we drink with a chilled wine that the woman at the store describes as having a “taste of forest floor.” I get it, sort of. We watch Terrace House, whose banal drama I used to blissfully soak up until a terrible and tragic event earlier this summer lifted its veil of innocence. A house member mentions the Tokyo Olympics, and it sounds like he’s living in an entirely different world, which of course, he is.
I doomscroll before bed and google the net worths of Selling Sunset cast members.
sunday
Read in bed. Drink coffee. Hand-wash masks for next week. Press petals using my microfleur, which I’ll use to brighten letters to friends in other cities. They come from unfurled, fallen flowers I collected on a walk, so are slightly torn but salvageable. In any case, the immediacy of this floral transformation delights me.
I eat leftovers and rambutan before my friend Aya picks me up to drive to McKinley Park, where we’re meeting other Chicago-based Asian arts workers for a casual, socially distanced picnic. I’ve been looking for something like this since I moved here three years ago, and it’s nice to finally meet artists I’ve sort of seen around or known of. The space feels supportive and kind. Around 5, as the clouds begin to darken, we head back to the car. This is the most social I’ve been all week, and I feel like my fullest self.
Jake has been hanging out at Mana Contemporary so we swing by to pick him up. Rain begins to fall as we roll onto the highway. For dinner we steam pork and veggie dumplings to dip in vinegar and homemade chili oil.
72 Seasons says we are entering Limit of Heat, when typhoon season is upon us. “Preparing for the worst, it is a good time to strengthen windows, shutters and doors, and make sure potted plants and other things liable to be blown by the strong winds are securely fastened,” the app reads. I take this to mean: fortify yourself. To mark this transitional period, the app also offers a haiku by the poet Yamanishi Masako:
A bird carried
in the cloudy sky
lingering autumn heat
There are new seasonal things to appreciate, too. Fish: hiramasa (great amberjack). Vegetable: paprika. And flower: mukuge (rose of Sharon), a bloom that symbolizes respect and conviction. I read that it opens in the morning and withers by nightfall. Relatable.
featured creature: axolotl
Adorable, but also in danger of extinction.