Hi readers,
Thanks for subscribing to Travels with Charley. I send this newsletter every month or two, covering what I’m writing, what I’m reading (including lines from my commonplace book), and what I’m wondering. The questions are genuine; write back if you’d like.
What I’m writing
Last month, I wrote about how teenagers are finding hope and happiness. The related story publishes online today: recommendations from teenagers across the U.S. about how to find happiness. (Also, in print tomorrow!)
It was a genuine delight to talk to and learn from teenagers for this story (including many that didn’t make it into the final version! I wish I got to include them all!). The conversations reminded me of ways that we cultivate happiness in spite of so much heaviness around us. It also reminded me of how intense it feels to be a teenager. Do you remember the potency of those emotions? I remember feeling with such absolute certainty: disappointment felt like despair, excitement felt like elation.
What I’m wondering
Which leads me to ask: When in your life have you felt most intensely? What has made you feel that way? I know adolescence is a big one, and I’m curious about that. I’m also curious about the other experiences and settings that have made you feel exceptionally strongly. (For example, Emily Adrian is writing beautifully right now about the intensity of the first weeks after her daughter’s birth.)
What I’m reading
on one of the most intense feelings, longing:
White Girls, by Hilton Als:
I looked at physical love like an anorexic looking at food: I did not understand how to consume it while I wanted nothing more than to consume it. Like everyone else, I required love’s nutrients—its touch—but didn’t that spoil love? To put one’s body in it? To not claim it—to not grab it by the short of the hair, or by its wit—was, to this Simone Weil of the ghetto at least, the greater good: why could we not rise up out of the world of bodies? Rise up and be holy, holy, holy, in the oneness of love.
More Curious, by Sean Wilsey:
I’ve always wanted to be good and free; a statement so true it makes me cringe (sort of the embarrassing bumper sticker on the car of my soul).
The History of Love, Nicole Krauss:
After all, who doesn’t wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness?
Martyr!, by Kaveh Akbar:
We held the song’s preemptive nostalgia between us like a candle, swaying as its flame smocked the wick, our faces illuminated and flickering in it, that flame, yearning, idiot yearning, yearning so strong it bends you, buckles you, like waves of miracles.
From “The Boy’s School, or the News from Spain,” by Joan Wickersham:
There are children who are too old to be children. It stops being a problem when they get older—they grow into themselves—but before that happens it’s perpetually awkward. For you it was a mix of judgment and wistfulness. You thought all this stuff was stupid, but you also had no idea how to get it, and you wanted it.
Durga Chew-Bose on “Call Me By Your Name”:
I am reminded of a missive Vita Sackville-West sent Virginia Woolf in 1926, anticipating their reunion. “How pleased I shall be,” wrote Sackville-West, “to sit on your floor again.” To sit on your floor again. The plainest, most anticipant expression of longing. A wish that requires so little; insisting on nearness without design.
Also, All of “Nostos” by Louise Glück.
yours,
Charley