New Moon, Same Us
Reconnecting, a rut broken, and some double coziness.
Hello! It’s us again. We’ve unintentionally found ourselves on this cycle of sending letters on the new moon and the full moon each month. Cute and witchy, no?
Anyway, Christine wrote about cheese and Taylore wrote about her style reawakening. Our last section covers our latest frivolities. In short: a very us letter.
Let’s begin.
Part I: Cheese Isn’t the Answer (but Also Sort of Is)
CC: 2025 has been . . . . interesting. Though things in my personal life are pretty solid, much of what’s happening in the world is pretty bleak.
If you’re anything like me, you’re a little stressed. You’re on your phone too much. You fluctuate between panic and depersonalization when more bad news hits. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, there’s some productivity in there too.
Well, I have something that may help. At least I hope it will. Shocker: it’s cheese-related.
As many of you know, a large part of my job over the years has been teaching cheese tasting and pairing classes. For years, this was 100% in-person, usually with 20-30 people. I loved it from day one. The energy of a room full of people eager to learn about one of their favorite foods is pretty addicting. The feeling of celebration, almost communion, when people come together happily over food and wine is and always has been a highlight of my life.
When the pandemic hit, that experience disappeared basically overnight. We pivoted, the buzzword of those days, to virtual classes. There was something special about sharing some delight in the darkness of uncertain times, but the vibes were different and I couldn’t help missing the before-times.
After one virtual class, I got an email from an attendee, thanking me for the class and saying how good it felt to be in her body that way. She’d done the class solo—just her, the cheese, and a laptop—and said it felt almost meditative. “I never get to engage with food this way,” she said. “I had never thought to.” A light went on in my brain.
One problem I’ve had with both traditional Christianity and New Age spirituality is the idea that bodies are kind of a bummer, that physicality is icky, albeit unavoidable. We see this everywhere from Plato’s theory of forms to the Bible (especially Paul) to the New Age obsession with detoxing. From every side, we hear that our bodies are an amalgam of yuck that keep us from experiencing our highest selves.
Here's the thing. We’re not in our bodies that long. 80ish years, in a best-case scenario, is nothing compared to the lifespan of a river or even a rock. Rivers in the “short-lived” category last centuries to a few thousand years. Rocks last anywhere from thousands to billions of years. We know on some level that we won’t be here for long, yet we cumulatively spent years of our lives wishing we had a different body, a different life, a life without the problems of physicality.
If there’s anything I believe religiously, it’s that having a body is beautiful. Our bodies take us through our lives, allowing us to soak in the beauty of the world in myriad ways. If there are sacred things to experience here, we must experience them through our bodies. What a gift.
This also means that experiences we think of as mundane have the potential to bring us back into right relationship with our bodies (and our lives). Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk and one of my favorite writers, talks about this in The Miracle of Mindfulness.
I love this idea, that every moment is a chance to connect with ourselves. I love meditation and have meditated off and on for the past 17 years or so. But you don’t need to sit on a cushion on the floor and close your eyes to meditate. Doing the dishes can be meditation. Walking can be meditation. Eating a tangerine can be meditation.
Though I discovered Thich Nhat Hanh’s tangerine meditation years ago, I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I hadn’t thought about eating cheese as meditation until I got that email after virtual cheese class. But of course eating cheese can be meditation! And, the contrarian goblin in me finds a lot of enjoyment in that idea because so many “spiritual” people think of cheese as not-so-spiritual, as “unclean” eating. But what’s more spiritual than saying “yes!” to the bounty of life, in nourishing your body with fat, protein, and minerals?
So I’ve been working on a cheese meditation. It’s finally here.
Think of it as a mini guided cheese tasting that also happens to be a meditation. This one is specifically for a brie-style cheese (any kind brie-style cheese you’d like) but maybe I’ll do others in the future. Use the code CREAM for $5 off until March 31st. Though it’s listed on Patreon, it’s a one-off product, i.e. you don’t need to be any sort of member to buy it.
Of course, you don’t need me to meditate with cheese. You can sit down any time, with any food or drink, be present with it and come out of that experience a little bit changed. But if you feel tired and disconnected to begin with, hopefully this meditation will help you reconnect.
If there’s anything I need these days, it’s more invitations to be present and savor all the beautiful things in my life. Deep presence grounds us more deeply into the beauty we’re surrounded by, reminding us that beauty is sacred and we must appoint ourselves stewards of it* if we wish it to thrive.
*my friend Catherine wrote about this recently in such a personal, compelling way
Part II: Do I…Like My Clothes and Face Again?
TG: Starting off with a life update…I got a new gig! I’m now Brand Marketing Manager at The Maker, which means I’ve finally found myself working in fragrance full-time. I’ll still be freelancing from time to time, though, so you’ll be seeing me around.
While we’re talking change, it feels like I’m finally emerging from a two-year-long long aesthetic rut. How do I know? I woke up a few weeks ago, hit my closet to pick out an outfit, and couldn’t decide what to wear because I had too many options I was excited about. When did tiger print, drop-crotch jeans, vests, and Sperrys enter my style vocabulary? When makeup time rolled around, I reached for multiple eyeshadow palettes, took my time tight-lining my eyes with brown liner, and etched on my wings in eggplant-hued pencil instead of my typical black liquid—all because I felt like mixing it up for the first time in what feels like years. My jewelry collection suddenly seemed expansive, so I layered on new necklaces and stacked forgotten rings. Days later, I decided I was going to start using hair accessories again, so I instantly ordered 100 teeny, clear elastic bands. And I’ve actually been using them! Seemingly overnight, I felt inspired again.
Maybe it’s because the most fashionable people in my life have finally rubbed off on me; the influences of EV Salon and Long Live founder Erika Veurink and vintage queen/Vogue editor Margaux Anbouba are apparent. Perhaps my algorithm has gotten more sophisticated and exposure to my personal brand of highly curated niche content (bisexual-married-to-a-straight-guy OOTDs, protection braids via #witchtok) is at an all-time high. Both of these things are contributors, for sure, but I also think that over time, I finally just cultivated a closet I look forward to shopping and a makeup bag I’m excited to explore, and that makes me want to keep exploring.
For example, I now regularly check in on makeup artist and vintage collector Erin Parsons’s Tiktok and fall down her glamorous and inspiring rabbit holes. I tend to leave her page with a new aesthetic cornerstone every time. Take the furious need to break out all my eyeshadow palettes and turn my lids into shimmering Easter eggs, or a doomed-to-fail effort to start using setting powder more often. My last deep dive birthed a surprisingly functional new look for me: ultra-nude lipstick. I’m very pale, but Erin is even paler, and seeing her make nearly-grey shades work IRL convinced me to try it, too. Now, my go-to nude combo is MAC’s Cool Spice liner (a newer variation on popular ‘90s shade, Spice) paired with the brand’s matte Cool Teddy lipstick (a new, cool-toned version of my college-era fave, Velvet Teddy.)
The final step in my style evolution? Start taking pictures of myself again.
Part III: Frivolities
TG:
The Classic: My best friend and I did a lunch at The Odeon recently that was restorative in a way I couldn’t anticipate. On the table: Chablis, salad (frisée for her, smoked salmon caesar for me), fries with no less than three condiments, and Vespers. Then we went jewelry shopping! For about four hours, I (almost) forgot the republic is falling.
The Cozy: My PS5 gaming library is slowly filling out. My most recent downloads were Divinity: Original Sin II (Larian’s RPG precursor to Baldur’s Gate 3) and Wytchwood, a brain-smoothing little crafting game. Imagine Animal Crossing and Minecraft had a baby that was conceived via a potion brewed by an odd little forest witch and you’ve got the gist.
The Chaotic: Soba has become one of my pantry’s sturdiest workhorses. And when groceries are running especially low, it makes the perfect pre-portioned vehicle for my dwindling veggies and lingering canned stuff. This week, Chaos Soba included the last of our frozen Hatch chile stash from our most recent Santa Fe trip, some miso, a few spoonfuls of canned corn, garlic, butter, and lemon.
CC:
The Cinematic: I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately, and in the spirit of Letterboxd “Last Four Watched,” here are the last four I made it through:
Barbie (2023), with Greta Gerwig’s commentary. I non-ironically consider this a cinematic masterpiece and will talk about it for hours if you don’t stop me.
The Stepford Wives (2004). Frank Oz really did something here. I’m not sure what he did was good, per se, but it was an experience
Something’s Gotta Give (2003). Actually the first time I’ve seen this! It’s fun the way Nancy Meyers plays with so many of the same themes in her films, and in such dreamy kitchens.
Dinner at 8 (1933). Goddamn, Jean Harlow is magnificent. I love when Lionel Barrymore plays a good guy. Pre-Code is so fun.
The Cozy (x2): Okay, this is just a chance to share this picture of Maizy taking a nap in the sun.
The Carnations: There were little bouquets out at my favorite donut spot the other day and it got me thinking: should this be the year we bring carnations back? They’re gorgeous, we just associate them with tight budgets and not being loved enough for fancier flowers, so they’ve fallen out of fashion. If you really look at them, I think you’ll agree with me that’s a shame.
