On Feelings
Daniel Tiger, "Skrit Lit," yogurt pouches, and zucchini fritters.
On the recommendation of Uncle Tyler, before our trip to Nova Scotia, we bought a Toniebox and a half dozen tonie figurines for the Kiddos CWD. For those — and I imagine this is most of you — unfamiliar with such things, a Toniebox is a modern version of tape player for kids. You place one of the figurines on top of the box and it plays songs and stories for about an hour. It’s perfect for road trips, especially if you are, like the Family CWD, attempting to avoid any screens for at least the foreseeable future.
Beyond a plethora of Disney characters, one of the figurines Kiddo picked out was Daniel Tiger. In the Daniel Tiger story, young Daniel describes his day puttering around the neighborhood as he waits for his dad to take him to the fair. Daniel wants to ride the Ferris wheel. But, when Daniel actually gets to the Ferris wheel, he realizes he’s not just excited, but also kind of nervous. He’s scared. He’s not yet ready to ride the Ferris wheel; instead, he sings: “sometimes, you can feel two feelings at the same time, and that’s okay.”
Having powered through the back catalogue of the Grey Man series, the latest installments from Jack Carr and Brad Thor, and the entirety of the Gentleman Bastards series1, I started Sun House by David James Duncan — a book that’s been sitting on my bedside table for almost a year2. Early in the book, the omniscient narrator introduces Risa by describing her love affair with the Sanskrit language. He explains her epiphany at discovering the Sanskrit word Ṣad, how by adding a dot beneath the word English word sad, it totally changes its meaning — morphing from a feeling of despondency to instead the action of “[sitting] down inwardly, and [breathing], and [attaining] the True.”
Drawing on her own moments of sorrow — of feeling sad — Risa blends the Sanskrit ṣad with English sadness to create a new word — a feeling — ṣadness, an amalgamation she intuitively understands as a “serene inner state,” “a space [so] calm, dark & spacious” it allows her to grow “calm, dark & spacious” herself.
Sometimes, you can feel two feelings at the same time, and that’s okay.
At the end of the story, Daniel Tiger ends up riding the Ferris wheel. It’s everything he’d hoped and dreamed of — he can see the whole neighborhood. He’s elated, not only to be on top of the world, but also that he overcame his conflicting emotions.
Not until I sat down to write this essay, with Daniel Tiger’s chorus running through my head, did I make the connection to what Risa/Duncan expound upon in the early pages of Sun House. And Daniel Tiger and Risa both, in their own ways, key in on the same power of the sublime which I wrote about last week — the power of the space in between seemingly contradictory emotions3. As I’ve gotten older —and maybe wiser — I’ve come to the conclusion that satisfaction in life is found by embracing those knives’ edges4. You need to take comfort in feeling two feelings at the same time, recognizing the dissonance, appreciating the discord5. It’s the same paradox I find when I’m doing a hard workout — specifically for me when swimming or running — where only when I’ve recognized that I’ve hit the “suck,” and then embraced it, can I actually find pleasure in the rest of the workout, even if there’s pain6.
While it is okay to feel two feelings at the same time, I have found that there are two which are best not conflated: anger and hunger7. Combining these two is a recipe for disaster that, even when recognized, can lead to poor decisions and snappy outbursts. Being the capricious savages they are, the Kiddos CWD have taken this week to vacillating at dinner between hunger strikes and gluttonous hyperphagia. The mornings following their (self-enacted) going to bed with little-to-no supper, they tend to become even more monstrous. There’s wailing, crying, hitting, biting — it’s like our house has turned into the dumping ground of the Granite Park Chalet8.
I’ve found that in this situation, there’s only one thing to do — get them to quickly shovel as much food into their mouths as possible, satisfying their hunger and dialing down their heightened emotions9. In the mornings, this has lately been done with yogurt pouches — either homemade (mixing Bulgarian yogurt10 with honey or jelly) or store-bought (Stonyfield of Siggi’s being the crowd-favorites).
Fortunately, none of the adults in our house ever get hangry, but if we did, the zucchini fritters we’ve been making with regularity this summer would probably be a good way to stifle it. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any photos of the ones we made this week — perhaps the best yet — but if you were to occasion yourself to make them, here’s how you might do it.
With a box grater, grate 3-4 medium zucchini into a colander. Place over a bowl — or the sink — and salt, tossing to incorporate. While that sits, combine a cup of flour, a tsp of baking soda, and several dashes of Old Bay seasoning. Beat an egg into a half cup of ricotta — and don’t skimp here — and then fold that into the flour mixture. Using a paper towel, press as much liquid as you can out of the zucchini, and then fold that into the flour mixture, too.
In a cast-iron pan or Dutch oven, heat a cup or so of cooking oil — I used a combination of tallow, duck fat, and lard — until shimmering. Dallop spoonfuls of the batter into the oil, two or so at a time, and cook until browned. Flip and cook through — each fritter should take 5-6 minutes total. Remove to a hot oven until ready to serve, and smother in sour cream — again, the best you can find — and eat.
Well folks, there you have it — hanger-bustin’ zucchini fritters. I’ve also incorporated browned onion into these, which is nice, but does add a little more time for an already somewhat prep-intensive meal. All that being said, if you make a bunch of these, they do reheat well.
With that, I’ll leave you to your — hopefully — long weekends. We’ll be decamping North one last time to enjoy Labor Day in the Granite State, a weekend filled with burgers and dogs, buoyancy and delight. I’m hopeful to get at least one session behind the boat waterskiing, soaking in the smile of the Great Spirit.
Regardless of if you slalom ski or not, I hope you get to spend some time with people you love, relishing in each emotion that washes over you. Try to find comfort in discomfort, and keep your horses reined.
We’ll see you back here next week.
Back to some young adult fantasy, a staple in my rotation, and one which Grandfather CWD might want to pick up after listening to a few hours worth driving back from Katadhin. While I’m past the point of being embarrassed by what I read, this is one that, when you listen to it out loud with someone else, you realize how ridiculous the genre can be
I know this to be true because I texted a photo of the cover to reader Salty Meatball last September saying “this looks right up your alley” — and then didn’t pick it up again until just now.
wrote earlier this week about bookshelves, and in it, his preference not to shelve a book until it’s been read in its entirety. I feel much the same way, much to Mrs. CWD’s chagrin, leaving most horizontal surfaces in our house stacked high with books yet to be read.See what I did there, Grandfather CWD?
At the risk of this newsletter becoming entirely referential to other newsletters,
wrote a terrific piece this week “On Courage,” also touching upon this idea of juxtaposed emotions.I’ve said this before, but sometimes the universe just puts an idea out there and then it’s all you can see.
As I’ve written before, “samsara is nirvana.” And this mantra — “get comfortable being uncomfortable” — is the staple of misogis, of endurance events, of Coach Alex’s “Drilled” classes.
Colloquially known as “hanger.”
This is an admittedly obscure reference to the site of the first two fatal grizzly bear attacks in Glacier National Park in the 1960s, a chalet lodge which dumped food for bears each night, attracting very hungry grizzlies.
As Risa would preach: “Restrain the mind as the charioteer restrains his vicious horses.”
Which I’ve just discovered and packs the flavor of Greek yogurt in a thinner and silkier texture — all the better for squeezing out of a pouch.
Fun and insightful. Taking comfort in that knife-edge comfort space...something to aspire to.
The word “hangry” is also a complete sentence. Those fritters sound delightful.