as a kid, i was always drawn to ghost stories, haunted houses, urban legends, and anything that felt even remotely spooky. i loved japanese horror and checking out scary books from the library. i loved staying up too late watching things that probably terrified my parents far more than they terrified me. i still remember becoming completely obsessed with silent hill after watching it for the first time. the atmosphere, the fog. the ash falling from the sky. the empty streets, the siren. everything felt abandoned and haunted and strangely beautiful.

i had a similar experience with ringu. i was probably too young to be watching it, which is probably why it left such an impression on me. years later, i remember the feeling of those films more clearly than i remember most of their plots.

looking back, i don’t think i loved horror because i enjoyed being scared. i loved horror because it gave fear boundaries.

in horror, the danger is usually easy to pinpoint. it lives in the haunted house at the end of the road or in the sound coming from the basement. it wears a mask or emerges from the woods. it has a name, face, and set of rules. even when the threat is supernatural, there’s comfort in its specificity. you know where the danger is and what you’re up against.

real life doesn’t work that way.

and i suspect that’s part of why horror resonates so deeply with so many women. before most women encounter horror as a genre, they’ve already spent years learning how to navigate fear in ordinary life. horror doesn’t introduce fear so much as externalize it. it takes anxieties that are often vague, private, and difficult to articulate and transforms them into something they can see in real time. a ghost, witch, monster, haunted house. suddenly the thing that has been lurking at the edge of your consciousness has a shape.

i find comfort in that.

of course, there was a period of my life when horror stopped feeling comforting altogether.

during covid, i could barely watch it. the world already felt terrifying enough. every day seemed to bring another headline, statistic, or reminder of how little any of us actually knew. there was so much uncertainty and anxiety that by the time evening arrived, the last thing i wanted was more fear, even fictional dread. for the first time in my life, horror took a back seat.

looking back, i think that period taught me that horror is not inherently therapeutic. sometimes it helps us process fear but sometimes our nervous systems are already carrying more than enough. there are seasons of life when a horror film can feel cathartic and seasons when it feels unbearable. both experiences are completely valid and normal.

at its best, horror offers a safe place to engage with difficult emotions. it gives shape to fears that are otherwise difficult to explain. it allows us to confront them, examine them, and sometimes even understand them a little better. most importantly, it reminds us that we are not the only people carrying them.

i think that’s also why i’ve always been drawn to films like house and suspiria. they’re horror films, but they’re also films that feel deeply interested in girlhood. they have deep throughlines with friendship, beauty, performance, jealousy, transformation, and all of the complicated dynamics that emerge when young women are placed together in a shared world. the horror doesn’t feel separate from those experiences. it grows directly out of them.

in many ways, that has always been one of horror’s greatest strengths. for a genre often dismissed as exploitative, horror has consistently returned to questions that are central to women’s lives. again and again, it asks what it means to live inside a body that can be watched, judged, controlled, desired, violated, transformed, or misunderstood. the supernatural elements may change from story to story, but the underlying concerns remain familiar.

when i think about films like rosemary’s baby, i don’t primarily think about satanism. i think about a woman whose instincts are repeatedly dismissed by the people around her. when i think about the exorcist, i don’t first think about possession. i think about the terror of watching a young girl change in ways that neither she nor the adults around her fully understand. even suspiria, with all of its witches and violence and surreal imagery, is fundamentally interested in discipline, ambition, beauty, and the intensity of female spaces.

i guess that’s why horror has always resonated with so many women. beneath the monsters are stories about power, vulnerability, autonomy, desire, motherhood, friendship, and survival. take the shining.

when people talk about the shining, they usually talk about the hotel. the endless hallways. the twins. the elevators full of blood.

what i remember is wendy.

i remember a woman isolated from everyone she knows, trapped with a man whose moods are becoming increasingly unpredictable, trying to protect a child while nobody else can see what she sees.

suspiria takes place inside a ballet academy, but much of its tension comes from the feeling that every institution around its young women is concealing something from them.

what horror understands, perhaps better than any other genre, is that fear is physical.

and it lives in the body.

it takes fears women often carry and makes them impossible to ignore. for two hours, the dread belongs to something else. the monster carries it for you. and unlike real life, monsters can usually be defeated before the film ends.

the rest of this newsletter lives behind the paywall. i’m including all of my favorite horror books and films for you. i’m also including some misc horror pieces of art and media that i think you’ll love. thank you for being here and supporting my page.

join my bookclub :)

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

Read more

not just by noise, but by the endless feeling that there is always something else i should be reading, answering, researching, fixing, planning, or remembering.

despite the fact that my brain feels like a room where too many people are talking at once, art has never felt like part of that noise.

a beautiful film can silence my thoughts faster than almost anything else the way that a great novel can pull my attention back into a single place after it’s been scattered across twenty different tabs. ,

i know people who decompress by watching horror films and people who turn to thrillers when they’re anxious. some people need comedy and some people need romance. everyone seems to have their own version of comfort.

for me, comfort has never been about escaping what i’m feeling. it’s about seeing it reflected back to me. and i think the most powerful films aren’t distractions, they’re mirrors.

loneliness looks different when you see it in a character you’ve come to care about. if you’re grieving, it feels less isolating when someone else has found language for it. uncertainty becomes more bearable when you realize other people have lived inside the same questions you’re struggling with.

even though nothing can replace real human connection (cinema or literature were never meant to). i do think there are moments when a film understands something about you that you haven’t yet been able to articulate yourself, and in those moments you feel a little less alone.

that’s one of the reasons i love movies so much.

when i’m overwhelmed, overstimulated, anxious, or simply exhausted by the pace of the world, i often return to the same handful of films because they create a little more space inside my mind.

these are the films i reach for when my mind needs fewer demands placed on it. when other platforms start to feel loud or overstimulating, MUBI feels more intentional.

stream these films and more on MUBI and get 30 days free at mubi.com/milkfed

this letter is free for you today!

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

when you need structure and repetition

jeanne dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 bruxelles (1975)

this film is built almost entirely around routine. peeling potatoes, washing dishes, preparing coffee, walking through the same rooms again and again while the day unfolds according to a rigid and almost ritualistic structure.

at first the repetition feels excessive, but after a while something begins to shift. the repetition stops feeling tedious and starts feeling stabilizing, the way a repeated action can become calming when you perform it long enough.

time stretches out, attention narrows, and small deviations begin to matter.

the discipline of the structure becomes the relief.

instead of overwhelming the viewer with information, the film reduces the world to a series of gestures that repeat and accumulate meaning slowly. watching it feels strangely similar to performing a routine yourself, the way cooking or cleaning can sometimes quiet the mind simply by giving it something structured to follow.

Germany

when you want slowness without pressure

columbus (2017)

this is one of the rare slow films that still feels emotionally clear.

the film unfolds through long conversations about architecture, responsibility, and the strange choices people make when they are trying to build a life. the framing is controlled and deliberate, but it never feels distant or austere.

instead the stillness of the film creates room for thought.

scenes stay around long enough for the viewer to absorb what is being said and what is left unsaid, and the pace allows you to think alongside the film rather than feeling like you are constantly trying to keep up with it.

the effect is similar to reading an essay that unfolds slowly and carefully, allowing ideas to develop without forcing them forward.

Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Australia, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, France

​

when repetition helps regulate attention

perfect days (2023)

this film is built around routine. the same morning rituals repeat each day: waking up before sunrise, watering plants, driving through the city with music playing, cleaning the same public toilets, returning home to read before bed. nothing interrupts the structure, but the small variations begin to matter. a new song on the cassette player, a stranger appearing briefly in the rhythm of the day, a moment of sunlight moving across a wall. the repetition becomes calming rather than monotonous, the way a steady routine can slowly gather your attention back together when everything else feels scattered.

India, Turkey, Ireland, UK, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Netherland

this is one of the reasons mubi fits so naturally into my life.

so much of the internet is designed to compete for your attention. every platform wants you clicking, scrolling, reacting, and moving on to the next thing as quickly as possible.

mubi feels different.

when i’m already feeling overstimulated, i don’t necessarily want more content. i want something that allows me to slow down.

the films on mubi often feel intentional in that way. they’re not built around endless escalation or the assumption that your attention needs to be recaptured every few seconds. instead, they invite you to settle in, pay attention, and spend time with a story.

instead they ask you to sit with a film for a while and let your attention settle into it. on days when everything else feels like too much input at once, cinema can be indubitably restorative.

if you’re someone who struggles with overstimulation, anxiety, or that feeling of having too many tabs open in your brain at once, i actually wrote an entire article about some of the things that help me when i start feeling that way.

it’s mostly small rituals, habits, and reminders that help me feel a little more grounded when my mind starts moving faster than i’d like it to.

you can read it here <3

okay, that’s all for today.

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

milk fed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

i know what you’re thinking. goths don’t dream about tomato galettes and barefoot dinner parties. but i’m here to tell you: you can romanticize the rot and the ricotta. you can light a candle that smells like damp stone and still want to host a dinner where everything tastes like lemon and love.

this is a summer for both. for those of us who read haunted novels in june, wear black to the farmer’s market, and stir things clockwise (just in case). for the ones who know that staying seasonal is a kind of spell, that soft herbs and soft jazz can be protection, and that food made with intention is magic.

a kitchen witch with a library card

okay, moving into today’s letter…

the barefoot contessa fantasy

i fantasize about summers that smells like lemon zest, fresh tomatoes, and sea salt, where the afternoons stretch long and slow and someone’s always slicing fruit in a sunlit kitchen. it’s not really about the house in the hamptons or the perfect charcuterie board. it’s about something more tender.

i call it an summer.

i want to move through the season with that same kind of ease. soft clothes. jazz playing. herbs snipped straight from the garden. i want to throw fabulous dinner parties. everything simple but significant. everything made with love. it’s a summer that isn’t trying to be anything but itself… a little salty, a little sweet, slightly overripe in the best way.

an ina garten summer is cooking something slowly and reading in between steps, setting the table even if no one’s coming over. it’s deciding that maybe the point of all this isn’t to optimize life, but to taste it more deeply.

so this is your invitation: to a season made of butter and tomatoes and rereading old favorites and to movies that make you feel full. to a summer that feels like the kitchen at golden hour.

food as love language

i love feeding people, including myself. the soft labor of making something just because it will be delicious. remembering how someone takes their coffee or the intimacy of buttering toast for someone still half asleep.

food has always felt like a love language to me and a way of saying: i see you and i care. i made this because i wanted you to have something warm. sometimes i think the reason i love cooking is because it’s one of the only things in life that makes sense. you put time and care into something, and it gives back (lord willing).

so much of that love lives in scent. the rosemary on your fingertips, the garlic blooming in oil, the first burst of citrus when you slice a lemon. scent is how we remember meals and how we’re brought back, years later, to a summer kitchen or a particular evening or a person who once made you soup. herbs wilt on the counter. peaches perfume the air. even the smell of something slightly burned feels like home. it’s invisible, but it holds the memory.

there are summer meals that feel like love letters. fresh pasta with lemon and ricotta. cold watermelon eaten standing up. peaches sliced into bowls of cream. a cobbler perhaps. dinner outside, everything sticky with heat and sweetness, people talking over each other while the candles flicker. these are the kinds of moments that i never want to end.

and sometimes, it’s just for you. cooking for yourself especially in a world that tells you not to bother. there’s magic in making a beautiful lunch and eating it with a book open beside you. in roasting a chicken on a tuesday night just because. in stirring something on the stove while listening to music that makes you feel like the main character of your own life.

there’s no real recipe for an ina garten summer. just good ingredients, good intentions, and a willingness to slow down long enough to enjoy it.

a literary kitchen

some books make you hungry. not always for food, but for life, beauty, slowness, and i think the kitchen is the perfect place to read. it’s where your hands are busy but your mind can wander and the sensual and the intellectual meet. in a literary kitchen, you can feed every part of yourself at once.

and if you’re like me, you start wondering what your favorite writers might have eaten or what they reached for when they were alone. maybe what they cooked when the words wouldn’t come or what their kitchens smelled like in summer.

so here’s a little game i created: meals and moods inspired by the women i love to read. literary flavors, if you will.

clarice lispector
she wouldn’t make a whole meal, just toast, burned a little, with soft butter and one perfect fig. maybe a spoonful of salted ricotta. eaten standing in the kitchen with the window open, barefoot, thinking about god.

pair with: the hour of the star: a young woman drifts through rio de janeiro, surviving on hot dogs, coca-cola, and small hopes she barely knows how to name. slim, strange, and devastating, it turns an ordinary life into something impossible to look away from.

virginia woolf
she’d make lunch for herself at 3pm. a boiled egg, a bit of smoked trout, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. everything elegant and melancholy. she eats in the garden with a notebook on her lap and crumbs on her skirt.

pair with: to the lighthouse: a family gathers at a summer house on the coast, where meals are served, children grow up, marriages strain, and years pass almost unnoticed. the plot is simple, but every glance, conversation, and ordinary moment feels charged with the weight of an entire life.

nora ephron
pasta, always. linguine with white wine, garlic, and too much parmesan. eaten at the kitchen counter while gossiping. dessert is lemon bars from the freezer. everything smells like butter and home.

pair with: heartburn: a food writer discovers her husband is having an affair while she is pregnant. filled with recipes, dinner parties, and observations about marriage. nora ephron, the woman you are! my forever comfort person.

anne carson
a bowl of pomegranate seeds eaten one by one. a piece of fish poached in milk. a fig cut open on a plate beside a stack of books. the refrigerator is nearly empty except for a few good ingredients, and dinner is usually simple, precise, and unusual. she cooks the way she writes, paying close attention to small details most people would miss.

pair with: autobiography of red: geryon is a shy, red-winged boy growing up in a difficult home when he meets herakles, a charismatic teenager who changes the course of his life. this is a coming of age story and love story. it follows geryon across years and continents as he tries to make sense of desire, heartbreak, and who he’s becoming.

laurie colwin
chicken soup simmering on the stove. thick slices of buttered bread. a jar of homemade jam pulled from the refrigerator. there is always a cake cooling on the counter or a pie that came out a little lopsided, and somehow that makes it better. her kitchen feels lived in and generous.

pair with: home cooking: memoir and cookbook, colwin writes about weeknight dinners, dinner parties, kitchen disasters, and the pleasures of feeding people you love. it’s warm and comforting, like spending an afternoon in someone's favorite kitchen.

reading in the kitchen is intimate. the soup simmers, the kettle whistles, butter softens on the counter and afternoon light crawls across the floorboards. you read a few pages, stir the pot, read a few more. somewhere between the recipe and the paragraph, the afternoon disappears.

the rest of this newsletter lives behind the paywall. i’m including summer recipes, fragrances, candles, films, and more summer fun for you. enjoy! thank you for being here and supporting my page.

join my bookclub :)

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

Read more

i’ve been a little quieter than usual lately. between a family emergency and some personal life stuff, the past couple of weeks have been a bit of a mess, which has made writing consistently more difficult than i’d like. i don’t really love turning this newsletter into an announcement board for my life, but i did want to acknowledge it since a few of you have checked in.

on a much lighter note, i also completely screwed up last week’s holiday giveaway.

so we’re doing it again.

giveaway details

i’m picking two winners.

one winner will receive a bundle of fragrances, books, a few miscellaneous sentimental items i love, and a fully comped annual subscription to milk fed.

to enter, simply be a paid subscriber (monthly or annual). if you upgrade during the giveaway window, you’ll automatically be entered as well.

entries close sunday, may 31 at 11:59 p.m. pst. winners will be selected at random and notified by email shortly after.

open to subscribers 18+ in the u.s. only. not sponsored or affiliated with substack.

okay. onto the good things.

this edition of everything good lives behind the paywall. thank you for being here and supporting my page. this week’s list is full of book, film, fragrance, podcast, and candle recs. i have a few misc niche things and articles i read and loved. enjoy!

join my bookclub :)

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

Read more

i’ve been wanting to shift away from the typical media consumption roundup for a while now. i found myself trying to fill space instead of sharing things that actually felt meaningful me. i want this version to feel more intentional and thoughtful.

there won’t be categories or rigid structure. just a simple ongoing list of things i’ve loved, admired, saved, underlined, obsessed over, or carried with me throughout the week.

future editions of everything good will live behind the paywall. thank you for being here for the first one. free for you today <3

join my bookclub :)

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

here are a few things i loved lately.

everything good this week

the sticky stuff motherhood card deck

for new moms, people trying to become moms, people unsure if they ever want children at all, and people still sitting somewhere in between. this is a game that understands motherhood as something fluid. the conversations feel deeply personal and a little messy. it asks questions about identity, belonging, intimacy, relationships, childhood, bodies, loneliness, connection, and the emotional things we carry from our mothers and from womanhood itself. some prompts make you reflect on the past, some force you to sit honestly with the present, and others ask you to imagine futures you maybe haven’t let yourself think about yet. the wildcard cards keep everything feeling unpredictable and alive. the perfect game to play with your closest girlfriends over pasta and bread and wine.

spread the jelly newsletter

so they created the game above ^ and if you’re not subscribed to them, i highly recommend. a newsletter dedicated to to motherhood. for new moms, expecting moms, people who don’t want to be moms, those still deciding, and those still trying. feels relevant, yes?

ana roxanne (music)

where do i begin. i love ana roxanne so much because her music feels like water, poetry, femininity, the body. she creates ambient music, jazz, choral sounds, hindustani singing, and electronics. you can hear every part of her life inside the music—growing up catholic in a filipino community, singing in cathedrals, studying voice in india. she exists within the dichotomy of gender and identity giving her work a soft, almost dissolving quality. she’s translates emotions that normally resist language similar to clarice lispector. her 2019 ep ~~~ especially feels like an out of body experience in the best way, music for people who feel too sensitive for the world around them.

polyester zine

understands how emotionally meaningful culture, aesthetics, fandom, femininity, and taste actually are. they take celebrity culture, fashion, internet aesthetics, messy girlhood obsessions, bad taste, cringe, desire, etc, and treat them with real intellectual and emotional seriousness. they make it fun always. it’s cyberfeminist in a way that still feels deeply human. i also love that they embrace contradiction so openly: irony and sincerity, highbrow and lowbrow, being deeply self aware while still allowing yourself to genuinely love things. the polyester book of (bad) taste (coming sooooon) especially feels like such an important antidote to algorithmic sameness and curated “good taste” culture. a reminder that developing your own strange, personal, emotionally charged tastes is actually part of becoming a person.

foundry mews shoes

foundry mews started in 2019 in a small room outside london. initially they existed like a secret corner of the internet, even their instagram remained private until 2022. they make pieces for a well lived life: shoes that get scuffed, sweaters that soften with time, things passed between friends or rediscovered years later at the back of a closet and worn completely differently. these are the highest on my wishlist.

project pal app

obsessed with this especially for new nyc girls because living in new york can feel especially isolating despite constantly being surrounded by people. everyone is trying to build a life at the exact same time. finding apartments, routines, favorite coffee shops, pilates studios, restaurants, friends, little pockets of comfort that make the city feel livable instead of overwhelming. i love that this app feels like the group chat every girl wishes existed when she first moved here. like all the conversations girls are already having. where to go, what to wear, who to trust, etc, finally put in one place.

hades wool cardigan

i’m obsessed with hades wool because everything feels eccentric, literary, emotionally attached feeling to it. knitwear for girls who save old movie tickets in their coat pockets. i’ve been dying over the aphrodite cardigan—a little romantic and a little strange, which is my favorite combination. the whole brand feels very thoughtful and unfussy in a way that reminds me of old british bookstores, rainy weather, wool coats, and women who always somehow look interesting without looking overstyled. loving it also makes complete sense to me.

french soles upper east side

an iconic new york store that only gets more charming the longer it exists. the brand dedicates itself entirely to one thing. the ballet flat. the store feels very upper east side: understated, feminine, a little old world, the kind of place where women who have lived in the city forever buy shoes they’ll actually wear for years. french sole feels connected to a version of new york that exists inside of rainy sidewalks, black tights, long wool coats, walking everywhere, shoes soft enough to survive the subway but still beautiful. the fact that they’ve been around since the early 80s and still feel timeless says everything you need to know.

the red shoes (1948)

the red shoes is about a young ballerina named victoria page who becomes the star of an elite ballet company run by a brilliant but controlling director who believes true artists must sacrifice everything for their work, especially love. when victoria falls in love with a composer in the company, she’s pulled between her desire for human connection and the overwhelming demands of ballet itself, which the film treats almost like a form of possession or madness. it’s emotional and visually stunning, full of saturated colors, theatrical performances, and the dangers of beauty.

mandylion book editions

mandylion is the exact kind of literary project the internet should be producing more of. i met madeline and mabel at a book event recently and they are lovely! mandylion is deeply researched and historically serious while still feeling playful, stylish, obsessive, and alive. they were founded by two women who met studying chairs in graduate school and i love that they focus on forgotten women writers and the weirdos of the nineteenth century instead of treating literary history like this rigid untouchable canon. even the way they describe themselves, based between new york, connecticut, and the fourth dimension, captures that same slightly chaotic intellectual girl energy i love so much. the books themselves feel beautiful and intimate and personal, like literary objects you actually want to carry around with you. their podcast and newsletter approach nineteenth century history and makes it feel current and relevant instead of dusty or distant. rigorous research plus gossip is honestly the perfect formula.

emily dawn long shirts

emily!! everything has this very specific downtown handmade feeling to it like someone spent hours dyeing fabric in their apartment kitchen or crocheting something slightly strange and perfect while listening to music at 1am. i think that’s why people become so emotionally attached to her pieces. they feel personal. lived in already. a little messy in the best way. even when celebrities wear her stuff it still feels niche and cool. the wanda hat became this weird, recognizable, playful, slightly art school, impossible not to stare at thing, but i’m most obsessed with her shirts, specifically her spoiled boys collection.

rhi dancey shirts

hot weird girls making art and clothes and community together. the patchwork fabrics and mesh and handmade pieces feel very diy in the best way, like something you’d find at a party in berlin at 2am and think about for the next six months. i also love that she does workshops and creative meetups as well. read more about her here.

get golden bars

this means a lot to me as someone who did ballet for 18 years because jenelle talks about dance in a way that resonates so deeply. ballet teaches you how to keep going no matter what. through injuries, exhaustion, instability, all while making everything look effortless from the outside. so hearing her speak openly about navigating ehlers-danlos and chronic injuries while still performing professionally is inspiring. you can feel that her interest in health and nutrition came from years of trying to understand and care for a body that had been pushed past its limits for so long. bonus points for tasting delicious. i’ve only tried the bars, but i need to try her protein next.

biena edamame snacks

perfect no matter where you are. subway. in your tote bag. half awake at the airport. running around the city all day. a crunchy salty little snack that make your life easier. the sea salt ones especially have me emotionally attached.

camper shoes—specifically the nina and casi myra

camper shoes are genuinely the most comfortable shoes in the entire world to me. like suspiciously insanely comfortable. the kind of shoes you can walk 10+ miles around new york in and somehow your feet still don’t hate you after. i’m obsessed with the right nina flats and the casi myra flats. they’re equally perfect. i swear once you start wearing camper shoes it becomes impossible to go back to uncomfortable shoes again.

iris silver mist

iris silver mist is one of the most haunting perfumes i’ve ever smelled. it smells cold. rooty. metallic. like wet earth underneath snow and the inside of an old cathedral at the same time. the iris in this fragrance is raw and ghostly like the actual flower being ripped from the ground with dirt still clinging to it. a cold silver fog of iris and incense and woods, but the longer it sits on skin the softer and stranger it becomes. i’m genuinely obsessed with it because it smells deeply melancholic, like the perfume version of an old european ballet school in winter.

spells of magic calming princess potion

if you know, you know.

first bloom coming to nyc

bringing first bloom to nyc feels like one of the most exciting thigs to happen this year. first bloom already has this very specific dreamy grocery store energy. beautiful pantry staples, anchovies and beans and little snacks and wine and things you suddenly convince yourself you absolutely need. but it also feels tied to her whole philosophy around cooking and home and making ordinary life feel more romantic. i think that’s why people are so obsessed with this entire world she’s built around taste and hospitality and the idea that grocery shopping can actually feel inspiring. also something about an alison roman grocery store in brooklyn just feels cosmically correct to me.

bonjout beauty le balm

a french pharmacy delicacy and dense little miracle balm in a tiny jar that replaces half your routine. i also love that it’s a solid serum because it feels so tactile and comforting, like the kind of thing you’d keep beside your bed and use constantly without even thinking about it. the appeal to me is that they’re less focused on anti-aging and more focused on skin that looks nourished and calm and alive instead of overexfoliated and stressed out.

i think part of building a meaningful life is learning how to pay attention and develop taste slowly. to care deeply about small things. collect beautiful and interesting fragments of the world instead of letting everything blur together into noise.

hopefully this becomes a small place for that.

okay, that’s all for today.

i love you.

bye.

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

i grew up inside studios and dressing rooms that smelled like hairspray, sweat, rosin dust, and old fabric. i grew up beneath fluorescent lights and wall-length mirrors and the mechanical sound of cheap plug-in fans struggling to cool overheated rehearsal rooms in the middle of july. i grew up sitting on marley floors stretching beside girls i idolized and feared at the same time. girls with perfect feet and protruding collarbones and tightly slicked buns and water bottles filled with coffee instead of food.

i hate the way ballet is aestheticized now because it feels so disconnected from the reality i knew. soft pink ribbons and matching sets and beautiful clean studios flooded with natural light. elegance and delicacy without obsession. ballet as something graceful and feminine and aspirational, which of course the illusion we create to mask our reality.

ballet during that era of the late 90s and early 2000s is the world i grew up in and i believe it created an entirely different psychological experience than what younger dancers are entering into today. the body culture was merciless. everybody had eating disorders, nobody got their period, and starvation became normalized. girls survived on coffee, apples, gum, cigarettes and diet coke while dancing for six hours a day.

i remember learning very young that my body was no longer fully mine.

it belonged to instructors and directors and mirrors and casting decisions and costume fittings and numbers scribbled down onto scales. your body became public property the moment you entered serious ballet training. something constantly being assessed, corrected, and compared against the bodies of everyone else in the room. ballet has always operated through implication, atmosphere, silence. you understood instinctively which girls were favored and which girls were “too big,” even if nobody explicitly used those words aloud. they did.

the rest of this newsletter is for paid subscribers.

i write about the psychological aftermath of growing up inside competitive ballet culture: the eating disorders, obsession, pain tolerance, beauty, perfectionism, body image, and the grief of loving an art form that permanently alters the way you exist inside yourself. i also write about the emotional burden of leaving ballet behind, the intimacy of dancers’ lives backstage, and why former ballerinas seem to carry ballet with them forever.

thank you for being here and supporting my work.

join my bookclub :)

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

Read more

girlhood lives inside bedrooms.

diaries with bent spines and half finished thoughts written at 2am. junk drawers overflowing with old movie tickets, lip gloss caps, friendship bracelets, receipts from places that mattered for reasons nobody else would understand. vanities cluttered with perfumes and jewelry and tiny objects that feel emotionally catastrophic to throw away. shoe boxes shoved beneath beds carrying entire emotional histories inside them. miniature museums.

a girl’s bedroom is one of the last sacred places left in modern life.

and the internet will never fully understand the gravity of a girl lying on her bedroom floor staring at the ceiling while music plays through cheap speakers thinking about her future. it will never understand the emotional architecture of sleepovers, sharing secrets in the dark, group chats exploding at midnight, trying on outfits with your friends before parties, documenting your life obsessively because some instinct deep inside you already knows these years are disappearing while you are living them.

girlhood is archival.

girls save things. we document everything. screenshots, notes app confessions, journals, letters, perfume bottles we cannot throw away because they still smell like a specific version of ourselves. we keep evidence of who we were because part of us understands that identity is fragile and temporary and worth preserving.

i think that instinct is beautiful.

and i think the female interior world is beautiful.

it’s one of the most emotionally intelligent spaces that exists socially and culturally and i’m tired of watching people flatten it into something shallow.

people love mocking girls while simultaneously consuming everything girls create.

they ridicule softness while stealing its aesthetics constantly. they dismiss femininity while entire industries are built around reproducing and profiting off female desire. they act as though girlhood is frivolous and naive while depending entirely on women to make culture feel emotionally alive in the first place

the internet’s discomfort with the word girlhood says something much darker about how our culture responds to visible femininity because why does every joyful thing women create eventually become embarrassing?

why does every sincere female experience eventually become discourse?

and why are women expected to abandon softness the second they become adults as if maturity and tenderness are somehow incompatible things?

i don’t want to outgrow girlhood.

and i don’t think women should have to.

girlhood was never about refusing to become a woman. it was about carrying your inner world with you instead of abandoning her for survival.

the girl inside me is very much still there and she still loves diaries and perfume and dressing for the female gaze and nostalgia and reorganizing bookshelves and saving tiny meaningless objects that somehow feel emotionally enormous.

i hope she never leaves.

i think women deserve to nourish that part of themselves forever.

comfort her.

let her come out and play sometimes.

because there is nothing immature or foolish about maintaining wonder and sentimentality. and there’s nothing anti-intellectual about beauty or softness or emotional sincerity despite how badly the internet wants us to believe otherwise

group chats are proof of this.

the group chat is sacred.

it’s modern collective girlhood archived in real time..

and every girl deserves a place where her thoughts can spill out, a bedroom that feels like a universe, a softness untouched by internet discourse.

girlhood is not an aesthetic trend no matter how badly the algorithm tried to flatten it into one. that’s why people reacted so strongly against the word in the first place because capitalism hates anything that can’t be optimized, monetized, or sexualized.

female friendship is difficult to commercialize because its value exists almost entirely in emotional texture.

and that is exactly why these things matter so much because they remind women that parts of ourselves are still allowed to belong only to us.

girlhood survives in those spaces. stubbornly and forever. and not because women refuse to grow up, but because the girl inside us never deserved to die in the first place.

truly, your support means the world to me and it’s what gives me the capacity to write to you.

join my bookclub :)

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

the best way to reclaim girlhood is through stories and films that hold sorrow and beauty in the same frame. to round out today’s newsletter with a pink satin bow, here are a few books and films that still believe in the power of girlhood in all of its complicated and unpolished glory.

books

my brilliant friend by elena ferrante
set in postwar naples, ferrante’s novel follows elena and lila, two girls whose friendship is defined by competition, devotion, and the desire to escape the limitations of their neighborhood. it’s girlhood as both intimacy and ambitio. the tension between becoming someone and belonging to someone.

milk fed by melissa broder
a twenty-something woman in los angeles, consumed by calorie counting and control, meets a devoutly jewish frozen-yogurt shop worker who upends her understanding of desire, hunger, and faith. broder explores the physical and spiritual dimensions of femininity with humor, irreverence, and raw honesty.

the bluest eye by toni morrison
morrison’s debut examines how beauty standards and internalized racism devastate a young black girl named pecola breedlove, who prays for blue eyes so she can be loved. it’s an unflinching portrait of innocence destroyed by societal cruelty—girlhood made tragic by the world that misreads it.

villette by charlotte brontë
lucy snowe, a solitary englishwoman, leaves home to teach at a girls’ school in a foreign city. brontë captures female interiority with precision, showing how repression, intellect, and loneliness shape a woman’s coming of age.

writers and lovers by lily king
after the death of her mother, casey, a struggling writer in her thirties, navigates grief, debt, and romantic indecision while clinging to her creative ambitions. king portrays adulthood as an extension of girlhood—a search for self-definition that never really ends.

the idiot by elif batuman
selin, a harvard freshman in the 1990s, drifts through early adulthood with intellectual curiosity and social confusion. the novel is both a campus comedy and a meditation on how young women learn to translate thought into feeling, and feeling into action.

films

the virgin suicides (1999)
a suburban neighborhood becomes obsessed with the five lisbon sisters after a family tragedy. coppola captures how girlhood is mythologized and misunderstood, told entirely through the gaze of those who can never truly know it.

picnic at hanging rock (1975)
a group of schoolgirls vanish during a field trip in turn-of-the-century australia. the mystery is never solved, which is the point—girlhood remains elusive, unknowable, something that resists explanation.

marie antoinette (2006)
a young queen learns how desire and excess can become a trap. coppola reimagines marie antoinette not as villain but as a girl coming of age under impossible scrutiny.

lost in translation (2003)
in tokyo, a recent college graduate and an aging actor form a quiet connection that sits somewhere between friendship and longing. coppola examines isolation, intimacy, and what it means to grow up when no one’s watching.

lady bird (2017)
a high school senior in sacramento battles with her mother, dreams of escape, and learns what love looks like when it stops being cinematic. gerwig’s story captures the contradiction of adolescence. self-absorption and tenderness, rebellion and attachment.

okay, that’s all for today. thank you for reading.

what i’ve been experiencing recently is an unbearable kind of loneliness. not the cinematic, poetic solitude people romanticize or the kind accompanied by ambient music and wistful train rides and the illusion that isolation automatically becomes meaningful if it is aesthetically pleasing enough. i mean a humiliating loneliness. a bodily loneliness. the kind that distorts your relationship to yourself and makes existing feel heavy and public and unbearable all at once. it settles into my body so deeply it begins to alter the way i move through the world. my own thoughts become so loud and distorted that even getting ready for the day feels catastrophic. there are mornings where i get dressed in the dark because if i look at myself for too long my mind begins spiraling uncontrollably about all the ways my body is failing me. i become trapped inside myself. i become hyperaware of existing at all.

sometimes i am consumed by the terrifying awareness that i am trapped inside something mortal and unpredictable. that organs fail. brains fail. bodies betray people every single day without warning. i fixate on every ache, change, and unfamiliar sensation as though i am standing at the edge of some invisible collapse waiting for it to finally happen. and once the spiral begins, it becomes almost impossible to return to myself again.

it is exhausting trying to inhabit a mind that cannot stop searching for danger inside the very thing keeping you alive.

and i think loneliness exacerbates all of it. it’s psychologically dangerous spending too much time alone with your own mind, especially when there is nobody there to pull you gently back into reality. loneliness creates an echo chamber where every fear reverberates endlessly without any sort of interruption.

the body was never meant to be witnessed entirely alone. maybe that is part of why isolation feels so destabilizing. there is comfort in another person grounding you back into ordinary life and being reminded that you are a human being instead of a consciousness trapped inside a collapsing body.

one of the biggest misconceptions people have about introverts is that we cannot possibly experience loneliness because we like being alone. but those are two entirely different things. introverts don’t hate humanity. if anything, i think many of us feel things too deeply. one of the reasons people like me love living in new york city so much is because it allows you to be lonely without ever fully being alone. there is comfort in proximity. comfort in overhearing strangers in crowded bookstores and fluorescent diners at midnight and the tenderness of seeing other people continue living around you. the subway alone contains more humanity than some people experience in months. grief sitting beside exhaustion beside someone carrying flowers beside someone falling apart.

but lately i feel ostracized not just from people, but from life itself. like everyone else received some invisible instruction manual for existing that i somehow missed entirely.

i am a shell of a human being sometimes. a half-formed girl trying to fulfill the basic requirements of survival. eating feels difficult. sleeping feels difficult. everything feels difficult when your mind becomes a room you cannot safely inhabit anymore.

and yet despite all of this, i still want connection so badly it hurts.

i want a friend. maybe two or three friends. something small and real and consistent.

i’ve had acquaintances. almost-friendships. those strange fragile connections where you begin feeling the soft possibility of permanence unfolding between you. the kind where you leave conversations thinking maybe this time, this person will stay. maybe this will become something beautiful and ordinary and lasting. but somehow things always dissolve before they fully arrive. people fade. conversations thin out. replies become slower. life continues elsewhere without you inside of it.

and as i’ve gotten older, i’ve started dissecting every interaction like evidence from a crime scene, trying to locate the exact moment i became too much or not enough. i replay conversations constantly wondering where i failed at being human correctly. maybe i’m too intense, too distant. maybe my silence reads as disinterest instead of fear. maybe people can sense how desperately i want to belong somewhere.

i have become very good at masking the parts of myself that feel undesirable. the anxiety. the obsessive thoughts. the awkwardness. the difficulty with small talk. the exhaustion of existing under the constant surveillance of my own mind. i smooth myself out for other people until i become almost unrecognizable to myself.

perhaps that is part of the irony of it all. being loved requires being seen, and i have spent years trying to make myself easier to look at.

the slow death of friendship love is a hyper specific kind of heartbreak. different than romantic heartbreak, but somehow deeper. more intricate. romantic love is allowed rituals. people expect mourning after romance ends. but nobody talks enough about the devastation of friendships fading out slowly over time. how unbearable it feels when someone who once occupied your daily life becomes a stranger carrying pieces of your history.

i begin wondering whether my loneliness exists because i have been unloved, or because i have somehow never fully learned how to let myself be loved at all.

sometimes i think i am still a teenage girl emotionally. still wondering what it feels like to have a crush. what it feels like to be desired and chosen naturally instead of incidentally. what it feels like to kiss somebody without fear and self-consciousness swallowing the entire experience whole.

what does it feel like to live without this constant existential heaviness pressing against your ribs?

i don’t know.

my problem is not that i want to die. my problem is that i want to live so badly. i want to experience life in the way other people seem to. lightly. naturally. i want friendship and softness and love and warmth and ordinary human connection. i want mornings that do not begin with dread. i want my body to feel like a home instead of a haunted house.

instead i feel trapped inside an endless cycle of paralysis. numbness followed by panic followed by brief moments of hope followed by collapse again. an infinite directionless sprint toward something i cannot even name anymore. freedom maybe. friendship. love. peace. some proof that i am still a person.

sometimes i dream about people i’ve never met before. in those dreams i feel a kind of closeness that almost resembles heaven. tenderness and intimacy. and then i wake up and the silence rushes back in immediately. the void. the awful weight of returning to myself again.

is this hunger?

i don’t know.

i only know this cannot be what living is supposed to feel like.

loneliness is an open sea. vast and endless and indifferent. everyone else seems to know instinctively how to keep themselves afloat while i am swallowing saltwater trying desperately to understand what survival is supposed to look like.

and maybe that is all this has ever been really. i want to know what it feels like to move through life without constantly bracing for abandonment. what it feels like to be held gently by the world instead of merely surviving inside of it.

but right now i am sinking.

and i still do not know how to swim.

during the warmer months, everything slows down except love. we’re looking for it, swiping for it, manifesting it, performing it, but nobody is inhabiting it. the ache is still there—the animal longing for warmth and intimacy.

i think what people crave about relationships isn’t being in love. it’s the becoming of it. the friendship before the romance and the way connection used to stretch itself out like a story you never wanted to end.

modern dating has made yearning feel obsolete. we talk about chemistry like it’s supposed to be instant. people fall in love inside of lasting, meaningful conversations and in the pauses between words. now the pause is gone. and we’re tired because we’ve lost the ability to love slowly.

when i think about love, i don’t imagine the perfect relationship or the perfect person. i think about patience, tolerance, the willingness to sit in the uncertainty. friendship is where love learns how to breathe. because without it, everything feels temporary.

all momentum, no depth.

sometimes i daydream about a different time. handwritten notes, seeing someone once a week and thinking about them for six days straight. i know the fantasy leaves out the misery of the good old days. but we’re not nostalgic for the gender politics or the repression. we crave the pace. the long ache of anticipation.

do you crave lasting love? think about friendship and how the way every love worth keeping begins in a space that isn’t romantic yet, where you learn someone before you start wanting them. that’s the step we’ve skipped. and maybe the step that could save us.

plato said love begins in admiration while aristotle thought friendship was the highest form of it because it sought the good of the other for their own sake. what they both understood is that love is a discipline of perception. it trains you to see another person as real, separate, equal, unknowable. that’s why friendship matters. it’s the school of love before the desire to possess distorts the lesson.

modern love has forgotten that love is a way of knowing. when everything is accelerated, we stop perceiving. we no longer meet people, we categorize them. dating apps don’t destroy romance because they’re digital. they destroy it because they promise certainty, but certainty is the opposite of love. love requires risk, ambiguity, the possibility that you’ll misread the signs and still show up anyway.

the rest of this newsletter is for paid subscribers.
through plato, longing, old forms of courtship, and the philosophy of eros, i write about uncertainty, yearning, and what it means to study someone slowly instead of consuming them instantly. i’m also sharing some books that feel relevant to our essay.

thank you for being here and supporting my work.

join my bookclub :)

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

Read more

mother’s day is usually presented as something to celebrate—a relationship that fits neatly into the shape of the day. and while that’s true for some people, it’s worth acknowledging that having a mother you can call, sit with, or buy for isn’t always guaranteed.

for a lot of people this day brings up grief, distance, resentment—things that don’t resolve just because there’s a holiday for them. not every relationship with a mother becomes easier over time, and sometimes it stays complicated, or unresolved in ways that don’t translate into anything that feels celebratory.

and because of that, the day can be anxiety inducing at best.

i wrote an essay titled womanhood is the process of becoming your mother and i hope it will resonate with you no matter the circumstances. it’s about the moment your mother stops being a fixed idea and becomes a person. flawed, shaped by her own history, and harder to judge in simple terms. and it’s about how womanhood isn’t something you arrive at alone, but something you come to understand through that reckoning.

in any case, today’s letter is a gift guide. a small, specific set of things that feel genuinely worth giving, whether that’s to your mother, a mother figure, or even to yourself.

and i want to start with books…

this post is free for you

truly, your support means the world to me and it’s what gives me the capacity to write to you.

join my bookclub :)

nyrb book

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

to mom, with love…

books

the glass essay by anne carson
a long poem reflecting on the poet’s relationship with her mother, weaving in themes of love, loss, and emily brontë.

of woman born by adrienne rich
the institution of motherhood, its complexities, and the ambivalence inherent in the mother-child relationship.

motherhood by sheila heti
thoughts on deciding whether to become a mother. obsessive, circular, philosophical. she turns the question over and over until it starts to feel less like a choice and more like a condition of being alive.

beloved by toni morrison
a haunting narrative about motherhood, memory, and the sacrifices made in the name of love and survival.

life's work by rachel cusk
early motherhood as raw, specific, and often uncomfortable in the way it refuses to idealize the experience. it captures the loss of self, the physical reality of it, and the strange recalibration of identity that follows.

boulder by eva baltasar
a woman who never wanted to be a mother finds herself pulled into it through love. it captures the tension between what it means to love someone and still feel yourself disappearing.

fragrances

for nights out and feeling like yourself again
frederic malle portrait of a lady. deep, rose heavy, unmistakably beautiful. this is the one you wear when you want to remember you’re still you.

for sleep / the bed itself
frederic malle rose linen spray. clean, soft, romantic. makes the entire room feel like a luxury.

for everyday softness
molecule 01 + iris. close to the skin, almost invisible. the kind of scent that feels like warmth and being enveloped by clean bedsheets.

sleep (the most sought after gift)

hand & body
l’occitane shea butter hand cream + lavender pillow mist. nostalgic, comforting, familiar, perfect.

sheets
piglet in bed linen bedding. slightly rumpled, soft, lived in. makes sleep feel better before you even get into bed.

pajamas (splurge + perfect basic)
anthropologie top and bottoms (something soft, slightly romantic)
gap top and bottoms (the best simple sets. reliable, comfortable, always good)

for winding down
hatch alarm. gentle light, sound, routine. makes nights feel intentional again.

beauty sleep, literally
slip silk pillowcase. one of those things people don’t buy for themselves but love having.

the softest blanket
lola blankets for the most long reading sessions on the couch or getting cozy in bed.

beauty + small luxuries

hair & care
davines for elevated hair, it smells incredible, and works wonders. shampoo, styling cream, and texture spray.

old new york essentials
c.o. bigelow for lip balms, brushes, small things that feel special.

(pair with a copy of anything carolyn bessette-kennedy adjacent and you’re set.)

little luxuries
eadem lip gloss in fig sauce
aesop hand cream, specifically the blue one

atmosphere (candles, soap, the things that make room feel lived in)

these are the things no one really thinks to ask for, but they’re the ones that make a space feel like it belongs to you.

hand soap
le labo basil. for the kitchen. green, clean, slightly sharp.
le labo hinoki. for the bathroom. warm, woody, meditative.

candles
maison louis marie, bois de balencourt. understated, soft, consistently good. the kind of candle you burn daily without overthinking it.
trudon gabriel. heavier, more atmospheric. this is the one you light in the evening when you want the entire room to shift into something cozier.

amoln sleepless candle. the most beautiful cozy lavender scent.

incense
aesop kagerou incense. dry, earthy, addictive. sarashina, too.

bags (practical but still chic)

a forever tote
marsell oversized zip tote that holds everything and still looks good. the ideal work & life bag. talked about this tote and i haven’t stopped thinking about it since. maybe number one on my wishlist?

something softer, more nostalgic
vera bradley. light, patterned, easy. my mom owns this one :)

the classic
longchamp le pliage. iconic for a reason. durable, lightweight, and it zips.

clothes

the dress
every mother deserves a dôen dress. billowy, romantic, the kind of piece that makes getting dressed feel nice again. or the classic henri top.

easy staples
gap. oversized button down, classic hoodie, and the softest sweater.

jewelry

catbird girl forever and ever
painters or buttercup ring
a dainty collar necklace
my wishlist necklace

there isn’t a single version of motherhood that this day can hold.

for some, it’s easy to celebrate. for others, it’s something more complicated. and for a lot of people, it’s everything all at once.

this guide is just a way of offering small gestures that can either be given or kept. things that make a day feel a little more intentional, whatever shape it takes.

okay, that’s all for today.

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

for this weeks report, i decided to share my april favorites: books, films, media, music, fragrances, beauty, clothes, snacks, etc etc. then i’ll share recent media consumption per usual filled with interesting and thought provoking articles, video essays, podcasts to keep you company throughout the week.

before we get into today’s free letter, i’d like to share a quick word from today’s sponsor, suri ~

also! quick note—today is the last day to enter the spring giveaway. if you’ve been thinking about becoming a paid subscriber, now is the time. entry is open to all paid subscribers, and i put together something really thoughtful or you (books, candles, perfumes, a few personal pieces). details are in this post if you want more info. subscribe below to enter :)

i’ve always thought oral care was one of those things that should feel simple but somehow never is. every toothbrush i’ve owned has either been clunky, died too fast, or turned into this weird collection of features i never asked for like apps, modes, notifications.

my mom is a dentist, which means i grew up with very strong opinions about brushing (whether i wanted them or not), and she’s the first person i asked before agreeing to this. she actually likes it, which, if you knew her standards, says everything.

what i noticed immediately is how uncomplicated it feels. it’s powerful, but not aggressive, and you get that really clean, post-dentist feeling.

And there are little details about this toothbrush that make it better over time: the battery lasts forever (i’ve stopped thinking about charging it entirely), the design actually looks good sitting out, and the travel case uses UV-C cleaning, which feels like one of those things you didn’t know you needed until you have it.

it’s also just nicer to live with. There’s no mess on the sink, no bulky charging situation, nothing extra. it feels intentional in a way most everyday things don’t.

if you’ve been wanting to simplify your routine but still want something that actually works, this is one of those things that lives up to it.

you can use my code CAITLYN for 15% off if you want to try it. i’ll link it here

and now, let’s get into today’s letter…

books

we by yevgeny zamyatin follows d-503, an engineer designing a spaceship to export the one state’s system where nothing is private, everything is scheduled, and even your thoughts are meant to be transparent. even intimacy is regulated. at the start, d-503 believes this is the highest form of human life. but what shifts is his encounter with i-330, who pulls him into a world outside that structure with secret meetings, alcohol, sex without permission, unpredictability. he doesn’t become a clean revolutionar, he becomes unstable and can’t reconcile what he’s been taught with what he’s feeling. he writes these diary entries which start precise and mathematical and then breaks down the way he is in real life. this book is not just “control vs freedom”, it shows how disorienting freedom actually is when you’ve been trained to fear it, and how easy it is to want to return to something simpler, even if it erases you.

worsted by garielle lutz is made up of short stories that center on a specific interaction between people, usually in some kind of relationship. a conversation, a breakup, a moment of tension that never fully gets addressed. lutz zooms in on the exact wording of things, how someone phrases a sentence, what they choose not to say, or how a response lands slightly wrong. you start to realize how much of connection depends on tiny, fragile details. even when people are trying to be clear, they misunderstand each other or they say something that creates distance instead of closeness. it makes you hyper aware of how often communication fails.

memoirs of a woman doctor by nawal el saadawi follows a woman from childhood into adulthood as she becomes a doctor in egypt, but the focus is really on how she experiences being a woman at every stage of her life. as a child, she notices the difference in how boys and girls are treated and starts rejecting anything associated with femininity because it feels limiting. in school and medical training, she leans into logic, science, and detachment as a way to be taken seriously. when she enters relationships and marriage, she realizes those roles come with expectations that feel just as restrictive as what she tried to escape. the book tracks how she slowly separates herself from those expectations and how she questions love, dependence, even her own emotional responses. it shows how she gains clarity and control over her own life, but also what she loses in the process.

fragrance

hayal by katana parfums wears like a bowl of jasmine rice pudding. soft, warm, slightly nutty, with that milky sweetness that sits close to the skin. the florals don’t feel sharp or perfumey, they dissolve into vanilla and amber and give you a cozy enveloping scent to nestled into.

vanille planifolia extrait 21 by guerlain is a structured vanilla, deep, smooth, and held together by spice and amber so it never tips into sugar. it smells expensive in that controlled, polished way, where everything feels intentional. it’s one of the best vanillas i’ve tried. the caveat? price is… yikes.

monstera by xinu is green in a way that feels almost photographic—wet leaves, broken stems, humid air. there’s a faint sweetness underneath, but it’s mostly about texture. it smells like being inside an overgrown garden where everything is alive and slightly overripe, right before rain.

utilykt by fischersund smells like cold air, salt, moss, something mineral. it’s very outdoors, very open. like standing near the ocean on a grey day, or that hush right before snow.

hexensalbe by stora skuggan opens sharp with black licorice, wormwood, then settles into something thicker and stranger with tuberose and angelica. there’s something slightly feral about it. it feels less like a “fragrance” and more like something atmospheric worn for a specific mood.

lately i’ve been drawn to scents that are more atmospheric, more tied to feeling than category. the last three especially sit in that space where they’re still wearable, but feel a little more like environments than perfumes.

if you’re curious about sampling you can use my link at scent split for a discount on all samples and full size bottles

films

nausicaä of the valley of the wind takes place in a world where most of the earth has been overtaken by a toxic forest filled with giant insects, and the remaining human societies are either trying to destroy it or survive around it. nausicaä is a princess who studies the forest, experiments with its plants, and realizes it isn’t simply a threat but part of a larger system trying to heal the planet. as other nations try to weaponize what’s left of the old world, she’s caught between violence and understanding. what makes it so good is how it reframes the conflict—not humans vs nature, but humans refusing to understand the thing keeping them alive.

violet evergarden follows violet after the war, when she leaves the military and starts working as a ghostwriter composing letters for people who can’t put their feelings into words. she was raised as a weapon, so she doesn’t actually know what emotions feel like, even though she’s constantly surrounded by them. each episode centers on a different client, a dying mother, a soldier, someone in love, and through writing their letters, she starts to understand what people mean when they say things like “i love you.”

persepolis traces marjane satrapi’s childhood in iran during the islamic revolution and the years after, showing how quickly everyday life becomes political. as a kid, she’s outspoken, rebellious, and trying to make sense of what she’s being told versus what she sees happening around her. the film follows her into adolescence and then into exile in europe, where she feels just as out of place in a different way. what makes it hit is how specific it is. small moments, family conversations, personal choices. but those moments are always shaped by something much larger happening around her.

beauty and home fragrance

the most perfect fig colored lip gloss

the best brow pencil i’ve ever tried

candles from maison louis marie, especially bois de balencourt (a creamy sandalwood), vanille infinie (a soft cozy vanilla), and aboukir (jasmine, cedarwood, and vetiver)

a most aesthetic timeless lipstick with the perfect spring/summer nude color

things i wore and cozy home essentials

the coziest blanket i’ve ever owned

the most comfortable ballet flats i’ve ever worn

a cozy brown sweater from gap that makes me feel like i’m in a nora ephron film and will live permanently in my fall/winter rotation

music

lots of bossa nova

ichiko aoba

green-house

sleepy folk

as promised, this newsletter is free.

i’m sharing articles, video essays, and podcasts that i’ve consumed recently. things to keep you company on sunday and scratch an intellectual itch in your brain.

truly, your support means the world to me and it’s what gives me the capacity to write to you.

join my bookclub :)

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

media consumption

articles

well soon find out what is truly special about human writing
this sits with the idea that writing has always implied a person behind it someone who meant the words and could stand by them. with ai, that assumption starts to break because the words can exist without anyone actually thinking or risking anything. it suggests what might end up mattering most isn’t the quality of the writing but the presence of a mind behind it.
psyche

how to be more cultured
being “cultured” isn’t really about consuming more it’s about paying attention differently. less trying to keep up, more returning to things, noticing patterns, letting taste develop over time instead of performing it.
the new york times

ghost notes
this is about the faint traces things leave behind digital, emotional, sonic. the idea that not everything disappears cleanly, and that absence often still carries a kind of presence. it lingers on what stays even after something is gone.
real life

the role of literature as the key to personal freedom
literature isn’t just about stories it expands what you’re able to think and imagine. the argument is that reading creates a kind of internal freedom by exposing you to other perspectives and ways of being that you wouldn’t encounter otherwise.
aeon

where brains process smell
smell is processed differently from the other senses, tied more directly to memory and emotion. it explains why certain scents feel immediate and almost impossible to separate from feeling they don’t pass through the same filters as everything else.
nautilus

if we avoid sadness in life why do we seek it in art
this gets at the strange comfort of sad music, films, and books. in real life we avoid sadness, but in art it becomes something we can move through safely, even find meaning in. it turns emotion into something contained and almost clarifying.
psyche

the centuries long quest for the scent of god
this traces the idea that scent could be a way of accessing the divine, from religious rituals to philosophical speculation. smell becomes something more than sensory it’s tied to memory, transcendence, and the attempt to reach something beyond language.
noema

the things that fuel our dreams
dreams aren’t random they’re built from memory, emotion, and fragments of daily life. the piece looks at how the brain pulls from what you’ve experienced and reshapes it into something unfamiliar but still connected.
nautilus

the mysticism of nietzsches doctrine of the eternal return
eternal return isn’t just a thought experiment it has this almost spiritual weight to it. the idea that you would have to live your life over and over again forces a different kind of confrontation with how you’re living now.
aeon

visualizing migraines
historical diagrams of migraines turn something internal into something visible jagged shapes, distortions, patterns. they make pain look almost aesthetic while also showing how hard it is to fully capture what’s happening inside the body.
public domain review

why is everyone wiping their instagram grids
people are clearing their feeds as a way of resetting how they’re seen. it’s less about aesthetics and more about control choosing what version of yourself stays visible and what gets erased.
dazed

how to put yourself online
this is about the tension between visibility and privacy. sharing your work means being seen but also being interpreted, flattened, or misunderstood. it frames being online as something you have to decide how to navigate, not just participate in.
the creative independent

so am i a writer yet
this gets into that uncomfortable middle space where you’re doing the work but don’t fully feel like the thing yet. it suggests that identity doesn’t arrive all at once it builds slowly through repetition and doubt.
the creative independent

how to wander free and easy through life by being useless
this pushes against the idea that everything has to be productive. there’s a kind of freedom in doing things without purpose, letting time pass without trying to optimize it into something.
psyche

how to use self talk to clarify your thinking and emotions
talking to yourself isn’t just a habit it can actually help organize thoughts and make emotions more legible. putting things into words, even privately, changes how you understand them.
psyche

scents in colour smell in art
this looks at how artists have tried to represent scent through visual work, translating something invisible into color, texture, and atmosphere. it’s less about accuracy and more about evoking a feeling you recognize without being able to name it.
apollo

video essays

podcasts

okay, that’s all for today. thank you for reading!

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

milk fed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

wanting isn’t constant, it’s tidal. wading into water that never stays the same.

we are taught to believe that desire should be stable, directional, and legible. that if you want something enough, you will want it the same way every day. or that purpose should feel like a straight line, not a shoreline that redraws itself twice daily. anxiety emerges in the intervals and in the hours when the tide recedes and we are left with the exposed floor of ourselves, uncertain and unremarkable. we call this loss of desire confusion or failure. but it is neither. it is the structure of our existence.

to think of desire as tidal is to accept its rhythm rather than resist it. the ocean doesn’t apologize for its withdrawal or interpret its own ebb as a lack of commitment to the shore. it leaves, and it returns the way it always has.

what we often misname as inconsistency is simply the body’s refusal to sustain a feeling beyond its natural duration. even love reveals itself differently when observed honestly. it swells. it recedes. it’s sometimes imperceptible, and then suddenly undeniable again. the insistence that love must remain at its peak in order to be real has done more damage than love itself ever could. it sets us against our own interior rhythms, making us suspicious of the moments that do not feel like intensity.

desire is something closer to hunger—a constant reaching that could never be fully satisfied because its function was not to end, but to continue. for him, desire was suffering precisely because it could not resolve into permanence. but we can interpret this in a different way. if desire is endless, it’s not because it fails, but because it is structured to move. it exists in motion, not conclusion.

and motion, by nature, is cyclical.

there is loneliness that accompanies the low tide of desire. is this all there is? is this enough?

in these moments, desire becomes more consuming and begins to take shape as a feeling of lack. a subtle pull outward.

this is where desire shifts from the personal to the existential. the desire for purpose, transcendence, and for a life that feels aligned with something beyond immediate satisfaction. it’s not always clear what is being sought after, and usually we don’t know.

i don’t know.

but i do know that what is present is insufficient.

to feel this restlessness is not a flaw but a condition of being human. it signals a misalignment between the finite life we are living and the infinite sense of possibility we carry within us. desire, in this sense, becomes a bridge between what is and what could be. it is not simply about wanting more, it’s about sensing that more exists at all.

but even this desire does not sustain itself indefinitely. it, too, recedes.

there are stretches of life where purpose feels distant, and the urgency to become something dissolves into the mundanity of our daily routine. these periods are often interpreted as stagnation or a loss of direction. but if desire is tidal, then these are not failures of ambition. they are necessary withdrawals.

the ocean can’t remain at high tide, not because it lacks force, but because its movement depends on contrast. without the pull back, there is no surge forward.

to live well, then, is not to eliminate these fluctuations, but to understand them and recognize that the absence of desire is not emptiness, but preparation.

the shoreline must be exposed in order to be reshaped.

i fall into the temptation of filling these intervals in an attempt to force desire back into place through distraction and consumption and the simulation of wanting. but it leaves me dry and shallow, sitting in a filthy pile of a half-lived existence. true desire cannot be manufactured on command. it arrives when it arrives, often after a period of silence that feels, at the time, like nothing at all.

desire is not something we possess, but something we participate in. it is not a fixed state, but a recurring event. it moves through us, leaves us, returns to us, shaping us in the process. we are not meant to feel it constantly. we are meant to be changed by its coming and going.

to want something deeply is to be carried toward it, but also away from it, over and over again. to live with desire, then, is to accept both directions—the pull and the release, the fullness and the stillness, the certainty and the doubt.

it means standing at the edge of the water and understanding that the tide is not leaving you.

it’s only turning.

books to read if you want to feel as pretty as the ocean

(jules i love you forever)

the sea, the sea by iris murdoch
a retired theater director retreats to a remote house by the sea, intending to live a life of discipline and simplicity, but becomes increasingly consumed by obsession when a woman from his past reappears. the ocean presses in on everything. restless, indifferent, almost watchful, mirroring his spiraling thoughts as memory, desire, and self-deception distort reality into something unsettling and unhinged.

the mermaid of black conch by monique roffey
a cursed mermaid is pulled from the ocean by fishermen and gradually transformed back into a woman, but she exists uneasily between two worlds. the novel unfolds slowly and lyrically, tracing her fragile connection to the man who shelters her, while the sea remains a constant, haunting presence, something she longs for, something that still claims her.

the waves by virginia woolf
told through six interwoven voices, the novel follows a group of friends across their lives, but dissolves traditional plot into a rhythmic flow of consciousness. their identities blur and overlap as time moves forward, structured by the recurring presence of the sea, which shapes the book’s form and creates a sense of life as something fluid, cyclical, overwhelming.

bluets by maggie nelson
written in numbered fragments, this book traces an obsessive meditation on the color blue as a way of thinking through love, loss, and longing. the narrative circles itself, never fully resolving, creating a drifting, hypnotic effect where emotion accumulates slowly, like waves returning to the same shore.

circe by madeline miller
the novel follows circe, a minor goddess exiled to a remote island, where she develops her powers in isolation while encountering gods and mortals who pass through her life. shaped by solitude and the surrounding sea, her story becomes one of transformation and self definition, as she navigates what it means to exist both apart from and entangled with others.

the sound of waves by yukio mishima
set in a small japanese fishing village, the story centers on a young fisherman and his love for a woman whose life is closely watched by their community. the sea governs everything, labor, routine, emotion, and the novel unfolds wit clarity, where human relationships are shaped by the steady, unchanging presence of the ocean.

the hearing trumpet by leonora carrington
an elderly woman is sent to a strange and isolating retirement home, where reality begins to fracture into something surreal and mythic. as she uncovers hidden histories and occult elements, the story drifts into dreamlike territory, blending absurdity with unease until the world itself feels unstable and transformed.

the summer book by tove jansson
a grandmother and her young granddaughter spend time together on a small island, moving through small, everyday moments shaped by wind, light, and the sea. nothing dramatic happens, but the novel captures subtle emotional shifts between them, as nature becomes a constant presence that both grounds and reshapes their inner lives.

galatea by madeline miller
told from the perspective of a statue brought to life, the story follows galatea as she exists under the control of the man who created her. confined and watched, she begins to understand the limits of her existence, creating a tense, restrained exploration of autonomy, power, and what it means to claim a self.

the penelopiad by margaret atwood
penelope recounts her life and marriage to odysseus from the underworld, accompanied by the chorus of maids who were executed in her absence. their voices weave through the narrative, reframing the myth into something darker and more ambiguous, where power, silence, and survival take on a haunting, unresolved quality.

autobiography of red by anne carson
a modern retelling of an ancient myth, the novel follows geryon, a winged red boy, as he moves through childhood, desire, and loss. told in poetic fragments, the story feels both distant and intimate, stripping myth down into something raw and emotional, where identity and longing exist in a state of constant transformation.

the rest of this newsletter is for paid subscribers.

if the first part of this piece focused on recommendations and atmosphere, this section goes a step further. i’ve pulled a small selection of passages from these books and expanded on why they’ve stayed with me and how they connect to the oceanic, haunting tone i’ve been describing. this is less about summary and more about how to read these works on a deeper level. i’ve also included a second set of more niche recommendations—the kinds of books that feel more personal, a little harder to get into, but ultimately more rewarding. and finally, i’m integrating a small selection of perfumes that carry the same feeling as this essay. scents that feel oceanic without being literal, that mirror the same sense of depth, distance, and immersion. if you’re interested in not just what to read, but how to experience these books more fully through language, atmosphere, and even scent, this section is meant to give you that.

truly, your support means the world to me and it’s what gives me the capacity to write to you.

join my bookclub :)

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

Read more

i’m bringing the book club back this month with a new pick and a little more structure going forward. (also a fun giveaway below!!)

our first read was the idiot by dostoevsky, which i still really love, but i realize it’s also a pretty intense place to start. so for may, i want to shift into something a little more approachable. still thoughtful and literary, just easier to step into.

so i’m putting the next book up for a vote.

(we will be reading east of eden this summer)

here are the options:

the passion according to g.h. by Clarice Lispector

a woman enters her maid’s room and has a deeply unsettling encounter that unravels her sense of self. what follows is a philosophical meditation on identity, the body, god, and what it means to exist, written in a way that feels more like entering a mind than following a story.

my brilliant friend by Elena Ferrante

a story of two girls growing up in naples, tracing their intense, complicated friendship through childhood and adolescence. it explores ambition, jealousy, intimacy, and the way another person can shape who you become.

the hearing trumpet by Leonora Carrington

a 90 year old woman is sent to a strange retirement home where things quickly turn surreal and absurd. what begins as a quiet displacement becomes a bizarre, feminist, and darkly funny exploration of power, aging, and rebellion.

convenience store woman by Sayaka Murata

a woman who has never quite fit into society finds comfort in the strict routines of working at a convenience store. when pressured to live a more conventional life, she begins to question whether normalcy is something worth performing at all.

the book club is simple: one book a month, space to read at your own pace, and a place to talk about it if you want to.

if you’ve been meaning to join, this is a good time. join my bookclub here :)

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

i’m also doing a spring giveaway.

there will be two winners! each will receive a small collection of things i love right now:

-a few of my favorite books

-candles

-perfumes i’ve been wearing constantly

-and some small, sentimental pieces i’ve been holding onto

it’s just something to say thank you for being here and reading along.

details on how to enter are below.

—

that’s it for this month. a new book, a softer pace, and something a little more intentional.

can’t wait to see what you pick.

giveaway details

-this giveaway is open to paid subscribers only (monthly or annual)

-one winner will receive a bundle including fragrances, books, and a few miscellaneous/ sentimental items i love

-one winner will also receive a fully comped annual subscription to milk fed

how to enter

-no extra steps required — if you’re a paid subscriber, you’re automatically entered

-if you upgrade to a paid subscription during the giveaway window, you’ll be included as well

timeline

-entries close on friday may 1st

-winners will be randomly selected and notified by email shortly after

notes

-open to subscribers 18+

-shipping available (us only)

-this giveaway is not sponsored

okay, that’s all for today! <3

thank you for being here

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more

)

money is one of the most emotionally charged subjects we carry. it’s not just a matter of income or expense, it’s something bound up with memory, shame, pride, fear, desire, and survival. it shapes how we see ourselves and how we imagine others see us. i would argue that most millennials and gen z were never taught how to speak about money with honesty and without shame. we learned to perform it, avoid it, chase it, or hide from it.

i want to emphasize that this is not an essay about how to budget. nor is it a how-to guide on building wealth. it’s certainly not a lecture about financial perfection or how to invest. this is about something more emotional and long lasting: the art of living well without needing more.

frugal chic is a term coined by mia rose mcgrath (@miarosemcgrath on tiktok). and before hearing this term, i had been slowly shaping this type of lifestyle without knowing how to name it. my goal today is to expand on how the concept has unfolded in my own life, what it looks like, what it feels like, and why it matters. as i’ve gotten older, i’ve prioritized my finances in pursuit of a more frugally chic life and it hasn’t been easy, nor has it been perfect, but i’m learning how to find better sustainability as i navigate through this type of mindset.

before we go further, i must preface this: the ability to choose frugality is a privilege. to romanticize restraint, you need to have your basic needs met. you need time. you need safety. you need access. many people are frugal, not because it’s “elegant” or chic, but because it’s necessary. and that is not a lifestyle trend, that is resilience and it deserves reverence, not repackaging.

what i’m describing here is something else. it’s the decision to step back from overconsumption when you could participate in it (in both minimal and maximal ways). it’s the discipline of enough. it’s the quiet luxury of discernment. frugal chic, at its heart, is not necessarily about having less. it’s about needing less, and feeling full anyway.

this mindset lives in the space between three extremes: overconsumption, deprivation, and guilt. frugal chic is not a rejection of desire, it’s a refinement of it. it’s not performative minimalism, nor is it miserly self-denial. it’s simply the act of being in conversation with your values every time you spend money. it’s taste without trend and elegance without excess and a healthier way of moving through the world.

culturally, this moment makes space for it. we’re seeing deinfluencing and anti-hauls, quiet luxury and recession-core. we’re watching people step away from the pressure to constantly acquire. frugal chic is adjacent to these trends, but it doesn’t rely on performance or aesthetic conformity. it’s not about looking rich, it’s about looking/ feeling like yourself.

it’s not gwyneth paltrow aspirational. it’s more carolyn bessette-kennedy restraint. it’s about wearing the same coat every winter and having a single signature scent. it’s emotional economy, not in the sense of scarcity, but in the sense of knowing what truly holds value.

the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. i explore what frugal chic looks like in everyday life: how it shows up in what we wear, how we eat, the way we shop, and the rituals that shape our days. i’m sharing the practical side of frugal chic. not as a rulebook, but as a way of softening the noise. if you’ve been craving a slower, more intentional way to move through the world, i hope this offers something useful. something grounding. something real.

thank you for being here

join my bookclub :)

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

Read more

i’ve written before about how to approach philosophy, but i wanted to share a quick refresher for anyone who’s curious about the genre, especially if you’re taking on something dense or finally opening that book you’ve been avoiding all year.

i’m not a philosopher, and i didn’t study philosophy formally. i fell into it after finishing my english literature degree when i saw how philosophy sat in the perfect intersection of everything i loved: language, science, literature, and religion. it’s the ideal combination for both an existential crisis and self understanding. a way of seeing the world that makes it feel sharper, stranger, and more alive.

philosophy doesn’t need to be intimidating. it just requires patience, curiosity, and a willingness to be confused. don’t try to understand everything at once. read a few pages at a time and give yourself space to think about them. underline what stands out, write questions in the margins, and let confusion be part of the process instead of a failure. many times i’ll read a sentence, paragraph, page, chapter, or even an entire philosophy book and feel overwhelmingly confused. the biggest thing that helps me is reading the introductions in each book. they’re there to give you context and tell you who the author was responding to and why the ideas mattered in their time. sometimes the introduction will unlock everything. and if it doesn’t, i turn to the internet. youtube, internet archive, stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, etc. use your resources, they are there to help you.

it helps to treat philosophy like dialogue instead of scripture. look up words you don’t know, read summaries afterward to check your understanding, and talk about what you read out loud or in a journal. the goal isn’t to memorize theories or repeat definitions but to learn how to think in new ways. pairing one difficult book with one secondary text or commentary can make the ideas feel grounded instead of abstract. and when you get stuck, move slowly and revisit sections later; it’s normal for things to click days or weeks after reading them. and above all, don’t rush or read to impress anyone. read for clarity and read because it makes the world feel sharper, and because once in a while, a single paragraph will shift the way you see everything.

so with that said, i’ll be sharing some recommendations for books, films, essay, and more to stimulate your brain as we enter into the cold months.

philosophy books that will keep you company through the dead of winter:

holy anorexia by rudolph m. bell
a historical and psychological study of medieval women who starved themselves as a form of religious devotion. the original proanatumblr? bell writes about how self denial and the pursuit of holiness blur the line between sanctity and pathology, raising unsettling questions about the body, faith, and spiritual authority.

saturation project by christine hume
memoir, essay, and criticism that explores how the body processes trauma, desire, and sensory overload. hume blends theory and intimacy to examine what it means to inhabit a female body in a world saturated with noise and memory.

the phenomenology of religious life by martin heidegger
based on his early lectures, heidegger examines how religious experience reveals something essential about existence. this is definitely a challenging read, but fascinating if you like philosophy that moves between theology and phenomenology.

maldoror by lautréamont
a surreal, violent prose poem that rejects morality and religion in favor of absolute rebellion. it’s one of the most extreme and influential texts in modern literature, obsessed with cruelty, beauty, and the collapse of meaning. this was one of my favorite books i’ve read all year. perfect if you love horror and philosophy.

sexual personae by camille paglia
cultural history that connects sexuality, art, and religion from antiquity to modernity. paglia argues that western civilization has always been shaped by tension between the sacred and the erotic. beauty as both divine and dangerous.

specters of marx by jacques derrida
derrida’s response to the end of history narrative after the fall of the soviet union. he argues that marx’s “ghosts” still haunt capitalism, introducing the concept of hauntology: how the past continues to shape our political present.

critique of judgement by immanuel kant
kant explores how we judge beauty and sublimity, linking aesthetics with morality and reason. it’s the cornerstone of modern aesthetics, arguing that our sense of taste reflects a deeper, universal order of the mind.

erotism: death and sensuality by georges bataille
bataille examines the relationship between sexuality, violence, and the sacred, arguing that eroticism is humanity’s confrontation with death. it’s part anthropology, part philosophy, and one of the boldest attempts to define the limits of human experience.

against nature by joris-karl huysmans
the ultimate decadent novel about a reclusive aristocrat who isolates himself to live entirely through art, perfume, and aesthetic control. it’s both a satire of society and a manifesto for artificial beauty over natural life.

the uncanny by sigmund freud
freud dissects why certain experiences provoke a sense of unease. the essay lays the foundation for modern horror, psychoanalysis, and how the familiar becomes terrifying.

in praise of shadows by jun’ichirō tanizaki
tanizaki contrasts japanese and western aesthetics through architecture, light, and texture. he argues that beauty exists in darkness, imperfection, and subtlety. a minimalist philosophy of seeing.

the will to live by arthur schopenhauer
schopenhauer’s core idea is that life is driven by an irrational force he calls “the will,” which causes endless striving and suffering. he offers a bleak but precise account of existence, suggesting art and deep thinking as temporary escape.

no longer human by osamu dazai
a semi autobiographical novel about a man alienated from society and unable to perform normal human emotions. it’s a psychological study of shame, depression, and the breakdown of selfhood in postwar japan. this was the first book i read this year and it became one of my all time favorites.

the tears of eros by georges bataille
written near the end of bataille’s life, this book connects eroticism, art, and death through visual analysis of images from prehistoric cave art to modern photography. it’s his final synthesis of desire as both sacred and destructive.

fear and trembling by soren kierkegaard
kierkegaard uses the story of abraham and isaac to explore faith, ethics, and the paradox of belief. he shows that true faith requires a leap beyond reason. a terrifying but necessary act. another favorite read of this year, and the book that made me fall in love with kierkegaard’s writing.

the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa
a fragmented diary of existential fatigue written by one of pessoa’s many alter egos. it’s a masterpiece about alienation, solitude, and the desire to disappear from one’s own life.

the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. i’ll be sharing the full philosophy syllabus: essays, films, lectures, and a playlist designed to make philosophy feel lived in rather than abstract. it’s everything that pairs with the books above: what to watch, what to listen to, and what to read when you want to think more slowly.

thank you for being here and supporting my girlblog.

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

Read more

the cat distribution system has finally blessed me. if you would like to see the four black kittens i’m currently fostering, check out my latest youtube. they are ridiculously adorable and i love how they look like little baby black bunnies when they hop around all over my room. :)

i will be keeping two.

one of the girls has already stolen my heart and sleeps on my lap anytime i sit down to work. i will name her clarice.

there’s a little boy who is also very squishy and plump and he’s the biggest love bug. i’m having trouble picking a name for him. he feels like a george.

george (gershwin)

(curious) george

jorge (louis borjes)

there’s another little girl and she’s a definitely a lover—the smallest of the liter. i will name her anaïs. anais and clarice love to nestle together in my lap.

lastly, there’s one more boy who i will name henry. he is very playful and very hungry all of the time. he loves to wrestle with his brothers and sisters, but once you hold him, he melts in your arms.

they love to listen to this playlist and their favorite food is salmon and each of them already has a favorite toy. i love them all so much and i don’t know how i’m going to part ways with two of them.

weekly report

reading

women without men – shahrnush parsipur
set in 1950s iran, this follows five women who leave restrictive or unhappy lives and end up living together in a house with a garden. each woman has a specific situation: escaping marriage, prostitution, or family control, and the story shows what happens as they try to live independently.

oblomov – ivan goncharov
this follows ilya oblomov, a man who spends most of his time lying in bed avoiding responsibilities and decisions. his friend tries to help him change, and he briefly considers love and a more active life, but he repeatedly fails to follow through.

after delores – sarah schulman
a woman in new york is dealing with a breakup with her girlfriend delores while working at a bookstore and spending time with friends. at the same time, she becomes involved in figuring out what happened to a missing person.

the gilda stories – jewelle gomez
a young enslaved girl escapes in the 1800s and is taken in by a group of vampires who teach her how to live as one of them. the story follows her across different time periods as she builds relationships and moves through different places over many years.

kissing the witch: old tales in new skins – emma donoghue
a collection of short stories that retell fairy tales like cinderella and snow white. each story changes the original plot to focus on the lives and relationships of the women, often showing connections between female characters.

the penguin book of lesbian short stories – margaret reynolds
a collection of short stories by different authors about relationships between women. the stories vary in setting and plot, including everyday life, romance, and conflict.

worsted – garielle lutz
a collection of short stories focused on people in everyday situations like work, relationships, and conversations. the stories pay close attention to how people speak to each other and the details of their interactions.

therese and isabelle – violette leduc
set in a boarding school, this follows two teenage girls who begin a secret romantic and sexual relationship. the story focuses on their time together at school and how their relationship develops.

odd girls and twilight lovers: a history of lesbian life in twentieth-century america – lillian faderman
a nonfiction history of lesbian life in the united states across the 20th century. it covers real events, social changes, and how women formed relationships and communities over time.

float – anne carson
a collection of separate short pieces packaged as individual booklets, each telling a different story or scene. they include conversations, retellings of myths, and descriptions of specific moments or interactions between people.

eating

more snack plates: envy apples, dates, radishes with butter, olives, herb crackers

blueberry polenta cake with black coffee for breakfast

muesli with cold milk, dried fruits, and brown sugar

homemade spring focaccia

strawberry rhubarb pie with vanilla bean ice cream

playing

famesick by lena dunham (audiobook)

violet evergarden

game of thrones

obsessing

my foster kittens: see above * watch here.

recommending

let me put you on to a few snacks i’ve been loving lately

fruit riot spicy mango is my favorite

baris a newer brand doing frozen chocolatecovered raspberries. the chocolate hazelnut and pistachio flavors are my favorites.

biena roasted edamame perfect savory moment and easy to pack in your tote bag

my loop earplugs: i cannot recommend these enough, especially if you are someone who gets overstimulated easily.

pura home fragrances: specifically sunday morning by brooklyn candle studio. (pear, bergamot, jasmine, amber woods) i’m trying to avoid candles because of my allergies. i’ve heard beeswax or soy candles are best?

treating

vintage wooden apothecary cabinet for herbs and spices. obsessed with this one, too.

emily long dawn shirt

sephora sale :) here are my favorites and these are my favorite sephora perfumes

the rest of this newsletter is for paid subscribers.

i’m sharing articles, video essays, and podcasts that i’ve consumed recently. some of the topics include: is gen z having sex? The decline in literacy, nobody understands asexuality, the problem with adolescents, parasocial relationships, the middle aged american crisis, walking trees and parasitic flowers, and so much more.

if you’re curious about sampling you can use my link at scent split for a discount on all samples and full size bottles

truly, your support means the world to me and it’s what gives me the capacity to write to you.

join my bookclub :)

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

Read more

this is an extension of a post i shared a while ago. it was a short, simple list of things to do instead of being on your phone. nothing urgent or groundbreaking. just a quiet invitation to come back to yourself.

it resonated more than i expected. i think that’s because so many of us are exhausted by constant noise. we’re tired of being pulled in a hundred directions, of filling every still moment with distraction. we’re not necessarily looking for discipline or detox, we’re looking for depth and presence. for something that feels like ours again.

this version goes a little deeper. it’s about remembering how to live in your own life. how to be curious again. how to stretch your mind, tend to your body, take care of your space, and reconnect with something slower and more sacred.

we don’t need to quit our phones or escape the world. but we can choose to step away now and then. we can make space for boredom, for stillness, for focus. we can give ourselves the gift of our own attention.

what follows is a collection of small, intentional things you can do when you want to feel more awake. more grounded and more like yourself.

you don’t have to do all of them. or any of them.
but if even one of them makes you feel more alive or more in touch with the present, then that’s enough.

for your mind
things that stretch your intellect, sharpen your thinking, and make you feel awake in the best way.

read a book that challenges you
choose something a little difficult. a classic novel, a philosophical essay, a book with long sentences and big ideas. read slowly. keep a pencil nearby. you don’t have to understand every word. you just have to keep going.
start with: the ethics of ambiguity by simone de beauvoir, the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa, or the death of ivan ilyich by leo tolstoy.

study a topic you’ve always wanted to understand
make it impractical. make it obscure. maybe you start watching lectures on gothic architecture or learning the basics of quantum theory through youtube explainers. use free tools like coursera or open yale courses. let your mind stretch in a direction that doesn’t need to be useful.

learn chess
chess is meditation in strategy form. it teaches focus, pattern recognition, and patience. start with a free app like lichess or chess.com, which both have excellent beginner tutorials. watch a few short videos by gothamchess on youtube if you want to get into it fast. play against the computer. lose a few times. you’re still winning.

annotate poetry
you don’t need to analyze. just sit with the words. underline the lines that feel like bruises or breath. write little notes in the margins. you’re not performing intelligence. you’re just being present.
start with: sappho, rainer maria rilke, or louise glück.

write a personal essay or a letter you’ll never send
choose a moment in your life and narrate it like you're telling the story for the first time. write a letter to your younger self, or to someone you miss, or someone who hurt you. let it be honest and unfinished. burn it or save it. no rules.

do a page of logic puzzles or sudoku with pen and paper
challenge your mind to move differently. sit at a table, make it quiet, treat it like meditation.

learn the basics of a new language
language learning is one of the best ways to gently rewire your brain. it wakes something up. it teaches you to listen differently. start small. write out simple phrases in a notebook. say them out loud, even if your accent is terrible. duolingo is a good place to begin, especially for structure and streaks. tandem and hellotalk are great for speaking with real people and building conversation confidence. if you're someone who needs immersion, switch your phone settings to the new language. watch children's shows in that language with subtitles. label objects in your room with sticky notes. let the language live around you.

make a list of questions you’ve never asked anyone and answer them for yourself
questions like: who do you feel safest around, and why? what part of your personality is performative? when was the last time you felt proud of yourself? be brave in the asking. be honest in the answering.

read something that disagrees with you
pick up a book or essay that challenges your beliefs. not to change your mind immediately, but to sharpen your reasoning. underline what makes you pause.

go to a museum alone and bring a notebook
give yourself at least an hour. don’t try to see everything. just choose one room or one piece to sit with. sketch it, describe it, or write down how it makes you feel. pretend you’re a student again. this is your field trip.

create your own mini syllabus
pick a theme: grief, memory, mythology, time, desire. choose three books, two essays, a film, and a podcast. give yourself a week or a month to move through it. keep notes. write a reflection when it’s done. this is your private university. you’re the professor and the student.

read the original source instead of the summary
go to the text. not the tweet about it. not the blog post. not the thinkpiece. read the actual thing people are quoting.
it’s harder, slower, and always worth it.

the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. i talk about things you can do for your body, your home, your inner child, and your spirit. i hope this resonates with you.

thank you for being here, for supporting my work.

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

(follow for more)

Read more

i have always lived at the edges of myself. an unintentional wiring of my brain chemistry that can’t comprehend moderation. i don’t know how to exist at a comfortable temperature. i’m either obsessed or detached, overachieving or disappearing, building something monumental or burning everything to the ground just to feel something again.

i’ve spent most of my life watching people who seem at peace with the world and i’m wondering what that feels like. there are the overachievers, the ones who chase success like it’s oxygen, turning ambition into masochism and measuring their worth by how exhausted they are. then there are the ones who find comfort in repetition, they marry the right person, raise three children, and take pride in the simplicity of the pseudo american dream we were once promised. and then there is everyone else. the majority of people who say they want a better life but can’t tell you what “better” even means. they drift. they wait. they scroll. they want purpose, but not badly enough to go searching for it.

if you’re a dreamer, or someone who’s multi passionate, you’re stacked up against the odds because the bigger your imagination, the easier it is to become paralyzed by it. you start believing that the version of yourself who could be a novelist, an attorney, a professor, a physician, a mother, all at once, and choosing one path would mean killing the others. so you do nothing. you sit in the in between and convince yourself you’re thinking things through, but really you’re just watching your own life harden around you while you wait for certainty that will never come.

i’ve started to think that the hardest part of wanting a big life is not ambition itself, but the disorientation that follows it. there’s no map for people like us. we know how to long, yearn, desire. but we don’t know how to choose. and the longer we linger in that wanting, the easier it becomes to confuse indecision with depth and this restlessness with potential.

the idea of balance has always felt suspicious to me. how do you balance it all? what does that even mean? why are you asking me? it sounds like something invented by people who have already given up on the intensity of their desires. i’ve been told to find it my whole life, to ground myself, to stop oscillating, to pick one thing and do it well, but i can’t be brilliant at anything out of fear of falling short of my perfectionism. and i don’t think balance was ever meant for anyone. it feels like a polite word for resignation. what people really mean when they say find balance is stop wanting so much.

clarice lispector is an author who wrote for people who linger in that wanting. she understood the strange violence of existential desire and the hunger to feel life and live it in a way that borders on unbearable. her characters don’t seek pleasure, they seek contact with what’s real in this world. they want to touch life without mediation, even if it burns.

when i read the passion according to g.h., she cracked something open inside of my mind. her narrator crushes a cockroach and then disintegrates alongside it in a slow and sacred unraveling. she loses her sense of identity, her name, her history, everything that made her coherent. it’s horrifying, but it’s also forces the reader into an awakening. she realizes that the self she’s spent her life performing is nothing but scaffolding. what we call balance or control or stability is just a trick we play to avoid feeling the truth and that we are vast, chaotic, and full of contradictions.

clarice wrote about that contradiction the way saints wrote about god. she believed that consciousness was both a gift and a wound. to be awake is to suffer the awareness of everything you are and everything you’ll never be.

i crave her writing because i live inside of that tension. the part of me that wants meaning and the part that knows it might not exist. i want to do something extraordinary with my life but can’t shake the suspicion that all of it is arbitrary. clarice didn’t tell me to pick a side. she didn’t promise resolution. she just revealed that it was the only honest thing there was.

i while i keep saying i don’t know what i want, i don’t think that’s entirely true. i do know. i just also want more in the way that clarity always opens another door instead of closing one. i want the life i have, and i want the lives that shimmer just beyond it. maybe that’s what makes wanting so complicated. it never ends, it just changes shape.

when i feel myself spinning, chasing a bigger life, craving something i can’t define, i try to remember that maybe the wanting itself is the point of living and that the only honest way to live is to stay in motion, even when you don’t know what you’re moving toward.

and sometimes i wonder what she’d think of the world we live in now, where every thought has to be shared, every feeling turned into content.

clarice would have hated the internet. it’s the purest manifestation of what she feared most. the loss of interior life. the constant noise, the endless scroll, the illusion of connection that keeps you from ever being truly alone. she believed that solitude was the price of consciousness and that in order to know yourself, you have to be willing to face the quiet. she once said that she wrote to find out who she was. i think most of us scroll for the same reason. we just never find out.

the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. we’ll go deeper into clarice lispector, and what her work teaches us about the kind of confusion that can potentially save you. if you’ve ever felt torn between wanting a bigger life and not knowing what that means, this part is for you. i’m writing about what clarice understood long before the rest of us and i’ll also share my full guide to reading clarice: every book, in order, and what each one reveals about her search for meaning.

thank you for being here, for supporting my work.

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

(follow for more)

Read more

most of us only ever encounter stories in the language we were raised in. we read books in it, watch films in it, move through the world assuming that the emotional vocabulary we grew up with is expansive enough to contain everything we might need. but it isn’t.

we live in a world with thousands of languages, thousands of ways to name a feeling, hold a memory, tell a story. and yet for most english speaking readers and viewers, our cultural world is mostly english. our literature is english. our cinema is english. the rhythms of speech, the pacing of conversations, the way characters express love or grief or anger all feel familiar because they belong to the same linguistic ecosystem we grew up inside.

translated literature and foreign films remind me how limited that world can be.

they remind me that language isn’t just about words. it’s about rhythm, silence, structure, even grammar. some languages hold entire emotional landscapes that english doesn’t. some cultures place emphasis in places that feel unfamiliar to me. sometimes a sentence arrives through translation feeling slightly strange or weighted in a way i can’t quite explain, and sometimes a film scene lingers on a moment longer than an american movie ever would. a look lasts too long. a silence stretches out. a conversation circles something rather than confronting it directly.

that can feel disorienting at first. but it can also be beautiful.

translation is not about creating perfect clarity. it’s about reaching across distance. it’s about approximation and trust. it’s about getting as close as possible to a feeling that was born somewhere else, in a different mouth, inside a different culture.

i think it’s easy to assume that translated literature is inaccessible or overly intellectual, but it’s actually the opposite. it asks us to slow down and listen. it reminds us that our way of thinking is not the default. it will inevitably make you a better reader, but it also makes you a better listener, a better observer, maybe even a better person.

i love the feeling of reading a sentence and knowing that, in its original language, it meant something slightly different. i love the tension in that. i love when a book feels like it has traveled across time and geography and somehow still found its way into my hands.

and i love when a translator leaves a note in the back explaining why they chose one word instead of another, how they tried to hold onto the shape of the original text while still making it sing in a new language. it reminds me that translation is an art form in itself. it’s a collaboration. it’s a bridge.

cinema does something similar.

watching a film made in another country often feels like reading in translation. the emotional language shifts. the pacing changes. people move through love, restraint, longing, and conflict in ways that feel unfamiliar. you start to realize that even the shape of a story is culturally specific.

that’s one of the reasons i love browsing through MUBI. their catalog is full of films from around the world that explore love in ways that feel more interior than the version we’re usually given.

here are a few that have stayed with me.

the hopeless romantic
In the Mood for Love (2000)

two neighbors discover their spouses are having an affair with each other. instead of confronting them or immediately acting on their own attraction, they spend the film circling one another. meeting in hallways, sharing meals, rehearsing conversations they’ll never actually have. the romance exists almost entirely in what they don’t do, which is what makes it so devastating.

available in: Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, India, Netherlands, Italy

the slow burn intellectual
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

a painter is hired to secretly paint a woman who refuses to sit for a portrait. the two women spend days walking together, talking, observing each other, slowly becoming aware of what’s forming between them. the attraction builds through looking, listening, and shared time rather than overt action, until the inevitability of separation makes every moment feel charged.

available in: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, India, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Australia

the philosophical sci-fi anime
Ghost in the Shell (1995)

set in a near future cyberpunk world, the film follows a cyborg security officer investigating a hacker known as the puppet master. beneath the thriller plot is a philosophical exploration of identity, consciousness, and the boundaries between human and machine.

available in: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico

the devastating romantic tragedy
Decision to Leave (2022)

a detective investigating a mysterious death becomes increasingly entangled with the widow of the victim. their connection unfolds through suspicion, attraction, and emotional manipulation. it’s a love story told through surveillance, longing, and the strange intimacy of watching someone from a distance.

available in: India, Turkey, US, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Netherlands, Australia

the obsessive / destructive lover
The Piano Teacher (2001)

a repressed piano instructor living with her controlling mother enters a volatile relationship with one of her students. desire becomes tangled with humiliation, power, and emotional violence. it’s not a comforting romance. it’s a brutal examination of what happens when intimacy grows out of repression.

available in: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Germany

the political memoir
Persepolis (2007)

based on marjane satrapi’s graphic memoir, the film follows her childhood in iran during the islamic revolution and her later life in europe. the stark black and white animation turns personal memory and political upheaval into something intimate and reflective. it’s both a coming of age story and a portrait of what it means to grow up between cultures.

available in: Germany, Australia

i love that MUBI makes room for all of these versions of love, not just the polished ones, but the complicated, interior, and difficult ones too. their catalog is full of films from around the world that explore love in ways that feel more interior than the version we’re usually given.

you can stream these films on MUBI and get 30 days free at mubi.com/milkfed

that same feeling of stepping into another emotional grammar is exactly why i love translated literature.

so i’ve also put together a list of some of my favorite works in translation. these books come from nigeria, japan, korea, taiwan, brazil, austria, hungary, portugal, poland. they do not all feel the same. some are violent, some are strange and fragmented. but all of them have stayed with me. they each offered something i couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. and they each taught me how to read a little more slowly, carefully, and with a little more humility.

right now, that bridge feels more important than ever. we live in a moment of deep cultural siloing, politically, socially, even algorithmically. it’s easy to stay inside the narrow lane of what feels familiar. but translated literature and foreign film ask us to stretch, listen, and step into rhythms and sensibilities that aren’t our own.

they remind us how small our perspective can be and how much we miss when we only consume what was made in our own language, for our own context, with our own assumptions in mind.

there are so many other recommendations i have, so maybe i’ll do a part two to this essay.

(this post is free, but if you enjoy this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber and be part of a smaller circle where things feel a little softer, a little more personal)

truly, your support means the world to me and it’s what gives me the capacity to write to you.

join my bookclub :)

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

my favorite translated literature books

no longer human by osamu dazai
this is the book i turn to when i need to feel cracked open. it’s written as a series of notebooks from a man who never really learned how to be a person. he moves through life like he’s mimicking the people around him, putting on charm like a mask, going through the motions while feeling absolutely nothing. he drinks too much, self destructs, and watches himself spiral with a kind of detachment that feels chilling. there’s no arc of redemption here, no moment where things turn around. the pain is constant, and completely unfixable. but somehow, reading it makes you feel less alone in your own disconnection. (japan)

freshwater by akwaeke emezi

it’s fragmented, spiritual, and completely uninterested in being easily understood. the narrator is inhabited by multiple selves—spirits, identities, forces—and the book moves like a possession rather than a narrative. it’s about the body as something unstable, permeable, not entirely yours. reading it feels like slipping slightly out of reality.

it’s fragmented, spiritual, and completely uninterested in being easily understood. the narrator is inhabited by multiple selves. spirits, identities, forces. and the book moves like a possession rather than a narrative. it’s about the body as something unstable, permeable, not entirely yours. reading it feels like slipping slightly out of reality.

kitchen by banana yoshimoto
this book is about a young woman who loses her last living relative and ends up staying with a classmate and his mother, who is trans. what follows is this soft, subtle story about grief, gender, and the way food holds people together. yoshimoto has a way of making ordinary moments feel weightless and holy. the prose is clean and dreamy, like fog over a city just before sunrise. it’s a book that doesn’t demand anything from you. it just sits with your sadness, offering tea and a place to rest. (japan)

the door by magda szabó
this book completely haunted me. it centers on the relationship between a writer and her fiercely private housekeeper, emerence. at first, it feels like a simple story about two women from different backgrounds learning to understand each other. but it grows into something much stranger and more consuming. their relationship becomes a tangle of love, dependence, betrayal, and worship. szabó writes them with so much restraint that when the emotional weight finally lands, it’s almost unbearable. it’s a novel about trust, power, and the intimacy of knowing someone deeply while never fully understanding them. it asks hard questions and offers no easy answers. (hungary)

the piano teacher by elfriede jelinek
this book made me feel physically uncomfortable. it follows a woman living with her mother, tightly wound and deeply repressed. she teaches piano by day and spends her nights lurking in porn shops and fantasizing about being dominated. then one of her students takes an interest in her, and things get brutal, fast. it’s a book about shame, control, submission, and what happens when a person has been so stripped of agency that even pleasure turns violent. jelinek writes a story that feels like it’s pressing its hand against your throat. i couldn’t look away. (austria)

the passion according to g.h. by clarice lispector
this book begins with a woman walking into her maid’s room and seeing a cockroach. that moment becomes the catalyst for a complete collapse of her identity. from there, she spirals into a philosophical and spiritual crisis that stretches far beyond the physical world. this book isn’t interested in plot. it’s about the boundaries of self, the experience of matter, and what it means to exist without language. clarice writes like she’s trying to transcribe a mystical experience while it’s still happening. it’s dense, chaotic, and completely singular. i’ve never read anything like it, and i don’t think anything else even comes close. (brazil) lispector is one of my favorite authors of all time

beware of pity by stefan zweig
this is one of those books that slowly tightens its grip until you can’t breathe. it follows a young austrian soldier in the years before the first world war who becomes entangled with a paralyzed woman out of what he believes is compassion. but what begins as pity curdles into obligation, guilt, and something far more complicated. zweig is so good at writing the kind of psychological drama that doesn’t scream. he’s interested in moral gray zones, in people who mean well and still cause harm, in the internal tragedies that unfold when someone tries to do the right thing for the wrong reason. this book is full of emotional claustrophobia, and it never lets you off the hook. there’s no real villain here, just two people caught in the unbearable tension between what they owe each other and what they want. (austria)

heaven by mieko kawakami
this novel follows two teenagers who are being horrifically bullied and find a kind of fragile, secret friendship in each other. it’s about what it means to suffer, to endure, and to survive something that never should have happened in the first place. kawakami doesn’t offer simple moral lessons. instead, she explores how cruelty shapes the way we see the world, and how it changes what we’re willing to accept. it’s subtle, uncomfortable, and incredibly brave in the questions it asks about power and complicity. (japan)

breasts and eggs by mieko kawakami
this book moves between two sisters living in tokyo and later zooms in on one of them as she considers becoming a single mother through sperm donation. it’s a novel about women’s bodies, reproductive autonomy, class, and aging. kawakami has this gift for writing about the body in a way that feels intimate and cerebral at the same time. it’s not preachy, just deeply honest about the ways womanhood exists at the intersection of physical experience and societal pressure. i loved how this book gave space to doubt, ambivalence, and all the questions no one wants to say out loud. (japan)

the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa
this book is a series of fragments from a man who lives almost entirely inside his own head. there’s no storyline, no action, no resolution. instead, it’s a collection of thoughts about dreams, boredom, art, time, and the ache of existing. it’s not a book you read straight through. it’s a book you return to when you’re feeling disconnected and want something to sit with you in the silence. pessoa’s writing is mournful and meditative, like someone writing letters to a version of themselves that no longer exists. (portugal)

notes from a crocodile by qiu miaojin
set in 1990s taipei, this novel is about a queer university student trying to make sense of her sexuality, her loneliness, and her desire for connection in a world that doesn’t make space for her. it’s written in the form of notebooks, full of obsession, heartbreak, art, and self-destruction. there’s nothing polished or clean about it. it’s messy and raw in a way that feels deeply true. it captures the ache of wanting to be loved without knowing how to be known. (taiwan)

days of abandonment by elena ferrante
this is ferrante at her most feral. the story begins with a woman whose husband suddenly leaves her, and from there, everything unravels. it’s not a story about rebuilding or bouncing back. it’s about descent. ferrante writes the physicality of heartbreak better than anyone. there’s no gloss here, just blood and anger and confusion. it’s a book about rage, motherhood, abandonment, and the unbearable weight of continuing to exist when everything has fallen apart. (italy)

white nights by fyodor dostoevsky
a young man wanders the streets of st. petersburg and meets a woman who seems like she might finally pull him out of his solitude. for four nights, they talk, connect, and imagine what a different life could look like. and then it ends. this is one of dostoevsky’s gentler works. it’s about longing, delusion, and the way we project entire worlds onto the people we’re drawn to. it’s tender and dreamy and deeply sad. (russia)

drive your plow over the bones of the dead by olga tokarczuk
this one is part murder mystery, part philosophical, part eco feminist manifesto. it follows an eccentric older woman in rural poland who begins investigating a series of deaths in her village that seem to align with astrological events. she’s dismissed as crazy, of course, but her voice is unforgettable. the book is strange and smart and full of fury. it’s about animals and justice and how dangerous women become when no one listens to them. (poland)

territory of light by yūko tsushima
this book follows a newly separated mother trying to raise her daughter in a new apartment. the story unfolds over twelve chapters, each one capturing a month in their lives. it’s about loneliness, instability, and the terror of having no one to fall back on. this is a story about light and silence, about the parts of motherhood no one prepares you for, and the slow, painful work of becoming someone new. (japan)

the melancholy of resistance by lászló krasznahorkai
a mysterious circus arrives in a crumbling town, and the sense of doom spreads like fog. the sentences are long and winding, like someone trying to explain the end of the world without breathing. it’s about entropy, fear, and the terrifying ease with which people surrender to power when things start to fall apart. unsettling and prophetic in all the ways that matter. (hungary)

okay, that’s all i have for you today. happy reading and happy streaming <3

i love you.

bye.

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

milk fed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

to be attracted to intelligence is to crave proximity to a person’s interior architecture. it is, in many ways, longing for the kind of recognition to be met in thought, not just in passing. we’re drawn to intelligence because it gestures toward something deeper. a life shaped by thought rather than impulse. it’s not just about what someone knows, but the structure of their mind. the way they observe, interpret, and articulate the world.

maybe part of why i think about this so much is because it’s been hard to find these sorts of connections with people. this specific kind of closeness that doesn’t rely on chemistry or compatibility, but on the way someone thinks. i’ve had conversations that felt performative, and platonic relationships that skimmed the surface. but it’s rare to feel seen without having to over explain yourself.

i’ve always lived in my head. and most of my intimacy comes from books, ideas, and observations i never say out loud. it makes dating strange, which is why i avoid it. i crave connection, but only the kind that feels earned. i want to be desired, yes, but more than that, i want to be understood.

intelligence is something that seduces slowly through articulation. the right sentence, the unexpected insight, the subtle pause before a word. these are the signs we read like omens. they tell us not just that a person is clever, but that they care about meaning and that they’ve built a self around the pursuit of understanding.

the allure isn’t just in the facts, it’s in the way a person makes you want to pay closer attention to language and ideas. to them.

intelligence has become a of social currency, especially for women. it’s the kind of smart that wears well. the kind you can read off someone’s bookshelf, or their posture, or their choice of bag. a crisp blazer slouched over one shoulder. a copy of the second sex half read but heavily underlined. the clink of a spoon in a cafe as she reads alone, looking both absorbed and inaccessible. this hyper romanticized intelligence becomes a look. a vibe / aesthetic.

the rest of this piece is for paid subscribers, where i go deeper into the psychology of intellectual desire and why we romanticize people who withhold, how intelligence becomes eroticized through performance, and what it means to crave that sort recognition more than touch. i’m also sharing a curated list of books and films about intellectual intimacy, projection, and obsession.

if you’re curious about sampling perfumes you can use my link at scent split for a discount on all samples and full size bottles

truly, your support means the world to me and it’s what gives me the capacity to write to you.

join my bookclub :)

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

fantasy books

(follow tiktok, youtube, ig, pinterest and spotify for more)

Read more