elemental, issue #10
from the other side of august
Hello, how are you?
It’s already September as I write these lines. August has come and gone, and so has summer, but not really. I’m writing from my favorite coffee shop in Bodrum, on the Aegean coast of Turkey where I spent most of each summer, with a giant fan blowing some much-needed cool(ish) air behind me, looking out at a table of older women wrapped up in a heated discussion of Turkish politics over their afternoon cup of Turkish coffee, and beyond them, fishermen boats and a beautiful, calm, green-blue sea.
This month was a bit tumultuous; both on my inner and outer landscapes. I feel a bit dry, and in need of inspiration, excitement, more laughter and joy. It’s been a month of solo traveling, a desire for even more solitude and a simultaneous longing for the right kind of company (see previous sentence re: the need for laughter and joy). And in these moments of solitude and the longing for opposing states of being, I found myself jotting down ideas, observations, questions without answers that have all shaped this month’s issue.
I hope you enjoy.
May the wind
A bucket list item was ticked off this month as I got to see my dream queen angel woman Angie McMahon live in Dublin, opening for Sharon Van Etten. I arrived at the venue so early that I was leaning right up against the security railings at the very front and got to hear the artist who was opening for Angie.
Her name is Katy J Pearson and two of the songs she performed that night were immediately added to my Summer ‘25 playlist. I found myself coming back to one of those songs as I walked the streets of Dublin, and noticed a lyric standing out to and staying with me: sort of as a good luck wish from me to me, as well as a manifestation of positivity, which I felt very much in need of this month.
May the wind be always at your back
May the road rise to meet you
I’m not religious, but Amen to that.
And here’s the song in full, if you would like to listen to it.
Happy 60th to my mom!
My mom always reads these issues. It’s her 60th birthday on September 9th (as well as my dad’s 66th on the same day), so I would like to wish her a happy, healthy, joyful 60th.
I noticed on my trip to Dublin that the smell of coconut oil reminds me of my mom. That’s kind of nice, no? :)
Nice senelere anneym!
On anonymity and traveling
Speaking of concerts and traveling, I stayed until the end of Angie’s entire show to watch Sharon Van Etten’s set as well. Sharon has incredible stage presence and was wearing a bold red lipstick, which made me wonder if I could pull that look off myself. She looked like a badass and I, too, wanted to look (and feel) like a badass. (This is assuming the key to her badassness is the red lipstick and not the fact that she’s a fcking rockstar talent, ofc.)
The next day, I went on a quest to find the right red lipstick for a red lipstick virgin like myself, which made me realize: If I walked the streets of Dublin with red lips, no one would notice something was up. No one would point at me or stop me and say; “Whoah, Naz! Red lips?!?!? What’s the occassion???” No one would notice something was out of the ordinary because no one knew me there! No one would know that the closest thing resembling a lipstick I ever wear is my Nivea cherry lip balm which still feels too tinted and makeup-y. No one would point out it looked nice or weird or wonder what was up with me and why I was trying to pull of such a bold look in bright daylight. No one knew me! I was anonymous!
Which took me on another tangent: Traveling solo can be kind of goofy if you want to make it because you can pretend to be whoever you feel like and nobody would be there to notice. Is there a look you’ve been trying to test out? Great! Do it in a totally foreign city. Do you want to adopt a different life story to tell a stranger who’s handling your checkout at a bookstore? Sure! Do you want to try out an accent you’re really bad at? Go for it!
I mean, this isn’t like inventing fire or anything, but it’s just kind of a fun, refreshing thought: Anonymity can be fun!
K bye.
Noteworthy things ChatGPT has said to me
Hydrate.
You’re a human being, not a mind-reader.
Let yourself feel without fixing.
An important reminder: I don’t rescue people who hurt me.
Another important reminder: I don’t live in their storm.
A metaphor from my new camera
I got a digital camera! It’s been a true highlight of my month. This camera has a longer focal length than usual, and so I have to decide what to take into the frame, what to focus on, what to leave out each time I’m taking a photo. When I was playing around with it and trying to learn a bit about focal lengths, etc, I realized there was probably a metaphor in there somewhere around this.
Zoomed-inness means setting boundaries (or at least making a conscious choice) on what deserves attention. It’s more intentional than just pointing your camera somewhere and snapping a photo. The metaphor? Choosing where to place my focus in a noisy world, blocking out certain voices, distractions (even figuring out what is and is not a distraction), even if they’re right there, next to the thing that deserves my attention. All require intention.
You can be physically far (in appearance) from an object, yet still see it closely. The metaphor? How close two objects (or people) appear to be or actually are doesn’t indicate actual closeness or intimacy.
I’m sure there are others hidden in there, but I don’t want to beat a metaphor to death, you know?
A poem
A light store in the Bowery
by Christian Wiman
Some love is like a light store
you slip inside only to escape
the rain. Something to see, it turns out:
the plasma lamps, mosque and lava,
the elegant icicles of the chandeliers,
shapes and shades so insistently singular
that rooms can’t help but happen around them,
lives can’t help but acquire choices and chances
inside. Some love is like an old owner
who when a child walks in with her parents
can only imagine shatterings.
And some love is like that child
asking with an earnest and exemplary awe,
“Where do they keep the dark?”
A playlist
Well, it’s officially autumn (though it doesn’t quite feel like it yet). So I’ve started my seasonal fall playlist, which I will keep adding to until the end of November.
You can find it here.
An ask
I would love to grow my audience on Substack. If you enjoy what you read here, I would be very grateful if you could share it with friends/colleagues/siblings/pets. <3
Thank you very much in advance! I appreciate you.
(This message was brought to you by my ongoing quest to learn how to ask for things…)
Random things
Here are a few random thoughts and observations from the past month:
My algorithm knows me so well by now. I mean, I know it’s creepy and they have my data and they know me and they’re trying to sell things to me, but hey, I will be the first to admit that I do enjoy it quite a bit when I open IG reels and I get exactly the sort of content I want to see, one after another. I want to put in exactly ZERO effort to find mindless content to take my mind off the awfulness of the world, and I’m proud to admit I’ve built it exactly to my liking, with my blood sweat and tears.
What’s on my feed, you ask? Well, 7/10 videos are of animals (5 of which are dogs). The other day I got an ad for a carpet washing service and the video was just. so. satisfying. I cannot even begin to tell you. The way that dirt washed off that thick ass carpet each time they scrubbed it with foamy soapy water? My mouth salivates just thinking about it. And then the remaining 1-2 are between tennis, food, and about being in your 30s and struggling your way through life.
Last week, I had a McDonald’s hamburger for the first time in about 20 years. The burger was much smaller than I remembered it to be, but the minute I bit into it, I remembered. I mean, I know you can remember how something tastes, but it’s usually an estimate. Like, you know what to expect when you bite into a Fuji apple, or you know what mushroom risotto tastes like, but the way I remembered what a McDonald’s hamburger tastes like was different. It was just SO precise! Like getting the same nailpolish every time and the shade being exactly the same every time you do. The pickles tasted exactly like that when I last had McDonald’s. I know this isn’t necessarily a good thing because who knows what’s actually in the burger and pickles, but at the same time, it was fun! And it brought me joy. So I’ll take it.
Earlier this month, I stopped by a bakery to pick up pate a choux to bring to my friend’s mom, whom I was going to visit for a morning coffee. It was quite early in in the morning and I was the bakery’s first sale of the day. We chatted a little with the lady who was preparing my order and as I was getting ready to leave after I paid, she said; “gününüz güzel geçsin.”
Directly translated, this means “I hope you have a beautiful day”. But “have a nice day” has become quite ordinary and almost an automatic, mindless phrase exchanged in English-speaking places. This was more than just “have a nice day”. Not only because it’s not really a phrase we use in Turkish, but also because there was an added layer of intentionality behind it. I felt like she really meant it; that she really wished for me to have a beautiful day, which was a sweet, warm feeling that stayed with me.
I jotted this down on my Notes app while I was walking around in a park on a rainy Saturday morning in Dublin:
The smell of wet gravel and wet grass and earth.
