JELLY: the newsletter you'll actually read

a newsletter about 🎨🔮💊👽✌️ Solid states of water, ice and air in Rye, NH by Yoav Horesh With my crooked fingers I write: I am not reconciled. From Karen Gershon's painful "Prognosis" (Collected Poems) But what if you just don't Let me tell you a (long) story: one that I thought had nothing to do with today but does and indeed has everything to do with tomorrow. ⏳ I was at a party with several women I didn't know. Inevitably the subject of cats came up. I once had two cats. Two kitty brothers:...

a newsletter about 🎨🔮💊👽✌️ Feeding The Pigs: El Centre de Recerca i Difusió de la Imatge (CRDI) de l'Ajuntament de Girona. This world will have you running to stone for embrace—والحجرُ أحَنُّ من البشرgravestone gentler than human. From Bazeed's cento (patchwork poem) for Sarah Hegazi, I WANT SKY WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE KPI? Can you think of a worse question? Oh, I can: What's the fastest (cheapest) way to build a bowtie funnel? or... How much do you love Hubspot!? If you're struggling to keep up...

EVERYTHING IS PLASTIC NOW Have you ever had a serious craving, Reader? Ever had a serious craving that also induced severe shame? For those of you who are new to this Jelly newsletter—welcome to the Thunderdome. 🎭 My mother was not/is not a good cook. We had pasta (macaroni) with homemade (sort of if you count opening tomato cans as DIY) sauce six, sometimes seven nights a week. But every now and then she'd pull out a small frying pan and cut a piece of baloney into small triangles, like a...

FACE FIRST INTO AN EMPTY POOL. Sure, I live to laugh at the daft and vapid phrase known as 😎Good Vibes😎 but let me tell you, that shit ceases to be funny when you are surrounded by BAD VIBES, VERY BAD VIBES. I've been suffocating under a heavy weight lately. The weight of impending transition. Pluuuuuus that delicious DQ ice cream cake. Whatever. My whole body sometimes behaves as if it is an antenna, a lightning rod for detecting the disfavor of others. There seems to be much disfavor in the...

THROW OUT THE FIRST PANCAKE Lies! Have you heard this before? I hear it all the time. Let me tell you about my pancakes. The first one is fantastic. The second, third, fourth rounds are crap! As in: pale-sloppy-burntedge-maybe thought it should be a sad crepe or a greasy paper towel? Yeah. I realized that my first pancake is a lot like many of the creative endeavors I've attempted. It's intoxicating to presume that what seems to be such a natural talent, a gift of effortlessness and instant...

Oh no, that's just depression. I've been meaning to write to you Reader, but every single time I started typing, a sad trombone would emerge to bludgeon me with unsolicited, mnemonic feedback. A "womp" with every adjective. A "womp" with every noun. Womp, womp. So I performed my perpetual disappearing act. Perform-ing, I should say, as I'm in the soggy midst of my performance. Reviews are still coming in but I can guarantee the third act's denouement is rife with petty cliches of self-hatred,...

ACCEPT THE THINGS YOU CANNOT CHANGE Or don't? Very TBD. One of the very first things my father tried to teach me was how to whistle. He is an expert. A pro. A shark. (I wouldn't doubt that he has placed bets on himself in this arena.) Somehow, he could meticulously gather the combination of thumb and ring finger towards his mouth and blow a piercing sound through the air like an ambulance chasing a burning building filled with all the world's...computer chips. I just never got it. He tried...

WHAT ELSE AM I DOING WRONG? I once had a friend reload my dishwasher for me. 💀 She put all the glasses between the upper rack spokes and the dishes in an entirely different direction than I had done for the entirety of my existence (or, at least the parts where I was lucky enough to have a dishwasher). I still have not fully processed what she did with bowls. Now: once my ego recovered, I was able to see the vast improvement she had made in the efficacy and efficiency of this slightly time...

THERE IS NO TEMPLATE IN THIS EMAIL. One thing no one's gonna tell you (but I will): There is no easy way to get from inexperienced to master, from student to professor. From bottle rocket to dick-shaped space thing. (Remember this?) There just isn’t. There are, however, plenty of promises out there. If aliens were to land on our planet, they would assume they could assimilate quite easily into humanity by logging onto the internet and entering their email enough times to create an entirely...