Creative Compost 🐛 vol. 10
new name, (almost the) same lovingly-curated round-up
The Webs We Weave is a place for meaning-makers, featuring essays that weave lived experience with fascinations and sharp-toothed questions as I tangle with what kind of woman I want to be.
Hellooo from the liminal space between essays! 👋
First things first, you might have noticed a small name change to these monthly round-up posts, formerly called "What's Feeding Me."
To me the new name, Creative Compost, better reflects the actual reason I love putting together these round-ups in the first place, and the role they play in my writing life. The links and pieces of writing you’ll find here aren’t just recommendations, but essential organic matter that are breaking down in (and enriching) my creative soil.
This month, I'm working on an essay that explores nostalgia for friendships past—the relationships that shaped us, even if they didn’t or couldn't last. Below you’ll find a collection of pieces that almost all touch on friendship in some way, and each one has contributed to how I understand our most formative and important relationships.
You'll also find a few seedling thoughts at the end that emerged from this collection of others’ work, which may or may not sprout into their own pieces of writing down the road. Time will tell.
I hope you enjoy, and I'll be back in your inbox with a fresh essay next week!
🪶 Writing that Resonates
In Search of Smoky Cafés by Lilly Dancyger
I’ve mentioned Lilly Dancyger’s book First Love: Essays on Friendship here before, for good reason. It’s a stunning tribute to female friendship, and the essays inside read like love letters to the women who shaped the author’s life, particularly during challenging and formative eras.
I read this book last year on vacation in the Shenandoah Valley and I remember the way it absorbed me. I spent hours one morning drinking coffee in bed with nothing but trees out the window, devouring story after story and scribbling little notes in my Hobonichi. That was when I first started thinking about the friendships from my own life I might want to bring to the page, and the stories and unanswered questions I might want to write into.
This essay, “In Search of Smoky Cafés” comes from First Love (I dog-eared it in my hard copy immediately) and it’s a beautiful piece about dreaming together as teenagers, feeling betrayed by our own expectations, and chasing the artist’s life.
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The Body Makes Us Choose by Candace Kronen
has a way with language. (I would know—we attend a weekly writing group together and I have the pleasure of hearing her read her work most weeks!)
I keep thinking about this piece she shared on her Substack, and the way she writes so tenderly about her time working with patients as a speech therapist and the delicate challenge of feeding them safely, all the while navigating a pileup of unforeseen challenges in her own life.
“I tried to keep chewing up these challenges, but soon, I was gasping for air. We cannot breathe and feed at the same time. The body makes us choose; sometimes, it chooses for us.”
Candace’s piece left me thinking about impossible choices, and their fallout. How I chose a cross-country leap toward new love and a new life in Washington, DC right after college, how finding my footing in that new life would demand so much of me, and what that would mean for my friendships back in California. How I can mostly forgive myself now for the choices I made all those years ago, and yet I still sometimes hear a faint hum of guilt and grief.
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The Secret Third Thing by Sky Fusco
This isn’t the first piece I’ve read that explores how differently we prioritize romantic vs. platonic relationships. But I did love the way Sky interrogated some of her own needs and patterns as they relate to intimacy and isolation, with transparency and gentle candor.
This piece is written from the point of view of being single while living in community with others, and explores a rich array of questions around love and the deep desire for intimacy, the role of friendship, lovers who become exes, community building, and which relationships we put on pedestals.
Also, the way I gasped when I read this:
“I wish I could say otherwise, but after witnessing my landmates and I move in and out of partnerships throughout the seasons, I can say with confidence that the project of new romantic love often pulls us away from each other, from our homestead and our collective ambitions."
My notes say: “Friendship as homestead!! WHOA.” In Sky’s case, it’s a literal homestead—but the metaphor is also stunning.
There’s a lot more here, and it’s definitely worth a slow, close read. (I’ll also note: at the time this piece was published it was free to read, but it has since moved behind a paywall. Worth the $5, if you ask me.)
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Fifteen Facts About Zebras by Lynda Rushing
The essay I’m working on now about an important friendship from the past was born out of a writing challenge that Joy Sullivan led inside Sustenance last month. One of the prompts was to write a research-driven personal essay inspired by the human body.
I love a prompt for the way it forces me into a lane I might not otherwise explore. Without a clear sense of direction, I immediately started looking around for inspiration—which is how I stumbled onto a gorgeous essay by Lynda Rushing in Brevity magazine, called Fifteen Facts About Zebras.
While Lynda’s piece isn’t about friendship per se, it’s beautifully written and the form was absolutely a catalyst for the essay I’m working on now. Read Lynda’s full essay here, in Brevity magazine.
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More from the Compost Pile
Good Hang with Amy Poehler: Kathryn Hahn
One thing I always loved about the friendship between Leslie Knope and Ann Perkins on the show Parks and Rec is that these characters were absolute ride-or-die best friends, but also met in their 30s. Maybe it’s a self-conscious part of me talking, but as someone who doesn’t really have the same kinds of best-friends-since-we-were-kids friendships I see depicted all the time across TV and film, I loved seeing such a convincing example of an iconic friendship between two women that bloomed in adulthood.
A real life version of this played out when Amy Poehler and Kathryn Hahn first met while working on Parks and Rec together, when Leslie was in her forties and Kathryn was in her fifties.
It’s clear these two are incredibly close now, and I cannot overstate how much it heartens me to see two women who met later in life and still managed to forge that kind of depth and love between them. Hearing them talk about the value of female friendship on Amy’s new podcast, Good Hang was just the cherry on top.
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Past Lives
Welp, after more than a year of putting it off for fear that it might break me emotionally, I finally watched the beautiful film, Past Lives. I’ll admit, as we got further and further in I could feel myself getting reeeeal cocky that I might actually make it through without crying. (I did not.)
The film follows two childhood friends over the course of 24 years while they contemplate the nature of their relationship as they grow apart, living different lives. I love a movie that’s willing to tangle with messy questions that don’t have clean answers, and this was no exception.
Watch the trailer below.
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🌱 Seedlings and Sprouts
I can tell you for sure, the piece I’m working on now won’t be the last I write about friendship. Thinking and writing and reading about friendship lately has loosened so many other tangential threads that I want to tug on further.
A few questions that have been particularly heavy on my mind lately:
What does it look like to honor friendships form the past and hold them sacred, even if they’ve gone dormant?
What does pouring into friendship look like for me, today? How has that changed since I was a teenager?
How would I show up differently in my friendships, if I were to think of my friends as people I want to grow old with?
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🤭 An Internet Giggle, Just Because.
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Your turn!
What’s composting in your creative mind these days?
If you’re game to share: what have you been reading, thinking about, or writing into lately? What memories or themes are on your mind? I’d love to hear.
Until next time,
Michelle
Thanks so much for including my recent post 🥰. You do such an amazing job compiling sparks of inspiration. I really love the idea of creative compost - it makes me feel at peace with gathering “scraps” of ideas and letting them sit for a while til they are ready to grow!
I should have known you were listening to Good Hang! Sam and I binged a bunch of episodes during our cross-country trek. I love how Amy just wants it to be a place that uplifts and enjoys humor, without having to dissect anything too serious (though friendships in your 30s IS serious! And important! And it's presented that way. Gaw, it's so good).
I recently started watching Poker Face, and I am so, so glad I got into it, even if a bit later than everyone else.