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YOUNG’S MODULUS*
On Tuesday, I went to a new yoga studio for a late evening hot flow. I had walked by the studio in the past (it is located in a small building that identifies itself as a mall and features a food cooperative, an art supply store, a tabletop gaming space and at least one church – not a very mall-like mall) but always scoffed at the idea of paying for classes or going to classes at all. However, having recently had a good experience with a studio in New Haven, I was excited when my mother gifted me a month of classes in this space that is very close and convenient. Hot flow is advertised as taking place in an only mildly heated room, but on a very warm day on the edge of August even a little added heat made a big difference. By the end of the hour, I was fully soaked in sweat and the comparatively less warm air outside of the studio, with the sun having set already, seemed revolutionary as I was walking home. Given the ever-present humidity and mugginess of the summer I had forgotten that being outside, slightly sore and with slightly fewer thoughts running through my head, could be so refreshing. I had been having one of those Tuesdays that feel like a whole week has passed by instead of just a measly 48 hours since the weekend, and sweating alongside bendy strangers had helped ameliorate that.
The benefit of having an instructor in the room as you try to lunge, bend and twist is that they can spot errors and offer corrections thus preventing injuries and making the practice more effective. Mostly it is simple: step a bit closer to the edge of the mat, lean slightly more backwards, tighten your core, don’t let the hips drop. Mechanical instructions that speak to the body being a machine governed by simple principles of physics. At the same time, there is a different kind of instruction that happens even when your center of gravity is sufficiently low, and a leg, a hip and an arm do come together to form one long straight line. Here, one is told to soften and unclench, to relax in what seems like a strenuous and tense pose, to breathe into the parts of the body that are usually not thought of as carrying breath, to examine the discomfort and the resistance and will it away by considering every piece of the body more consciously. I am a stiff, tense person – softening requires a conscious effort. That effort does make a difference though, and despite my being skeptical of one teacher encouraging the class to ‘expand the mental map’ of our bodies, the notion that a physical pain or discomfort can be identified and worked on, softened, by acknowledgement and mindfulness has stopped grating on me.
So, you lunge, you bend, you twist, you fold, and it hurts. You stop and check whether your jaw is clenched, whether your neck is craned, whether your knees are misaligned with your hips and ankles. You check whether your face is in a grimace and whether you are holding your breath. You try to let go of the clenching, of the furrowing and creasing, try to feel the air move against every vertebra as you breathe in and out. Breathing in lengthens the spine, forces it to expand, breathing out helps the muscles settle into the posture. You coax your body into relaxing by giving attention to every part that is contributing to the pain, lessen the discomfort and the resistance by gently taking it apart and making one small adjustment after another. It’s a work in progress. My thighs are still constantly on fire, my balance questionable at best.
The most radical part of such a practice is its ability to provide something akin to an algorithm for dealing with a bad feeling couched somewhere in the body. There are so many ways in which one can acquire these feelings outside of exercise, but very few for how to acknowledge them and respond. We use language rooted in physicality to describe mental and emotional discomfort – jaws drop, stomachs tie themselves in knots, hearts race, throats close up. However, when a bad feeling, a tension or a discomfort, arises and it is not quite clear why or what triggered it, we are rarely taught how to unpack it. Feeling uncomfortable is often confusing, and when it happens in conversation, or anywhere out in public, there is little to no incentive or opportunity to acknowledge the feeling and to sit with it until it becomes less opaque.
For a while I lived with three other women and a number of our conversations boiled down to comparing the odd feelings we got from having seemingly not so odd experiences. “This has always made me uncomfortable” we’d say to each other about some turn of phrase or gesture or a scene in a movie, then struggle to justify the feeling and to find words to identify its cause. There is so much talk about microagressions** in academic circles precisely because the term, as flawed as some say it might be, gives us the language for some of these moments. The notion of an emotional death by a thousand cuts sparked by bias provides a framework for some of these mysterious feelings of discomfort. It further gives incentive to take that feeling and examine whether it is a response to a microaggression, something that is a known quantity once it has been explained. Identifying where the feeling came from and why is an act analogous to realizing your neck hurts because you had clenched your jaw, or that you cannot fold as deeply as you would like to because your elbows are pointed incorrectly.
Still, determining what to do with an uncomfortable feeling is more difficult than un-furrowing a face. Sometimes discomfort is necessary for growth. (Even muscles need to be stretched, after all.) There are uncomfortable conversations we need to have in order to make our relationships, be they familial, romantic or work-related, better and there are uncomfortable conversations we need to have to stand up for ourselves and turn anxiety into confidence. Sometimes discomfort is really fear or anger that has gone unrecognized. Sometimes others can cause us discomfort without ever meaning to, without knowing they are doing so or without understanding just how much of a big deal it can be when repeated.
To be fit, to be healthy and to be content, a level of understanding and acceptance of the body seems necessary. You set down a knee instead of burdening an ankle, lower your hand to a block instead of reaching for the floor, you stretch only until the body says stop. Frequently, the point demarcated by that ‘stop’ is hard to recognize and you underestimate when you are tired, overestimate when motivated, overcorrect in response to either. It can be really hard to understand and trust the body. It is much harder to understand or trust people, particularly because intent is such an internal quality with often such poor external representation.
(Someone says something, or they do something, and it makes you uncomfortable. Did they mean it? Can they tell your stomach is tightening up? Should you say something? Will they be offended? Is this even a big enough deal to dwell on? Does it matter?
What do you do with a bad feeling?)
The amount of trust people put into their feelings, especially bad ones, varies wildly with their upbringing and their background. While growing up with some level of privilege does not eradicate all insecurity nor does it make everything easy, being a member of some sort of a majority or a dominant group helps with confidence and encourages believing in one’s instincts. Where an underrepresented person may get uncomfortable, someone with a more societally advantageous identity might get angry instead. Because they do not have the backing of thinking their experience is the golden standard for what is normal, people belonging to minority groups are more likely to question their anger, question their first reaction and settle for being quietly uncomfortable. At some point the discomfort starts to seem like another regular part of being. If you’re lucky you come across someone else who has experienced something similar but has been able to acknowledge it and put words to it. Talking about it becomes sort of like breathing into the part of the body that hurts. The tension does not just disappear, but it is being dealt with, consciously worked on.
The issue of intent becomes less conflicting once a bad feeling is given enough attention and time as well – if you understand it and have sat with it, you can explain it instead of letting it grow into silent pain and resentment. Of course, the game only works if both players follow the same rules: the person that has unintentionally caused discomfort becomes uncomfortable about learning that, the bad feeling is in their court now. The discomfort experienced as a reaction to being accused of being offensive or insensitive seems straightforward to understand but realistically always connects to a more complicated underlying issue. Understanding that issue instead of lashing out at the surface level cause of conflict is a much more permanent fix to the discomfort. In a sense, a position of privilege comes with an even greater need to acknowledge and examine bad feelings in a way more constructive than simply letting them morph into pain and anger.
Neither of these things – unpacking then speaking up and listening then unpacking – are easy and neither process is particularly pretty. An interaction where space is made to process feelings, a conversation where a discussion takes a detour to address an unintended triggering of a discomfort does not seem smoothly flowing enough to be normal. We are largely taught to not take conversations in that direction, to not cause that sort of emotional trouble. It is then not all that surprising to note that many of us don’t know how to and don’t maintain a practice of focusing on a bad feeling and addressing it head on until it can be deconstructed and talked about. Instead, we carry discomfort with us for years and when we finally decide to deal with it, it feels gargantuan and scary. We stay quiet when someone makes us uncomfortable and we get loud and defensive when someone informs us of having caused them discomfort. We repress our own discomfort and fully dismiss the discomfort of others. There’s a lot of tooth grinding, jaw clenching, tense shoulders and breaths stuck between the stomach and the chest.
I went to another yoga class on Friday and then another on Saturday. You always hear the same thing: go only as far as feels comfortable, listen to your body, do the version of the pose that feels natural to you instead of some painful ideal. The opposite of being uncomfortable is being in a stance that feels natural to the body. Discovering that stance requires work and in a physical practice of any sort that work is encouraged and rewarded. Ultimately, there is power in knowing what it means to be un-uncomfortable, to make yourself at ease by taking the discomfort apart. Most days it seems like we could benefit from taking the same approach to mental and emotional discomfort.
Best,
Karmela
* Young’s modulus is a physical quantity that measures the stiffness of a solid. It is defined as the ratio of stress and strain. Stress refers to force per unit area and it is the common notion of pressure (such as one for instance exerts when they step on a scale) while strain refers to deformation in the sense of particles composing a body actually shifting without the whole body rigidly moving alongside them (strain is more of a bend or a stretch than an even distribution of force over an area like stress is).
** A straightforward definition of microagressions that I have found to resonate is that they are “brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership”. An example is, for instance, joking that a math course will be easy because there are many female students enrolled in it. The examples can be seemingly benevolent as well such as insisting a woman in a lab not lift heavy equipment even when she refuses help or over-praising racial minority students for completing simple tasks.
***
ABOUT ME LATELY
LEARNING: On the research front, this past week has mostly been an exercise in perseverance. Thinking back on it, it is not perfectly clear to me where the time had gone except that it was suddenly late Friday night and I was still pushing around the same four coupled equations and re-reading late night emails from collaborators. I have taken a break from banging my head against that particular wall over the weekend and will be right back in the trenches on Monday.
LISTENING: As a benefit of living in a small town, I snagged a copy of Sleep’s latest record, The Sciences, after seeing it on an Instagram feed of friendly neighborhood record store (I commented on the picture and they saved it for me), and I have been listening to it, loudly, for most of the week. I mentioned being mesmerized by this record when it first came out and that has definitely not worn off. In fact, I was disappointed to see that someone had already sold the vinyl back to the store. On a similar note I revisited Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer and finally made it past the two or three most catchy songs that have become a part of the zeitgeist already. There is not much I can say about this record that has not been said already by people who know music better than I do but overall, I did enjoy it more than I expected. Archandroid will likely always be my favorite, and a rare non-metal record that I think has really impacted me, but Dirty Computer is a close second and I appreciate Monae being more bold, more angry and more queer on it. In addition to its value as a statement about various identities she straddles (and there are no subtle robot metaphors here), it is just a genuinely fun record, filled with feel-good messages about confidence, plenty of 80s references and songs clearly intended for the kind of cheekiness that comes about with summertime.
On the podcast front, listening to the first episode of KCRW’s Bodies felt like a companion piece to some of what I was trying to verbalize in last week’s letter and this story about women, sex and the failings of the medical community is really worth listening to. Much more randomly, I got quite sucked into the latest WNYC mini-series called the The Realness that documents the life of a successful rapper ailing from sickle cell anemia. I had never heard of Mobb Deep or Prodigy before listening to this show, but the story is possibly even more compelling that way and the points it makes about healthcare are quite disconcerting regardless of the framing. Closer to the topic of how to deal with mental anguish, the most recent mini-podcast in Radiotopia’s Showcase series, The Great God of Depression, follows up on an extreme case involving a famous writer battling depression fairly publicly and a neurologist that openly calls herself mad. This is not a story that is told with much philosophizing or exceptionally crafty production (I wonder what this show would sound like as an episode of Radiolab or even in the hands of anyone at Gimlet), but it is an interesting one, it takes a few twists and turns, and it gives a few people dealing with mental illness a chance to openly talk about their experience.
READING: Last weekend I got a library card at the free public library two blocks away from my home. This may seem odd given that I have automatic access to all of the libraries in my university, but I am fully aware of how lazy I am when it comes to walking to the far side of campus where all of the fiction books and comic books live, so this seemed like a good first step in trying to read more. Additionally, supporting a public library seems like a universally worthwhile thing to do (or maybe I am just listening to Lost in the Stacks too much). After getting my card I checked out a few trade paperbacks of East of West and The Wicked + The Divine in the hope of getting back to some of the comics I was really enthusiastic about when I first started graduate school. A lot of issues have been published since I ran out of time (and money) for a weekly comic book habit, but bingeing a comic series is in a lot of ways more enjoyable than bingeing a TV show so I was happy to have found time for Vols. 3 and 4 of East and West in between running errands, working and cooking this weekend. I started reading this series after hearing about it on Supercontext, and the criticisms of Jonathan Hickman that the hosts voice in that episode pretty much all stand: imagining a world where the United States have split up into states mostly segregated by racial lines makes it very easy for Hickman to write characters from those states into stereotypes and get away with it, there is a questionable uniformity to how the Native American characters are presented (how come they are literally all Lakota?) and even beyond issues of identity certain characters read as clear cyphers for lukewarm political statements (about statehood, race, religion, free will…the usual suspects) the reader can’t quite be sure Hickman is actually trying to make. In a way, the dystopian future presented in this series could have been pushed further and the edginess of it could have been more meaningful and less aesthetic at times. However, these books are absolutely engrossing and once the main plot starts to emerge, they are genuinely hard to put down. If Hickman’s downfall is partly in plotting a book that could easily become an HBO show, and is drawn as one, this is also its greatest success. I would watch that show, and I would follow every map and every history embedded between depictions of machine warfare, rogue AIs, false prophets riding demons, Texas rangers traveling with mechanical dogs and Death himself (in a suit, an eyepatch and a bolo tie) begging forgiveness of his wife that happens to run an empire. I hope the library carries volume 5.
EATING: It is peak summer squash season at the farmer’s market and I am leaning pretty heavily into it. Growing up I only really knew about large dark green zucchini that my grandfather grew so committing to the farmer’s market last summer really broadened my horizons when it comes to vegetables from this family. This year I am less surprised and more excited to cook with various striped, yellow, light green or mixed color squash, but the classic zucchini is still a favorite. Part of this conviction stems from the memory of my grandma’s savory zucchini and cottage cheese strudel (I believe this could be recreated with cashew cream in place of dairy cheese but have not been brave enough to attempt it), part from having discovered zucchini bread, and part from the way a nicely browned zucchini pairs perfectly well with other summer produce like ripe tomatoes. The stew I am sharing below is very loosely based on this Food 52 recipe, but mostly just an excuse to turn the flavors of summer harvest into something easily spoon-able and as good over rice or quinoa as it is with just a bit of toasted homemade sourdough. It takes a bit longer to make than a simple tomato-based stew usually might because I have chosen to roast the zucchini first, but I have found the deeper flavor that comes from their being a bit charred and caramelized to be absolutely worth it. I had it with some simple baked tofu heavily spiced with curry powder but feel free to serve it differently, I have included a number of plant based ideas below.
For about 4 servings you will need:
4 teaspoons olive oil, divided
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 large or 4 small zucchinis
1 onion, diced
1 teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon black pepper
4 tablespoons tomato paste
2 cups of water (or more)
1 ½ teaspoons salt (or more)
2 tomatoes, cut into eights or smaller
For serving: brown rice or quinoa, lemon wedges, cucumber slices, chopped parsley, red pepper flakes or hot sauce, soy or cashew yogurt
Optional: one 15 oz block of tofu (preferably organic), salt, curry powder, cornstarch (or arrowroot starch)
Prepare the zucchini: Preheat the oven to 400F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut the zucchini parallel to its long side, then cut each of the halves in two parallel to the long side again. Cut each quarter in five or six pieces (bite-sized) perpendicular to the long side. Toss with about 2 teaspoons of olive oil and a good pinch of salt the spread on the baking sheet (keeping the pieces as far apart as possible). Roast for 20 minutes then give the pan a good shake or a stir (or if you have the patience flip each piece individually) and bake for 20-30 more minutes, until the color is deep, and the edges of some pieces are dark brown
Make the stew base: In a wide pot heat 2 more teaspoons of olive oil then add the onions and sauté until soft, golden and slightly translucent. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute or two, making sure the garlic does not burn and become bitter. Add the turmeric, salt, pepper and the tomato paste and sauté for another minute or two until the mixture starts to look somewhat paste-like. Add about a cup of water and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for roughly ten minutes, until the mixture starts to look less chunky.
Add the veggies: Add in the roasted zucchini and the tomato and stir. Add in just enough water to cover the vegetables (or more if you’d like a more runny stew) and bring to a boil again. Cover and simmer for another ten minutes or until the tomatoes look cooked, their skin should be peeling at the edges. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed
Serve: In a bowl or on a deep plate add ½ cup of cooked rice or quinoa then top with the stew and some cucumber slices. Season with a squeeze of lemon juice red pepper flakes and chopped parsley. If desired serve with tofu and a few spoonful’s of unsweetened nondairy yogurt (cashew or soy seem most appropriate as good unsweetened coconut yogurt is typically very thick and tastes very strongly of coconut while the former two can have more of a tang to them).
Make the tofu (optional): Drain the tofu, wrap it in paper towels, put on a large plate and place something heavy on top (a cast iron skillet or a few thick books) of it in order to squeeze out some moisture (otherwise it will be terribly mushy). Let it sit like this for at least 20 minutes, before you use it you should see some water that has come out of it at the bottom of the plate. (If you have bought pre-pressed tofu that is not packaged in water, skip this step.) Cut the tofu into eight large squares (or any other desired shape), then toss with a generous amount of curry powder (on the order of a tablespoon or more) and some salt. Finally, toss in cornstarch for a crispier texture. Bake the tofu on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper at 400 F for about 20 minutes flipping halfway. If you want to skip the cornstarch, toss with a bit of oil before baking instead.
Tips: Swap the zucchini for any other summer squash you like. You could also use an Italian or a globe eggplant, however eggplants tend to be quite watery so before roasting it put it in a colander, sprinkle with salt and let sit for half an hour or more. This will draw out some of the water that you can then wipe away with kitchen towels. You could skip this step if you are super rushing, but the texture of the roasted eggplant will be slightly more mushy and it will need to roast longer. You could also use a mixture of summer squash and eggplant. Don’t use a heirloom tomato – eat that one raw and use plum, Campari or Roma tomatoes here.
To make the stew spicy add in a finely minced jalapeno or serrano pepper with the onions. To give it more of an Italian twist skip the turmeric and season with basil and oregano then add in navy beans (roughly two cups) and don’t serve with tofu. For a Mexican twist season with cumin and chili powder instead of turmeric and serve with black beans or season the tofu with chili powder as well. To make it more ‘meaty’ add sliced mushrooms with the onions and sauté until all the water has evaporated before adding the garlic and the tomato paste.
If you dislike tofu or cannot eat soy but would still like to add a plant based protein to this dish, add roughly two cups of cooked chickpeas when you add the tomatoes and the zucchini. Alternatively, serve the stew alongside a ¼ cup (or more) of hummus.
For a grain free meal, serve the stew with baked potato wedges, roasted cauliflower or chickpea flour crepes (mix chickpea flour and water in a 1:1 ratio, season with salt and your favorite spices then panfry in a non-stick skillet). For an oil free version, simply roast the zucchini without any oil and sauté the onions at a slightly lower heat, using water or vegetable broth to deglaze when necessary.
To up the vegetable content stir in some baby spinach or chopped kale in the last ten minutes of cooking.