Honey No. 6
Feat. the power of asking, the slippery slope of time travel, and a step-by-step guide to organizing your bookshelves
Something funny has been happening to me recently. Not funny-ha-ha, exactly, but more like funny-whoa-what-the-HECK? Ever since Jesse and I moved into this house we have been…getting everything that we ask for? And I don’t mean that in a blissed-out zen way like, everything we need has been in front of us this whole time :), I literally mean we will ask for something and then…it will appear. Let me explain.
The luck started with finding the house itself-a story which, if you’ve talked to me in the last three months, you are no doubt sick of. But in case you somehow missed it, let me catch you up to speed. My formerly-long-distance boyfriend Jesse moved to LA from New York in March and hopped around many different apartment swaps and sublets until he was able to move in with me last summer. At the time, I was living with two roommates in a lovely apartment that was being cloooosely monitored by the landlady who lived in the house behind us. The stories about this woman are endless and range from baffling to rage-inducing (she told us not to give our shared wifi password to (male) guests in case they accidentally clicked on porn and “infected the wifi?” she watched our comings and goings via a security camera in the driveway and tried to charge us when anyone else, including our partners, stayed the night? she texted us during a heavy rain storm saying that our power might go out and also the weather was preventing her from being at the hospital with her daughter who was currently giving birth and when we were like, what? she texted us a picture of her naked bloody newborn grandson and our power didn’t go out at all?). When one roommate moved out in August, Jesse moved in (so she had to give a boy the wifi password 😈). Even though our lease wasn’t up until the end of October we started looking for new apartments almost immediately, because 1. places in LA go fast and we didn’t want to miss a gem, and 2. we wanted to make sure we could vacate the surveillance state as soon as possible.
After weeks of searching, we were starting to feel desperate- the spots that we were seeing in our beloved neighborhood were the compelling combination of being so expensive AND so small, and I was heartbroken to think that we wouldn’t be able to stay in the area. But then! My addictive refreshing of ZillowCraigslistPadMapperEtc revealed a 15-minute old Craigslist post that described almost nothing. The pictures were of corners and piles of dirt, but the location was great and the price was right and thirty minutes later we were meeting the landlord. The corners turned out to be in a 2.5 bedroom house in the heart of our favorite neighborhood, the piles of dirt were a vast, plantable yard with battered fruit trees and a raised garden bed, flanked by two patios and a defunct but perhaps fixable grill. It was a project, for sure, but it also felt like a gold mine. And, for a rental application in a time where I was moving into freelancing with no tangible proof of future income, this sweet, older Italian man asked us to write down on a piece of paper how much money we had earned that month. Two days later, the place was ours.
I’ve never moved into a place that I’ve loved this much and one that felt like such a project. The bones of the house were so, so good but the previous tenants had been living there for 10 years and had left the place, specifically the yard, a wreck. According to the neighbors everything used to be nasty, overgrown and unkempt, so when they moved out the landlord pulled up nearly all signs of life leaving a large, naked plot of dirt. After one steep visit to a nursery to plant a narrow strip, we decided to shelve our plans for the yard until some future, more flush day. We want plants, we want so many plants, but plants are so expensive, we kept saying. We’re just going to have to be patient. Then the day before Thanksgiving I missed a turn in a part of town I’m rarely in, and stumbled upon some potted plants set out on the sidewalk. The minute that I pulled over to investigate, the man who lived there pulled into his driveway and struck up a conversation. It turns out that he was a gardener who rescued and rehabilitated the dozens of plants that his clients asked him to throw away. His landlord was selling the building so he and his wife had to move out and downsize, and all he wanted was for his plants to go to a good home; he said I could have as many plants as I wanted and he wouldn’t hear of taking money. I described just how touched I was by this gesture in more detail on tiktok, but suffice it to say I was absolutely blown away by this man’s generosity. And hey, weren’t we just saying how much we needed as many plants as we could get our hands on? The luck of the house was brewing and brewing.
As we’ve continued to settle into our space, we’ve had several more encounters of this variety. We lamented over the price of a hutch for the dining room, only to find a beautiful, free, mint green vintage one online. We reached out to the seller of a gorgeous vintage bar on facebook marketplace, and got a discount because she turned to her husband and said, doesn’t this guy look like someone you’d be friends with? (it turned out that he and Jesse knew each other from college). Most recently- and most insanely- we were on the hunt for a fire pit so we could have people on the patio this winter, but found that the cheap ones melt and the expensive ones are more than we were hoping to spend on what is essentially a metal barrel. Then our friends Hannah and Jen reached out to us- they just bought the apartment they’ve been renting and have been doing a lot of intense landscaping on their overgrown lot. This week they cut back an unruly rosemary bush and discovered that under its mass lay a large, functioning firepit. Would we like it? I mean…weren’t we just saying?!
My mom is the one who pointed out the connection between these dots- that every time we’ve asked for something, we’ve received it in some strange and beautiful way. “It’s time to get more specific,” she said, by which of course she means asking about my career. So I have! I’ve been trying to get really specific in my thoughts and dreams and asks about my work, in the hopes that whoever is on the Fire Pit and Landscaping Wish Fulfillment Team out there knows someone in Entertainment. Or hey, maybe they’re a jack of all trades, who knows. But since I appear to have found myself on the luck train, I’m going to do my best to just keep riding it. All aboard!!!
How To Recover From Time Travel
Alison Lynch is a beautiful writer, person, and manager of Echo Park’s incredible Honey Hi. Have you been? A cafe that, when I visited LA, made me think ohhh I could live in a city that has places like this! Check out her upcoming substack, My Aim is True, for more wonderful Alison!
Just a few weeks ago, on the day after Christmas, I walked into a bookstore in my hometown of San Francisco to idly browse, a sacred ritual. There’s something soothing about all those pages. I like to carry a stack lovingly for a while, but leave with none, so that I walk out the door both in love with a world full of infinite ideas, and drunkenly smug that I didn’t spend any money. But this time, the smell of fresh bindings wasn’t having the same effect. Instead, the words repelled me. My brain felt too sodden to read, and my eyes slid off every book jacket like it was covered in oil. It was then I realized I had Time Traveler’s Disease.
It was a moderate case, as far as TTD goes. Upon further self-examination I had all the classic symptoms: fatigue, blurred vision, and a permeable mind. I tried to remember how long I’d been suffering. For a week at least, since my annual 6-hour pilgrim’s drive up from Los Angeles for the holidays. Yes, the more I thought about it, the more certain I was that somewhere during that ride, probably east of Oakland among the lumbering Altamont Pass windmills, my Civic and I had slipped through a wormhole as shimmering and imperceptible as a spiderweb. By the time I zipped onto the Bay Bridge and laid eyes on the city perched atop its famous hills, a city I haven’t lived in for 17 years, I was 18 again, and also 11, and 6, and my actual age of 35, and also every other age I’ve ever been, all jumbled together in one. I‘d time traveled, to every time in me.
San Francisco is a small city, and spending the first 18 years of my life there means that nearly every inch of pavement triggers endless half-remembered moments. Of course, certain personal landmarks have a greater gravitational pull, and I encountered one such touchstone not far from where the bridge spills out into the city. Just to the left of the freeway, the top few floors of a stout, gray-green, glass-paneled building are visible. It stands out among the rest, not quite for its beauty, more for its distinction. The architecture was what first caught my eye when I was young. It curves and ripples alongside traffic with something jolly in its shape that recalls Flubber from the movie Flubber. The facade is nearly all windows, but frosted along the edges, so that the view inside was obscured. What goes on in there? I wondered. Maybe it was a law office. Or had condos with recessed lighting. I fantasized about an adult life where I might live or work in such a striking building. Who was that future version of me? Maybe I would grow up to be her.
Eventually I asked about the building, and my dad told me it was the San Francisco County Jail. I was stunned. My understanding of prison up to that point was distant and cartoonish. It felt so incongruous to me that this structure of corporate whimsy housed something so brutal. I couldn’t stop talking about it. Did you know that’s a jail? I said, each time we drove by. I thought everyone else would be just as thunderstruck. I repeated it so often that to this day my friend Maddie will sometimes text me out of the blue, Did you know that’s a jail? and I am reminded that I am known.
You’d think I would stop imagining my future at the jail now that I knew its true purpose, but the fantasy simply shifted to a darker one of incarceration. What if that’s what my adult life held? I considered that with equal parts apprehension and intrigue. And it wasn’t just happening with the jail. I was projecting an alternate version of myself into every building I passed like a tic. As an anxious kid with no real sense of self, my guiding maxims were Don’t break the rules and Don’t draw too much attention to yourself. But every school, diner, or well-lit living room window was an invitation to imagine a different life, one where I was bolder or knew how to crimp my hair. I was particularly preoccupied with which neighborhood I would live in in my adult apartment. My family on both sides has been in San Francisco for generations, and it only made sense that I’d be there, too. Maybe I’d land somewhere in North Beach, among the old school Italian restaurants, or in a three-flat in the outer Richmond with vintage crown molding. Every neighborhood that wasn’t mine felt exotic and rich with possibility. I tried on versions of myself in my mind that might come to be, trusting that when the future arrived it would feel like solid ground.
Back in the present, visiting San Francisco for Christmas, I take in each block with the eyes of an 8-year-old and a 17-year-old and a 35-year-old. I feel bittersweet nostalgia for fantasies that never came to pass, and I can’t help but slip into old habits, projecting myself anew, now equipped with the dispiriting adult concept of a budget. I left for college in the Midwest and never moved back after all, so none of those futures have come to pass. There’s some comfort in my old game, but also heartbreak. At 35, I feel like I’m at the kids’ table in many of the traditional ways, still untethered and searching for exactly what I’m trying to do here. I have a sisterly compassion for younger me but also feel like I’m still that girl, a girl who has decades of emotional endurance to come.
With all that churning of the mind, you might understand how I came down with TTD.
I drove back to LA the day after the bookstore incident. In the car, I let podcasts about the Real Housewives and Dolly Parton wash over me, too off-kilter to consume anything but smooth brain content. When I arrived at my building, a cheery courtyard complex in the shadow of Griffith Observatory, the little life I’ve carved out for myself started to become concrete again. I was reminded I had plans I was excited for that week, getting drinks with friends, maybe catching a movie. I wasn’t dying to get back to work, but I like my job managing a cafe and was looking forward to seeing my coworkers. And when I stepped inside my apartment, it greeted me with the decor I’d lovingly chosen and arranged over the years, books on every surface. A woman who knows herself lives here, I thought, and knew it to be true.
All The World’s A(vailable to) Stage
One of my favorite activities in the world is organizing a bookshelf. Arranging tchotchkes on any surface, sure, but a bookshelf in particular is just mwa mwa chef’s kiss my favorite part of settling into a new space. Since it has taken a while to accumulate the surfaces necessary for such endeavors in our new house (bookcases, etc.) we are just now getting into Staging Season. Decorating a space is such a visceral and joyful experience for me- my personal sign of success is when I repeatedly return to a staged spot in my home just to wistfully gaze- and I am sometimes asked by friends who don’t experience the same physical response to decor how to literally do it. Since it’s fresh on my mind, here is how I, personally, organize a bookshelf:
Gather all of your materials. This particular bookshelf is in the main area of our space, so I wanted to use it as more of a favorite-pretty-things display rather than heavy duty book storage. With that in mind, I gathered some of our books that are particularly beautiful/meaningful, and then focused my magpie eye on laying out all of the pretty/funny/sentimental/colorful treasures I could find. Like truly, laying them all out on the ground next to me so I can pick and choose. Ideally, I like to start with a wider selection than I need so I can balance color, texture, elements, etc. We’ll get into it.
Start with the big stuff. When I’m looking at an empty bookshelf, it’s helpful for me to mark the space with some of the larger items so I know where to build from. I started with the biggest books I had, grouped them in colors that felt pleasing to me (not necessarily organized by color, though that’s fine too!), and plopped them at different points on the shelves so that when I looked at them, my eyes found a natural flow down the bookcase (think zigzags here, not straight lines).
Layer, layer, layer. I like to pull any books that I’m putting on a shelf all the way to the front- a tip that I learned from my interior designer mother. It just looks nicer and more intentional! As a bonus, this also leaves room at the back of the shelves to display postcards, pictures, books that you want to stand up and show the cover of, etc. I love each shelf to feel like its own little curio box, so each unit has depth & dimension, a mix of new and old, different colors and textures, etc. So once you have the big pieces down, add some mediums, then some smalls. In general, things like to be grouped in odd numbers (a trio of tchotchkes rather than a duo, for instance) but all rules are made to be broken. Try it out, see what you like!
Expand your idea of what goes on a bookshelf. There’s no way to do this wrong! Any of this! The only way to do it wrong is to imagine that there’s a “right” way to do any of it instead of a version that makes you Happy. With this in mind, you don’t have to go out and buy a bunch of stuff to make this look beautiful (although that is also FUN and may I suggest antique/independent stores if you’re already headed that way? It’s all about the character, honey!). I love to look around my house and be reminded of my whole life, so when I’m searching around my space for items to choose from, I look for: cards I’ve received, pretty postcards I’ve collected, functional items that I also like to look at (polaroid camera, pretty jar of pens, matchbooks), plants, candles (if you’ve got candlestick holders, pop some boys in there!), favorite record/cds/tape cases if you’ve got ‘em, photographs, small art, vases, bowls, things I’ve collected from nature (dried flowers, rocks, driftwood), beautiful art supplies, the list goes on and on! All of these things could just as easily be in a drawer as they could be on display. Make art from what you have!
Take a step back and check it out! How’s it looking? How does it make you feel? My favorite imaginary game is that someone is interviewing me and they say, now tell me the story of every little thing on these shelves. If you like that game too, does it check that box? Or do you respond “West Elm,” and the interview is over? Maybe that’s a sign to go scavenge for some treasure! You can also play a bit of a pattern game as a checkpoint: pick one element (a distinct color, a texture like a dried flower or a natural material, glass, wood, metal, etc.) and see the path that your eye takes around your bookshelf if you track that one element. I find it to be the most aesthetically pleasing when that paths snakes around the shelves, rather than being grouped in one section or, again, in straight lines rather than zig zags.
Happy organizing! And listen, if you need any assistance…you already know it’s my favorite game. Comments? Questions? Let me know below!
Happy Sunday my friends! I hope you’re staying warm, wherever you are.
xx, Olivia
love the pen cup persisting through arrangements