Theories of relativity
When it comes to this kind of writing — unnecessary self-disclosure, oversharing, the indulgent rubbish many of you know me for — I’ve been totally dormant since 2022. Around that time I felt betrayed by a number of my readers because I mistook them for friends. The fact that I’m back doing this means I’ve learned something, or at least am trying to beat a lesson into my thick skull.
The reason I’m calling this “Stew” is because that’s all I do, and because coincidentally I also specialize in cooking soups. This edition gives you context into my dormancy and outlines the mish-mash of thoughts I have on connection, audiences, and friendship.
Some time around 1750 BCE Nanni inscribed on a clay tablet to merchant Ea-nāṣir a complaint about receiving the wrong grade of copper. It was sent to the city of Ur, where the merchant resided, and eventually lost to time.
In the early 20th century Ea-nāṣir's dwelling was unearthed. Inside: Nanni's letter and some others, including one from an Arbituram man who had not received his copper at all.
In 2015, a netizen re-discovered Nanni’s tablet. They shared it online. We rejoiced: as it turns out, customer service has always been shitty. The tablet became a meme.
From my vantage point as a writer in the 21st century, Nanni and Ea-nāṣir got off easy. Though it’s true that their squabble became public consumption centuries later, I like to imagine that in their era, no overly-nosy courier would have read the tablet and inserted themselves into the conflict.
That’s not the case anymore. Every small advance in communication — whether blocky letters carved into clay, the first human-trained carrier pigeon, the Hughes Network System satellite launched in 1996 — has brought humans closer together. Now it’s easy to read something not meant for us and, mistakenly feeling included, throw our weight behind a specific cause or sentiment. A single person can achieve the critical mass needed to sustain explosive — destructive — fission.
This is the plight of those who make things: there will always be an audience.
The trouble occurs when you mistake the audience for your friends.
I mentioned 2022. At the end of the year there was a fiasco. Though I’ve never shied away from criticism or even verbal abuse from readers, I didn’t expect harsh subtweets and behind-my-back gossip from people I considered friends. I was completely shocked. Time and again I returned to the question: If we were friends, why didn’t they just call me an asshole to my face?
But recently (this is why I’m able to write again), I’ve realized that I was the issue. Throughout my time on the Internet, I’d been under the impression that anyone, given enough time and the right circumstances, could become a friend. That was how I spoke to my followers: that is to say, carelessly and assumptive of their understanding (this becomes important later). But a handful of interactions does not a friend make. Sometimes a reader is not a friend, just a reader who lacks context for why you hold certain opinions or write in certain ways.
For context as to how I was led so astray: I grew up mostly alone. My nose was buried so deep in books I didn’t notice as entire seasons passed by my bedroom window. There were years when texting, instant messaging, and phone calls were all I had in the way of meaningful human connection.
Isolated and hungry as I was, I never bothered differentiating between online and offline interactions. Instead I assigned them the same weight — to the point I experienced friendships and even entire romances fully online. Miraculously, even in those circumstances, I always had one or two friends — and not “just hanging out” friends or “casual” friends, either — but really, really, really, really close friends.
Take M, the person I consider my closest friend now. I met M on Twitter in 2015. Though we’ve known each other for almost a decade, M and I have met face-to-face at best a handful of times. Yet this bond has survived months-long periods of silence, undergraduate school, multiple moves to different cities, inexplicable behavior from parents, childbirth, my failed return back to the States.
My thinking: If even my closest friend started off as a random Internet stranger, then shouldn’t I be able to achieve our level of trust and intimacy with everyone else?
The answer to the question is: no. My friendships withered between 2016 and 2024 and at first I couldn’t understand why. But you grow up, lose opportunities to meet, realize you had different values the whole time, grow apart.
I think of Olivia de Recat’s “Closeness Lines Over Time”:
A lasting relationship requires proximity, frequency, reciprocity, and strong mutual understanding. The last part (and “mutual” matters here) is what smooths the gaps and ties everything up neatly when the first three are somewhat lacking. Its absence leads to conflict. Mutual understanding confers a gravity of forgiveness and grace that keeps the lines close. You need it if you want the thing to last.
The elephant that feels like a fan to one blind monk feels like a tree trunk to another. To another it feels like a weapon. (A parable my father used to share with me). When you don’t have mutual understanding — oh, it’s really neither of these things, it’s just an elephant and not dangerous, it wasn’t like that — any number of signals could introduce fear, discord, or distrust into the relationship.
What does it mean to love? How far should we go for the sake of someone we care for? Why do people go back to someone who already hurt them deeply? How should children be raised? Why are some people more emotionally volatile than others? Friends that last don’t always arrive at the exact-same conclusions to any of these questions — but they’ll understand each other, or at least have enough curiosity to figure out how they arrived there.
Given the weight of our respective burdens, that M and I are still alive is nothing short of miraculous. I think we’re aware of this every time we speak and connect, and it gives us a lot of grace for each other. Without needing to apologize or explain, we understand that sometimes life overwhelms us to the point of silence. We get why certain things keep us up at night. Though the roads we take often differ wildly, we eye life’s outlook from similar vantage points. And so we last and last and last.
Sometimes the understanding arrives through conversation. Sometimes it’s through shared time and struggle. But its inception demands a willingness from both parties to seek and forgive, and therefore more often than not it won’t come at all.
A reminder and a rebuke: don’t assume that anyone — friend, reader — understands.
Now, what of the audience?
An audience can leave the author to die just like Roland Barthes would have wanted, and assess the work as-is without wondering why the curtains are blue. Readers aren’t required to forgive sloppy wording or offer the benefit of the doubt. I no longer seek understanding from my readers: do with my words what you will.
In this newsletter, I’ll share snippets of my goings-on, and finally name streets instead of sharing implacable photos three years after I take them. Once in a while I might share recipes, update you about my latest experiments with food and drink, or even offer peeks into my working life, because aside from everything else I’m doing I’m also still holding down a WFH job.
Thanks for waiting. Thanks for being part of my journey. Still, as ever, I wish you well.