I had the pleasure of being the +1 at The Black Archives Bijlmer Book Club, where we read Travis Alabanza’s None of the Above. Meredith and Wally were excellent hosts, and I loved meeting new people with similar interests.

I had strong feelings about Alabanza’s insistence that this work “feels like theory”, in response to it being marketed as a memoir. Calling Get Out a comedy diminishes the value of Black storytelling in horror narratives. But calling it a documentary is just as ineffective. “Feels like theory” very much sits in that spectrum, for me.

I enjoyed the lively conversation my strong feelings sparked about respectability and Black works, and was surprised the lyrical essay appears to be such an unknown genre when I offered it.

The first and last photos were taken by Wouter Pocornie.

They open their roti takeout, unfold their pancake, and start eating. Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it. I ask them if it’s okay that I watch them eat before I start, so I can see how in the world I’m supposed to eat sauce without cutlery. (Continue)

This week marked the week I got back into the swing of things at work. I tend to find the holiday season quite boring because things slow down quite a bit. Now that people are returning from their winter break, my to do list is filling up again with exciting projects, opportunities for collaboration, and research endeavors. As usual, a conversation with my manager reminded me how much I love my job. (Continue)

The first week back at work is fairly quiet, I even found myself on the verge of boredom at one point. Organically, this makes me feel bad, but I remind myself that weeks before and after holidays tend to have this effect on my life. I tell myself I’m just landing. No one can convince me the municipality of Amsterdam isn’t using major construction projects to show tourists how crap the city can be. (Continue)

Two months of onboarding have rushed by in a blink. The new job is absolutely wonderful: the people are great, the work is complex and important, and the office itself is perhaps the finest I’ve ever worked at. I joined this company because the challenges they have seemed interesting to me. I’m very pleased that, two months in, it’s difficult to think that, at one point in time, these challenges weren’t also mine. (Continue)

January flew, flew by, I tell you. We started with “wow, 2023 already, let’s have a chill time this year, hey what’s on Netflix?” and at the time of writing everything is different: Things are not chill, because we’re preparing ourselves, our lives, and our house for our first-ever puppy Both our work lives are unexpectedly bustling and busy We cancelled Netflix I’ve been saying for years that I’d be willing to pay 100 euros a month for a single, all-encompassing international streaming platform. (Continue)

The weather has officially reached a temperature that requires me to buy a new coat. I dread it. Unlike most other types of clothing, coats and jackets never seem to suit me, regardless of the style. To soften the blow of having to order several coats on the Internet hoping one will work for me, I granted myself three sets of retro socks. I finished reading The Midnight Library, which I had borrowed from Annelie. (Continue)