Best of Lucky Rigatoni 2023
another year-end list for your inbox
These 2023 year-end round ups of the internet are the inspiration for this week’s newsletter. I’ve scanned the archive of my published posts from this calendar year and selected my favorites originally published for paid subscribers. My favorites are the ones I’m proudest to share, ones I return to when I doubt myself or lose my thinking. Below, each of my favorites is now available for everyone, in case you missed it.
Nodal Events (published May 9)
I think of nodal events as the ones that you’d mark on the timeline of your life. In my high school writer’s workshop, with the best teacher in the school, maybe on the planet, we had to annotate a timeline of our own life. It’s silly to think about that assignment now, because I was seventeen years old, so what could I even include? What felt important to me at the time? Defining the narrative of my life? It would have been something to draw a timeline not only of my past but into my future. Maybe I’ll do that now.
A City of Breakups (published May 16)
All of my breakups took place in Amsterdam. This is a lie, depending which of my friends you decide to ask. (We all write our own histories - but witnesses speak for themselves.)
On St Andrews (published August 29)
The map of the town’s streets are carved into my internal compass. But when I approach the iconic cathedral, I can’t remember if the face of the ruins closest to the street always had one tower or if there were two when I lived here. Did it fall down? Was it already falling when I lived here? What fissures remain invisible to us until it’s too late? How is it possible that I can’t remember? Why does that bother me so much?
things i took personally this week (published November 14)
at warby parker, i was trying on glasses, squinting at myself in the mirror because i didn’t wear contact lenses and so could only witness my blurry reflection. someone with a kind face went into a back room returned with pair of frames wrapped in plastic and offered me, with flair, these are the frames that i would pick out for you and i put them on, again squinting, and couldn’t figure out what it was about these frames that felt so ‘me’ to a complete stranger
call for submissions! 6 words to describe your 2023
send me 6 words to describe your year. it could be a sentence, a fragment, a list, an inside joke. you can send me one entry, you can send me a dozen. ask your family. ask your friends. ask your barista. email me, text me, leave a comment, write me a postcard. the collection will be published on January 2, 2024.