Surrounded by Water with Alicia Kennedy
[Series] On Slow Living #3
November 17, 2024
A few years back my dear friend and fellow creative, cook, teacher, and author Claire Ragozzino* turned me on to Alicia Kennedy. Her weekly newsletter, From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy which drops every Monday has become one of my favorites. She is stellar. Over the years I’ve continued to take writing workshops with her and attend her Salon Series. She’s also recently launched an online publication, Tomato Tomato.
Claire, the amazing Kate Berry**, and I just spent the last ten days together on Kaua’i working on her forthcoming cookbook, so home cooking, relationship, family, and the beauty and struggle of living on a colonized island, topics which Alicia Kennedy regularly writes about, were on the forefront of my mind.
Based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, she focuses on the irrefutable interconnection of food, people, culture, and politics. When discussing the impact and importance each one has on a neighborhood or country, it’s kind of hard to not bring up the others. Pull one thread and you quickly discover how much unravels.
Posing the questions around slow living and hearing her responses made me rethink how to frame the very notion of my query. The more we chatted about it, we agreed that it really comes down to mindfulness. Slow living is an approach and ethos just as much as it’s slowing the hell down. Now, how this presents itself will express differently for different folks. Yet paying attention and taking the time to formulate one’s own thoughts and beliefs outside the noise are certainly common denominators.
What drew me to ask her was because I find her voice, her approach, and her astute awareness of food systems truly insightful. It is a subject that I find extremely important and want to remain cognizant of.
Like her, I’m hyper organized. Recognize the value of generating systems to ease operations. Love me a list. And thrive getting shit done. I don’t think that this way of living discredits or ignores inherent principles of slow living. Life is a pulsating paradox. We are human. We live in dense cities, remote valleys and everywhere in between. We eat. We work. We play. We participate in life through both action and rest. All of which has a deep emotional narrative that if you don’t slow down enough and pay attention to it, it’s nowhere at all.
Thanks Alicia.
Yours, Erin
What does slow living mean to you?
I'm not sure I live in a slow way: To me, the phrase "slow living" conjures a lot of relaxation and quiet, and I live life with a lot of anxiety and music and inputs. I wouldn't want to live without these things. They're what allow me to work and keep inspired and curious. I try not to live my life in a way that is totally in thrall to capitalism's demands, but I do get satisfaction out of being productive and focused. And so, I don't think I really embody a slow life. I am deep in my bones a city person.
What's one thing (action, mindset, ritual, habit, etc.) that's essential to maintaining it in your day to day life?
Writing, reading, and keeping to my lists. I also benefit a lot from talking to people, whether they're on the street or at the café or the bar. I like to know how people are talking, the phrases they're using and the things that are preoccupying them.
How do you ensure that a little bit of wildness and or nature remains close?
Right now, I live in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is one of the few walkable city spaces on the archipelago. Though it's ostensibly a city, I also see the ocean every day. So nature is close. I'm a person who's always lived on islands, and so I define nature as bodies of water.
The things I love most in life are about inhabiting a mood, locking into a choreography that’s simultaneously all mine and belongs to humanity: music, cooking, writing an essay, posting online. ~ Alicia Kennedy
I’ve included below a couple of her recent essays that not only are fantastic and I recommend reading, but explore slow living from an interesting vantage point. Essays from From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy:
others referenced //
* Claire Ragozzino – https://vidyaliving.com
** Kate Berry – https://kateberry.co.uk