plové zine: issue 02

⋆｡˚ THE PLOVÉ MAGAZINE ˚｡⋆

issue no. 02: summer solo

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(plové girls on the cover: @gracee.ag & @em.seg)

hi, hi.

welcome back. or, if you're new, welcome to the part of your friday where someone you've never met sends you a very long text about flowers.

last issue we talked about being soft together. this one's about being soft alone, which is, in our experience, the harder of the two. (the group chat is a love language. so is leaving it on read for an afternoon.)

we promised you the thirty-second flower trick and a longer essay on doing pilates by yourself, and a promise is a promise, so here we are, slightly horizontal, exactly on schedule.

this is the summer solo issue, and we mean it gently. summer is the season everyone wants you to be at: the rooftop, the dinner, the trip with eleven group chat names. all good things.

but summer is also the season that gives you the longest evenings and the most light, and it would be a crime against light to spend all of it performing for other people.

so we made you something for the quiet half of the season.

— x, the plové team

──── ❀ in this issue ❀ ────

01 — the thirty-second flower trick

02 — a longer essay on doing pilates or yoga alone

03 — small summer things, for the in-between

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01 — the thirty-second flower trick 🌼

the move is called the spiral. and once you know it, you cannot un-know it.

here's the whole thing: hold all your stems in one hand, loose, like you're holding a deck of cards.

every new stem you add goes in at the same angle, say, two o'clock, laid across the ones already in your fist. don't fight it. don't fuss. just keep adding, always at that same angle, rotating the bunch in your hand a quarter turn every few stems.

when you've used everything you bought, look down. the stems will have crossed themselves into a soft little spiral underneath your thumb.

still holding the spiral as one piece, hold the bunch up next to your vase, trim the bottoms in one straight cut. wrap a piece of wire around the stems where they cross to lock the spiral in place. drop them into a juice glass, a pickle jar, the small ceramic thing you made in pottery class. done.

that's the whole trick. it takes about thirty seconds once you've done it twice, and the bouquet that comes out the other side looks like the kind a florist hands a bride: fuller, fanned out, every flower somehow doing exactly what you need it to. florists charge for this. we don't.

do this on a sunday morning in summer, with the windows open, for nobody in particular. the flowers are not a photo. the flowers are not for a girls' dinner. the flowers are because you live there.

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02 — a longer essay on doing pilates or yoga alone 🩰

(plové girl in pic: @sarahdeleeuww)

the case for the class you don't post about.

last issue we sang the gospel of pilates with the girls; the matching sets, the matcha after, the mirror photo you do not apologize for. and outdoor yoga, the mat under a tree older than your grandmother. all of this still stands. moving with the people you love is a cultural moment for a reason, and the reason is mostly love.

but there is a different version of the class, and it is the one we want to talk about.

the version where you go alone. midweek, midmorning if you can swing it. pick whichever you reach for -- pilates at the studio, yoga in the park, a mat on the floor of your living room. it doesn't matter. you put on your set (porcelain pink, misty taupe, whichever you feel like that day) and you leave the apartment without telling anyone you're going.

no group chat coordination. no "running 5 min late!!!" you just go.

something happens in that hour that doesn't happen in the other one. it's just you and what your body is doing. the attention has nowhere else to go but inward, and the move stops being something you're doing and starts being something you're feeling.

the breathing gets quieter. the count gets honest. you find out you've been holding your shoulders an inch higher than your body wanted them, possibly for years.

the matcha-after rule from issue 01 still stands. you just get yours by yourself this time. order one, take it outside, sit somewhere with sun on your face.

it doesn't have to be content.

it doesn't have to be content.

it doesn't have to be content.

(we say it three times because we needed to hear it three times.)

most of your week is spent being someone for someone. but inside it there are these little hours that belong only to you. the ones nobody asks about later. the ones that don't make it into a story.

those are the hours that hold the rest of it up.

book the class. don't text the group chat. let it be only yours.

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03 — small summer things, for the in-between ☀️

(plové girl in pic: @gracee.ag)

a short list, because the small things are the whole point of the season.

— the first stone fruit of the season, peach, plum, apricot, whatever's perfect that week, eaten outside, sitting somewhere you can drip.

— go to the pool, the river, the ocean, the lake; whatever salt or chlorine is closest, early enough that you're the only one there. swim a few laps. lie on the concrete until you're dry.

— take the long way home from somewhere on purpose. golden hour, ideally. notice three things you've never noticed before.

— write a poem around sunset. it doesn't have to be good. it doesn't have to rhyme. it doesn't even have to be a real poem; just put words down for ten minutes while the light's gold. nobody is reading it but you.

— buy yourself the flowers. you already knew this one. we're just reminding you.

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✿ before you go ✿

this issue's album —  rain forest by walter wanderley (1966). bossa nova on a hammond organ. it sounds like a poolside in rio in 1968 and you, alone, in the kitchen, slicing a mango. put it on while you do the flowers.

this issue's movie — practical magic (1998). how convivial! the aunts. the midnight margaritas. the sisterhood that holds the whole movie together. and stevie nicks somewhere in the soundtrack, exactly where you'd want her. the kind of film you watch alone in july with a glass of something cold.

next issue — may 22

we read replies. send us a photo of your spiral. tell us what you did alone this week: what you ate, what you noticed in the light, we want all of it.

with love, loose stems, and a long evening, the plové team

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p.s. forward this to the friend you'd happily not text back for an afternoon. (she knows it's love.) ❀

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