Five Things (10.4.24)

1. At every turn, I’m convinced I must be one of the luckiest people in the world. There’s a nagging part that questions why me, but I know exactly why: it’s partly circumstantial (the true luck of the draw), and the rest can only be attributed to the sacrifices my parents made—and continue to make—so that I can live a life of, and on, my terms.

The older I get, the more intense and frequent these waves of gratitude. They’ve been tidal lately.

2. I’ve been absent here because I’ve been everywhere else. (Mostly here, where I’ve been sharing my beauty nonpareils and objects of affection.) It’s a tale as old as time, isn’t it? I promise I’ll write more—I say into the digital void—then disappear without a trace for nearly two months. Writer’s block only exists when I’m tasking myself with a project (even one as simple as a little blog post here and there), yet miraculously lifts the moment a brief or commission comes through.

If I were feeling more articulate, this would’ve turned into a stream-of-consciousness dissertation on how capitalism trains us to value career (or production, really) over fueling self and soul—but I only have the wherewithal to glaze over the thought in a bullet within a listicle. Critics of Gen Z and its successors would call it “brain rot” (pilfered from the very demographic they lambaste); I simply attribute it to late capitalism.

… Or my luteal phase.

3. The last two months seemed to have slipped through my fingertips. It’s in part due to the lack of seasonality here in L.A.—it looks like summer, feels like summer, but the calendar distinctly places us strictly amid autumn—and as an ex-Jersey girl, I rely on the crisp shift in temperature to situate where I am in the year. I’m yearning for Babycat weather. I have bottles of delicious woody fragrances and rich ambers to wear. How is it October and still too hot for a warm gourmand?

4. I genuinely believed that the new Sally Rooney would resurrect me from this reading rut, but as it turns out, Stephan Zweig’s Beware of Pity was what my brain craved. Granted, I’m only a few pages in—but this is more progress than I’ve made most of the year.

5. Augustinus Bader The Cream is truly the crème de la creams. I tested it for Editorialist and the moment I finished my bottle of Dieux Air Angel (which I also adore), The Cream took its place in cementing sinkside real estate.

.   .   .

xx

A SENSIBLE EDIT