Hello! It is Thursday, March 4th, 2021. How is your week going?
Mine is fine, but my brain feels like a football trying to touch down. I can’t even finish this metaphor because I’m not sure if the people who play football and make it a challenge for footballs to touch down are called quarterbacks or players or members of like, a receiving line (?) but basically, my brain is the football and everyone playing brought their A to this game so it is becoming clearer and clearer, that I, the football, will not be touching down today.
So here, instead of something long and dramatic, is an actual e-mail. Like, from me to you. Checking in. Asking what’s up and how you’re doing. I’ve been photo-documenting the life and times of a bouquet of tulips I bought last week. Do you want to see their progress?
Tuesday, 2/23: Baby tulips arrive at home, are safely placed in their crib, and promised they’ll be cared for
Wednesday, 2/24: Baby tulips deliver themselves into a bouquet of toddlers (Happy 3rd birthday! I wish you pollination on your own terms for the occasion)
Thursday, 2/25: Where does the time go! We’re entering, but have not quite arrived, at peak tulip. The bouquet has entered their 20s. Ah, youth! Don’t take a mortgage out on it — you can’t ever pay that shit back
Friday, 2/26: A double-decker bus has come to witness the end of the bouquet’s Saturn Return. They are ready to see and be seen. Peak has arrived
Saturday, 2/27: Recall: Tulips prime in their 40s. Individual stems earn the confidence when out on their own. I’ll never forget the time someone told me that a woman’s 40s are her invisible decade. I have this idea that actually, it’s the most prosperous decade of them all
Sunday, 2/28: Though I’m sure once I get there, I’ll talk about how much I look forward to my 50’s — it seems that it’s when you really learn your angles. Your confidence is nestled into your bones, you’ve explored, you’re returned, you’ve left again, you’ve returned. The bouquet has mastered the art of exposing its parts with great grace and aplomb
Monday, 3/1: Here the bouquet delivers itself into various directions that keep it contained, but free enough to be! what! it! (they?) is (are). Can’t more than one thing be true of ourselves? Part of me tilts towards the light but some of me marvels in the shadow.
Tuesday, 3/2: Look here, young disciples in the distance, pink with new life. One day, you’ll expand your multitudes just as we have
Wednesday, 3/3: It will be glorious
Thursday, 3/4 — in case you’re wondering: these mirrors are Raawi; the blue and white check ceramic vase is from Vaiselle Boutique and the white vase was my great grandmother’s
The end!
Here’s also a passage (no. 9) from Alain de Botton’s On Love, which I’ve been re-reading at the suggestion of my friend Ruth:
It’s pretty great, but I’m also pretty aligned with most of Alain de Botton’s philosophy on how to live a meaningful life. Lately, I’m really interested in slipping into perspectives that are expressly different from my own. I heard this idea on the concept of tolerance in a podcast sometime recently that really enchanted me — suggesting that tolerance is not conceding that you agree with an opinion that you don’t agree with, or surrendering your perspective, or even changing it, but rather it’s building the resilience to try to understand a perspective that you still don’t agree with. To respect it and make space for it and allow for it to flourish in the same room in which yours does.
This is a complete non sequitur because the subject matter is naturally very interesting to me, but the next book I’ve ordered to read is bell hooks’ The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Have you read it? Maybe we should inaugurate an informal book club. Substack’s thread feature can probably facilitate pretty great conversation.
And in still another non sequitur, in case you’re wondering whether I have worn anything cool this week. The answer is, Well, that depends on what you think of this:
The collar is part of a shirt, by Chloe, which I bought last year from Net-a-porter. It was pretty expensive ($795) so my recommendation for you would be to get a plain ruffle collar (I like the ones Petite Chou makes) and wear it under a white t-shirt to produce the same effect, or just style it separately with a shirt like this one — a kiwi-green cashmere button down by Maria de la Orden — and salamander pants. These are from Rollas. They feel new and old — fresh and familiar, a new dalliance but storied love — all at once. You can’t see my loafers, but they are Tod’s I got them from The Real Real for $65. There is a pretty wild sale in progress right now.
