In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: “How you been?”
He grins and looks at me.
“I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees.”
— Wendell Berry, “A Meeting”
Once, in a dry season, I wrote in it large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.
On Self-Respect An essay on understanding our character, worth, and limits.
“Love is, like, twenty-eight different things, and they all get lumped in together in this one sack, and there’s a lot of things in that sack—it needs to get emptied out. There’s fear, and jealousy, and revenge and control, and they all get wrapped up in really nice fucking wrapping paper.”
“i hate everyone on ‘succession’ and i can’t stop watching,” a typical headline read. The show is so unsettling, in part, because it offers no vantage points exterior to its scrupulously rendered universe—there is no outsider figure who is easier to identify with than the amoral protagonists. The Roy family’s outsider, Cousin Greg, is as calculating as any member of the clan with whom he seeks to ingratiate himself. Culture critics have popularized the term “wealth porn” to characterize shows, such as “Billions” or “Gossip Girl,” that lavish attention on the consumption habits of the absurdly wealthy. But, if the shiny surface of “Succession” bears a relation to pornography, it is less because it titillates than because it partakes of pornography’s deadening relentlessness.
Glute Lab: The Art and Science of Strength and Physique Training. What are your favorite exercise books?
He might be a crazy optimist, but even Ted Lasso concedes that hope can feel terrible.
“It’s the hope that kills you,” laments the American who finds himself coaching a British soccer team in his eponymous show. He echoed the words of John Cleese, whose character in the 1986 film Clockwise, cried: “I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”
How ‘active hope’ may help sustain us through the uncertainty
Important: How Does the ‘Official ‘Ted Lasso’ Biscuit Recipe’ Stack Up?
The Popularity Of Immersive Art Rooms
Saloni on what we know and do not know about depression.
25 Worthwhile Dessert Recipes That'll Make People Say, "Where Did You Get This Recipe?"
Born in Memphis into a family of gospel, Aretha Franklin was destined for style. With a career over five decades long, the ‘Queen of Soul’ transcended the music industry. Franklin became an icon not just of soul itself, but of strength, women’s liberation, and the civil rights movement. She redefined the art of expression through song.
Life: The Queen Of Soul In 90s Fashion
Cool! Respect’s Costume Designer on Recreating Aretha Franklin’s Most Iconic Outfits [T&C]
SO good and juicy: The Spine Collector: “For years, a mysterious figure has been stealing books before their release. Is it espionage? Revenge? Or a complete waste of time?” [Vulture]
Pierre Hardy’s Perfect Paris Apartment
In the wrong hands, some Paris apartments can become boring white boxes. In the chic hands of fashion designer Pierre Hardy, his husband Christopher Turnier, and their Italian interior designer Vincenzo De Cotiis, a 17th-century apartment in an hรดtel particulier on รle Saint-Louis, became perfection personified. I’m so so in love everything about these interiors that were just published in Architectural Digest. It reminds me of an updated version of my favorite sexy 70s interiors that mix antiques with modern and contemporary pieces in historic interiors. I’m going to be dreaming about this for a long time.
To read the entire story and find credits, pick up the September issue of Architectural Digest or click here.
