Wanted: human connection
On renewable emotional energy.
As we near the end of a very long and uncertain week — toward the end of a very long and uncertain year — I feel like I'm wearing lead boots.
Although the results of the Big Thing That Happened This Week are becoming clearer, it's impossible at this moment to imagine an outcome that erases the pain and strife that exists between us. We seem to be headed for more of the same, not less.
Winter is coming. Virus cases are surging. Unemployment is rising. And the rift between neighbors and strangers, parents and children is cracking wide open. We no longer simply disagree on which policies are best and worst for our country; we disagree on the nature what's true and untrue. There is no beginning or end to the grievances we have with each other.
Don't worry, I'm not going list them one by one here. Every room in a house has its purpose (which is why I don't cook food in the shower). And this newsletter's purpose for me — and I hope for my readers — is to be a source of shelter. I do quite a bit of politicking elsewhere.
It would be pretentious to suggest that I have a prescription for how to heal what's going on here. But throughout this week, I found myself jotting down my own personal ideas for how to proactively seek connection with my fellow human beings. It's a task made harder by our inability to touch each other. But here's my plan:
Share: I want to make things with my hands, grow food, and share both with as many neighbors as possible.
Spend: I want to give my money to just causes and be intentional about patronizing local businesses over multinational corporations, even if it's less convenient.
Look: If you live in a city, you know the move. Peer intently down at your feet as you pass someone on the sidewalk. Or gaze around the room as you're talking to a friend. Making eye contact can be an almost uncomfortable level of intimacy. But it's a substitute for the handshaking and hugging we can't do right now.
Listen: I want create a space to hear what people are most scared of about the future — without debating them or trying immediately to fix it.
Write: I want to jettison social media, the endless, sad scrolling, and the false sense of connection that comes from likes and comments. Instead, I want to establish a regular practice of writing postcards.
Want one? Reply back with your address.
This is not an alternative to the responsibility we have to address the extremely real suffering and danger some of our most vulnerable communities are facing. It simply isn't an option to tap out, and I plan to fight like hell to help right those wrongs.
At the same time, I am aching to understand — and be understood by — my neighbors, friends, and family. I want to make a choice: to invest in renewable emotional energy instead of the unsustainable outrage that fuels our lives online.
away we go
Brian Eno's Music for Anxious Times
Lindsay Zoladz for The New York Times
Best line: “I think one of the great drivers of the mess that we’re in now is the increasing atomization of society into more and more individuals and fewer and fewer communities. I want to see ways of communities being built again. Now, of course, the internet has created new types of communities. But unfortunately, it’s done it in connection with social media, which has meant that there’s this sort of … it’s like a very intense form of masturbation. Where everything is self-referential and it’s possible to create communities that are so sealed off from everybody else that they become convinced that the whole world is clearly how they see it.”
10 Swivel Chairs We're Loving Right Now
My take: I'm a bit obsessed with tête-à-tête seating and the opportunity to exist alongside someone, even if it's in silence reading books together.
Best line: At High Point's fall market, we saw pairs of swivel chairs everywhere. Designers love the chair’s versatility—accommodating multiple focal points in a room, while taking up little space. As you shop, pay attention to how the chair swivels: Some are engineered to spring back to where they started, but others glide around and find their own resting spot regardless of where they are positioned—driving you nuts. Regardless of the type or style, swivel chairs look lovely in pairs and can act as wonderful room dividers when floated in a space. (The Editors at Architectural Digest)
A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can't Crack
Best line: In April 2017, a man started hiking in a state park just north of New York City. He wanted to get away, maybe from something and maybe from everything. He didn’t bring a phone; he didn’t bring a credit card. He didn’t even really bring a name. Or at least he didn’t tell anyone he met what it was.
He did bring a giant backpack, which his fellow hikers considered far too heavy for his journey. And he brought a notebook, in which he would scribble notes about Screeps, an online programming game. The Appalachian Trail runs through the area, and he started walking south, moving slowly but steadily down through Pennsylvania and Maryland. He told people he met along the way that he had worked in the tech industry and he wanted to detox from digital life. Hikers sometimes acquire trail names, pseudonyms they use while deep in the woods. He was “Denim” at first, because he had started his trek in jeans. Later, it became “Mostly Harmless,” which is how he described himself one night at a campfire. (Nicholas Thompson for WIRED)
Cookbooks Help Me Escape These Days
Best line: The best cookbooks are so much more than recipe collections — they’re oral histories, documentaries, time capsules, love letters, geopolitical texts, nature guides. And we, as readers, deserve to see more of them from more parts of the world, written by the people whose stories they tell. I’m convinced that it’s how we’ll become better cooks. At the very least, we’ll get to travel a bit. (Samin Nosrat for The New York Times)
home tour
image: Peter Bennetts
This Playful Melbourne Home Embraces Its Split Personality
Stacey McLachlan for Dwell
Best line: The modernist extension is a brutalism-inspired beauty, featuring a charred-wood-and-glass volume split neatly into two halves. It’s two-faced architecture, if you will—but together, the two sides tell one beautiful design story.
ephemera
Tweet: A construction roadblock in Philadelphia becomes a message board for a dispute over a bike lane — with a surprising twist that we could all learn from in *these trying times*.
Tweet: Sucks for whoever has to move the furniture into this place.
Tweet: A Halloween-themed old house thread.