My fridge broke down last week and the ensuing meltdown I had over it was admittedly disproportionate to the issue at hand. Of course, it wasn’t really about the fridge. Besides the fact that I had to throw away all my beautiful produce and sentimental foods like my kimchi from Korea, it revealed how quickly a practical inconvenience can tip into existential overwhelm—how something as banal as an appliance malfunction can conjure questions of support, safety, and even loneliness. My landlord did what she could. My mother wailed with me over FaceTime. My superintendent, somewhere in Ireland, ghosted me until I found a repairman myself: a Turkish man who didn’t speak English and told me through Google Translate that the fix would take five to seven business days.
I’ve found that what undoes me is rarely catastrophe. Catastrophe, oddly, I can handle quite well. It’s the mundane roadblocks and the tiny ruptures that expose where I am already depleted. My refrigerator saga revealed a quieter grief: not a wish to be rescued, but a longing for someone beside me to help me—to share the burden of troubleshooting, to problem solve in tandem. Or someone to just wail with me, not over FaceTime but quite literally beside me.
I thought, too, about how many years I’ve lived in this country alone, without family nearby to call and ask to come over. Friends become chosen family over time, yes, but it is different. I’ve navigated much of my 13 years in America on my own. Proud as I am of what I’ve built, it’s comforting to know there can someone you can lean on when something just…breaks. And usually, that someone is a partner or family member.
I’m halfway through my WSET Level 2 wine course and already mourning what was once the beginning of a new endeavor and the earnestness with which I took it on. In the past five weeks since embarking on this journey from hobbyist to (hopeful) expert, I have found a new kind of confidence, which I can only attribute to a trust in self that grows when curiosity is given structure. There is a kind of dignity that comes when a passion is taken seriously. And this is why they tell you to have hobbies!
I’ve been going to bars and restaurants and telling my servers I’m taking the course, and they respond with great enthusiasm. At Chambers—something of a mecca for wine in New York—a quietly formal sommelier (John Paul <3) in a navy twill blazer brought out a spittoon and four blind tastings mid-meal. It was a complete, kind surprise and I was touched. I only got the Pinot Noir correct, and was taught to discern why the others were what they were. At Stars—a new wave wine bar overlooking a freshman NYU dorm I have too many memories in—a disarmingly casual but razor-sharp young bartender in low-slung jeans did the same, sans spittoon. I only got the Vinho Verde correct. (I had gone with a new friend from wine class who also went to NYU with me, and the whole thing felt strangely full circle: back downtown, a student again, but of something entirely different.)
Different priests, same lesson in humility.
I didn’t attend a single brand event this past week except for a ceramics-making night with a clothing brand I worked with once four years ago. The openness in my schedule has done more for my mental clarity than any meditation or mindfulness exercise ever has. I’ve traded back-to-back obligations for early mornings spent writing and midday naps in a red light bed. This, I think, is true wealth.
During the ceramics class, other creatives who I am sure are overloaded every day were hyper focused on shaping clay into whatever vessel they wanted. It was one of those odd nights where you’re locked in to the kind of work you almost never get to do, participating in a small communion built around something tactile. I got a 91 Oura sleep score that night.
Ava and I decided to meet on the Upper East Side—somewhere we both always seem to feel especially happy—for our reunion after a month and some weeks apart. We are both always spending extended periods of time in Asia and we looked forward to this reunion for weeks. Sant Ambroeus Madison was a somewhat random pick on my end, but after being turned away from there on a random Wednesday the other week trying for a solo lunch, I was determined to participate in the fantasy of being transported to Milan in the middle of Manhattan. “YESSS”, Ava responded.
Ava is around six months pregnant, and the first of my close friends to be expecting. I don’t think it has fully hit me yet that her life—and, by extension, our friendship—will be changed forever. There’s a quiet awareness that our time as just the two of us is becoming finite. And if I feel this way, imagine how couples feel!
The momentum of life, and its quiet insistence on change, feels stronger than ever. I feel it when I look at Ava, who appears exactly herself except now with the improbable presence of a little baby inside of her. I hope she still texts me back immediately even after she gives birth.
At the Knicks playoff game, a man seated behind me spent most of the night tossing around small talk and jokes with my friend who dabbles heavily in sports—straight male banter, as I like to call it. It’s fun being in environments where I don’t always know exactly what’s happening, as though I’m borrowing entry through atmosphere alone. I go for the viiiibes, after all. But as we stood to leave, teetering out in my Matthieu Blazy pumps, the guy tapped me on my shoulder, grinning: “Great shoes, by the way. Great. So good, that collection.”
Fluency takes many forms and we contain multitudes. One person reads the game; another reads the shoes. And god forbid sometimes a man can read both!
Charlotte invited me to a dinner at the James Beard House for some sushi innovation that has apparently taken Japan by storm. An odd invite, but we were mainly there for the free sushi and as a launch pad for a girls’ night in the West Village.
The company’s CEO gave a speech and, after apologizing for his poor English—which was really not poor! I’m always sad when non-native speakers feel obliged to disclaim this in a room full of Americans!—stage fright seemed to overtake him. After what felt like a 60-second stretched out silence in his speech, I had to physically move my body into another room from secondhand embarrassment.
Almost absurdly, two waitstaff approached me to ask what perfume I was wearing, saying it was the best thing they had ever smelled. They asked so I had to answer and I felt even more ridiculous for pointing them to a perfume combo that my sister reminded me is literally a thousand dollars.
I realized I lived much of this week offline. And in doing so, I noticed how life keeps unfolding in the analog, interrupting abstraction through human contact. We are always colliding with other people’s attention in ways that soften life.
Why was I so touched by a sommelier bringing out blind tastings I never asked for? Why was my friend so moved on my behalf that he left a 50 percent tip? These gestures register differently from the fucking matrix. And for all the ways I remain plugged into the matrix, I find I can still discern the difference. I’m reminded more than ever how restorative these minor exchanges in the world can be.
I woke up the next day thinking about that sushi robot CEO and how stage fright may be one of the most human experiences left untouched by the digital—the body faltering in public, and a room full of strangers feeling it with you. Embarrassment, too, is a form of communion. Almost nothing is an original experience and that is so comforting.
Wow first time commenting but had to because I was so delighted by every vignette and then the way you strung it all together… love
Reading this felt like catching up with a friend over the phone in the best way possible. I’m also a couple of weeks into my WSET level 2 and isn’t it kind of crazy to discover all these levels to wine that you kinda knew existed before but now being able to put them into words??