Coffee, Mysteries, Tears, Running
Plus a comic about connection
Hello, I’m Edith, formerly of The Cut and The Hairpin, and this is a newsletter with links, personal writing, illustration, and comics. It’s a work in progress, and I’d love to know what you think. (Feel free to hit reply to this email!)
...tears come in three varieties...
First Things. In a review of Bill Bryson’s new book, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Joseph Epstein lists a bunch of facts about the human body, including this detail about tears. (The three kinds are “basal, reflex, and emotional,” per Wikipedia.) He also lists everything that’s gone wrong with his own body, from a bout of ringworm in the sixth grade (“I had to wear a hat in school for several weeks, which was embarrassing”) to developing cataracts, getting a celiac disease diagnosis, and having a heart condition that called for bypass surgery.
It was fun to read — also awful — and it made illness and death seem closer in my own life. I thought, Maybe I should be doing more stuff, having more adventures, being more fearless. But then again, maybe that’s what I am doing.
Thinking about fear and fearlessness reminded me of how in the years after my dad died, I did a lot of career things that felt kind of fearless, and I’ve wondered if that had to do with him being gone. (I shared that thought with someone once, about how there is a sad liberation that can happen after a parent dies, thinking it might be helpful. Years later, she brought it up again, saying, “Remember that time you said you were happy your dad died?” And I was like, “That is not what I said!”) Anyway, now I’m thinking, Well, what are the things I’m currently afraid of? What are the deep forces at play right now? Is it possible to consider them more clearly?
It’s not something I have a lot of memories about, outside of the fact that ultimately the commercial kind of seems like the brother and sister are going to have sex. That’s why we’re talking, right?
GQ. The wonderful Gabriella Paiella gathers an oral history of the famous “Folgers incest ad.”
The illusion features a moving shape that somehow can be seen to rotate around both the horizontal and the vertical axis and rotates in two different directions around each axis. W. T. A. F.
Kottke. The illusion is crazy.
Here: the 20 best feature-length documentaries of the decade, and how you can watch them.
Vox.
All year, I felt surprised by everything. When I was pregnant with Jane, I thought Desi would hate the new baby and resent us. I didn’t know that we would be giving him his main obsession in life. I thought I would be relieved, after a tough pregnancy, to never “have to” be pregnant again, instead I felt devastated that my reproductive years were over, [...] that all the mystery of my previous years, where would I live?, who would I love?, would I have children? what would we call them?, was now revealed, and while it all turned out better than I could have personally designed, it left a void of wonder. A “what’s next?” feeling that I experienced like a death rather than an adventure.
Everything Happened. I love this newsletter, from Evie Ebert.
Every bright spot in this new image is a distant galaxy.
MIT. Freaky!
Todd: She’s very sweet, and I feel smarter just by being around her. And she’s hilarious. And pleasant.
Rachel: Yes, very pleasant!
Cup of Jo. Cute wedding content.
With my pulse rushing through my ears, my face splotchy and beet-red from the blood pounding in my head, I felt totally closed off, trapped, and almost deaf. My own sensory experience was so intense I couldn’t even hear my teammates chatting casually in the pack around me.
Narratively. This story is also about “sex, running, and the Mormon Church,” but I especially liked this description of running.
