Shopping for chefs, anticipating grief, and seeing fuzz everywhere
Welcome to A Few Good Mentions, a weekly (or so) toss-up of five random, share-worthy things I might come across, see, read, do, or eat in a given week. You can find me on Instagram, and my website, which I try my best to update with latest published works. Ok, let’s go!
1.
You know how sometimes you may habitually pass by a longstanding neighborhood business so often that you’ve lost track of the last time you *actually* went inside? That was my case with SOS Chefs. But then all it took was reading that this gloriously extensive spice emporium (a mere three blocks from my home!) was a favorite spot of my friend Chef Ayesha Nurdjaja, and I was there the next day. SOS Chefs’ owner Atef (you’ll know her by her fantastic bright green eyeglasses) helped me pick out a few things for Ayesha, including this crazy-good smoked soy sauce, which I can’t wait to get for myself when I go back—asap.
2.
My friend Christene recommended this episode on anticipatory grief from Anderson Cooper’s podcast All There Is, with the caveat that she was crying within the first five minutes (I choked up around that minute marker too). Anticipatory grief, Cooper explains through a personal anecdote, occurs when a loved one is still alive. It’s knowing that someone’s time is limited, and the overwhelming confluence of feelings that emerge while they’re still in front of you. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had to experience such grief firsthand. Just the idea of it, frankly, terrified me.
In an ensuing interview with the filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, who takes anticipatory grief head-on by making a film with her father as he declines into dementia, Cooper and Johnson do offer this hopeful truth: “Even though it doesn't seem possible, you can always get to know another person differently than you think you can, even if they're already dead, whether it's through someone who knew them, finding something they wrote, etc., it's never too late to get to know someone differently and even more deeply. We let the idea of death trap us, but we don't have to.” Wow. Big deep breath. There’s such power in holding onto that, especially when you may feel otherwise powerless. It may not necessarily spare me the experience of grieving, but it makes me less fearful of it.
3.
In two weeks, hundreds of Joan Didion’s home furnishings and personal items will go up for auction at a gallery not far from where I grew up. Between the proximity of the gallery to my hometown, which I visit often, and the fact that Didion has been a favorite writer of mine in such a deeply intrinsic way that I can’t even recall how or when I first fell for her work, I really thought hard about this. Would I—if I could— want to own a set of Joan’s dining chairs, or perhaps a pair of sunglasses she once wore? And look—I know by all the interest this auction has already conjured up, that there are tons of people who feel differently, but my answer is NO (and even a little “ick”). Right now, those objects remain too close to Didion—they feel too much like her possessions, versus objects once belonging to—for me, a non-relative and a stranger, to think I could assume one for myself. Maybe I’ll feel differently with the passage of time, after these items have moved through different owners…I hope I do, because I genuinely LOVED Joan’s taste in sunglasses.
4.
Nearly two years ago, I wrote a fashion story for the Wall Street Journal about our obsession with shearling and all things fleecy and fuzzy. While it’s obvious the fervor for fleece apparel is still very much a thing, fashion—like viruses—has its variants, too. Right now, we’re hitting “peak” bouclé, that curly-looking looped material that resembles fleece, but it’s actually made from a yarn. Most visible in furniture and home decor right now, boucle is steadily showing up in apparel, hats and accessories, slides and slippers, And curly cockapoos, I’m looking at you.
5.
I recently finished Dilettante, Dana Brown’s memoir about his time at Vanity Fair, from his role as Graydon Carter’s second assistant to his eventual ascent to executive editor. It’s a great story, especially considering Brown’s unlikely hiring in the first place: he had been a waiter at Brian McNally’s 44, a midtown cantine for power-lunching Conde Nast staffers, and Carter, who had recently been named VF’s editor-in-chief, took a shine to him. The book is fast-paced, extremely juicy—but also surprisingly earnest—and not surprisingly, a nostalgia-tinged paean to a recently bygone era of magazine publishing.
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