A new weeknight dinner, an absorbing memoir, and an electric blue nightstand
plus surprising science of happiness and a gorgeous new MTA arts commission
This week, I rediscovered the joy of just … killing time, the inherent pleasure of not having anything pressing to do, nowhere to be, and the expansive feeling of lots of time ahead of me.
On Monday and Tuesday, my oldest child had the day off, so between ferrying him to various activities in NYC, I first found myself for several hours in a coffee shop full of plants on Broome Street, and later, I lingered in Odeon eating profiteroles with hours before my train home.
I listened to the tables around me as I doodled, the awkward interview for a tech job at one table, and the happy group of French tourists who filled the half-empty dining room with the most beautiful laughter. The white cotton tablecloth was cool and smooth beneath my fingertips. The condensation on my tall glass of Diet Coke. Time slowed down. My typical preoccupation with productivity waned, and I chilled out.
Sitting there alone, time folded in on itself for a moment, too. When I was pregnant with Alex (16 years ago!), I often had lunch at Odeon with my friend Nancy (we'd gotten pregnant the same week and delivered our kids within days of each other). Odeon was miraculously, reassuringly unchanged; what an absolute joy and gift to sit there for a while, a gentle type of time travel.
Because I always want this to be a real place, to the extent that I can make it one, there was hard stuff this week, too: I had the sudden onset of ocular migraines caused in part by high blood pressure, probably caused by my intense stress about social dynamics with one of my kids. It's hard to listen and not "fix"; bearing witness as a parent is hard and stressful!
My eye doctor, a rare polymath knowledgeable on just about everything, reassured me my eyes were just fine - that these were absolutely ocular migraines and would probably clear up in a few weeks. He peered down at me (he is very tall, and I'm quite petite) and said, after hearing just how high my blood pressure had been, "You're just one of those people whose blood pressure is sensitive to emotional stress, aren't you?" I just laughed because, as a highly sensitive person, every part of me seems to be highly attuned: to pleasure, to my environment, to stress. Why would my heart be any different? NB: Don't worry; I monitor and take medication for my blood pressure. Drinking A LOT of water has helped a great deal with these migraines, as has taking it easy this weekend.
As someone who has been unhappy, sometimes profoundly so, in the years since COVID as I've juggled the dislocation and relocation for myself and my family, pivoted my career, and made a whole new social circle in my 40s, not to mention adapting to the intense driving required by country living after almost twenty years of not driving, I have learned over and over that small points of social connection consistently make me happier and lighter.
A chat with the folks in the coffee shop (who were among the first people I told I'd finished my novel; that my Substack was a bestseller!), a chat with my friend Pom over her gate when I pick up gorgeous tulips from her CSA; I've even learned to make small talk in the narrow aisles of my local grocery store (something that was unheard of in my time in NYC).
I read two articles on happiness this week. The first, How Nearly a Century of Happiness Research Led to One Big Finding (gift link), highlights the importance of - yet again - small talk:
“What [the researcher] found more surprising was just how effective even having smaller points of connection throughout the day could be for happiness — and how achievable that is, if people could only overcome their own hesitation. Talking to strangers — on trains, in a coffee shop, at the playground, on line at the D.M.V., in the waiting room at the doctor’s office ….Talking to strangers guarantees novelty, possibly even learning. It holds the promise, each time, of unexpected insight.”
A Global Flourishing Study Finds That Young Adults, Well, Aren’t (gift link) makes the same point from a different angle:
“Study after study shows that social connection is critical for happiness, and young people are spending less time with friends than they were a decade ago,” said Laurie Santos, a psychology professor at Yale and host of “The Happiness Lab” podcast.”
All of this brings me to suggest an audiobook with stand-up comedy special vibes by Casey Wilson and Jessica St. Clair called The Art of Small Talk that fundamentally changed my feelings about small talk and made me significantly better at it!
I think my main takeaways from the audiobook are 1) treat small talk like an experiment and 2) try out various “material” - for me, this is asking about something that genuinely interests me about the person I’m talking to - a piece of clothing; their car; their garden; their kids. 3) Have an exit plan “I’m going to get a drink, do you want one?” This is all common-sense advice that somehow seems fresh and, more importantly, doable when presented in such a funny and down-to-earth way by the authors.
I've suggested The Art of Small Talk multiple times, but it's worth the repetition if even one of you listens and feels a shift. In a world increasingly designed for efficiency and digital connection, I’ve come to think of an unhurried small talk with a stranger as downright revolutionary.
A. One of the small joys of riding the NYC subway is the serendipitous discovery of art when you least expect it. Hilma's Ghost won the prestigious MTA Arts & Design commission, a public art program known for transforming transit spaces in New York. This month, their project, Abstract Futures, was completed and installed in Grand Central Station in Manhattan. I can't wait to see it in person.
B. This olive oil is so happy; it would make an excellent present for your mother or mother figure!
C. I get asked a lot for bedside table recommendations - this is an unexpected one!
D. A friend recommended Deborah Levy’s “living autobiographies” to me, and as luck would have it, Bookshop delivered the last one in the trilogy—The Cost of Living—first. I devoured it in days. Levy’s writing is elegant and spare. She writes with a propulsive quality about “the joy contained within small things” while not being saccharine or glossing over life's challenges (divorce, death, financial stress). I highly recommend it!
E. We've moved to a maybe 80% plant-based diet. We still eat fish, and smash burgers are a real occasional treat. I love Cabot special stock cheddar (as a friend said once, "You can get through a lot on cheese and crackers, amen!"). But on the whole, most weeknight dinners are plant-based. These Peanut Noodles with Roasted Broccoli are pretty darn delicious.
F. This collaboration between Band-Aid and The Metropolitan Museum is great!
G. A friend texted me these loafers and holy moly, did I smash the add-to-cart button! What a small joy to be known so well.
H. These slides from Laines London made me laugh out loud. I think they'd be a great small talk starter. I recently had a nice chat at a somewhat awkward dinner party that started with a discussion about my shoes (smoking slippers embroidered with fireworks!) but led to a deeper conversation about relationships and marriage. We both share (and celebrate!) the anniversary of our first dates- May 18th! Small talk; you never know where it is going to take you.
I. One of the joys of the modern internet is waitlists. Whenever I see something sold out, I sign up, and sometimes, a long time later, I will get a little surprise in my inbox—this striped tee is one of those!
J. When I was in my 20s, a beloved neighbor of mine used to joke that she was born under a schlepping sign. We lived on a third-floor walk-up, and she lived on the fourth floor. Well, same, same! I, too, was born under a schlepping sign, and these Ikea bags are my absolute favorite.
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I often have a few finds that don't fit into the main image (my favorite part of the newsletter to create and the hardest to get 'right') or the overall flow. I put a few bonus finds here for subscribers as a tiny thank-you.