East Coast Travel Notebook #1
My trip East to SAVE BYSTANDER (and also drink some really astounding wine) (and also...)
YES, I AM ALIVE!
Thanks to everyone who has written, texted, and even called, concerned over my e-silence. As always, I have been thinking furiously and, if anything, living louder than usual—I am a full 2688 miles away from my desk in Santa Monica, look at me ma, top of the world!—but I admit I have been recalcitrant in my Substackin’ duties, and I apologize. Do you want to hear about my YA novel set in Ancient Rome? I’m working on that again.
I do not think you do, and perhaps this is a generational quirk. I have found that one of the gifts (?) of middle age is a general diminishment of Things I Must Tell Everyone, though I am not sure whether this comes from fewer coherent thoughts (possible) or a sense that what I am interested in is, shall we say, the nichiest of niches.
This morning, for example: as I contemplated last night’s migraine (the second in as many nights, brought on by, we surmise, incense or paraffin candles), I thought for the millionth time how much I—unlike many men?—enjoy shaving my face. It’s the ritual of course, but also: truly completed tasks are so rare in the artistic life. Shaving scratches the same itch I used to get mowing lawns, strip by strip, until the job is done. I only wished I’d brought my shaving brush. Last birthday Kate got me a deluxe version from Simpsons. (I’m linking because you MUST know about them!)
Proraso and a Simpsons brush and a Merkur safety razor, that’s my rig. Shaving nuts, put yours in the comments.
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