Alice's Weekly: I got off my hammock just for you
I’m on vacation! And yet I’ve taken precious moments away from my intense schedule filled with napping and eating chips to send you this very newsletter. You see how I love you?
I would kiss your faces. Only if you're cool with it, of course.
STUFF I DID
My weekend in a (sort of) cult: I signed up to learn meditation and almost became an infinite being
For our first exercise we had to mill around as if at a cocktail party, but instead of making small talk we had to look each person in the eye and say “I belong to you.” I considered jumping out the window. I would rather plummet three stories to the pavement below than say “I belong to you” to a stranger.
This was that piece in Salon I told you about. Remember last week? Oh, memories.
STUFF I DID NOT DO BUT I LIKE ANYWAY
What Garden of Earthly Delights Abomination Are You?
Whether you like Hieronymus Bosch or you think there was something seriously wrong with him—or both!—this is a lot of fun. Take it several times and check out all the different abominations you might be. (My favorite is "Lonely Soggy Fruit-Man Whose Only Friend Is A Rat." I know how you feel, guy.)
6:00 am. Arise. Wrap your cardigan-sheathed hands around a mug of hot cardamom lemon water; squint into the distance from your craftsman veranda. Breathe authentically. Pick off a passing man with your bespoke porch rifle.
Perfection.
The Strange Brain of the World’s Greatest Solo Climber
On the hardest parts of some climbing routes, his fingers will have no more contact with the rock than most people have with the touchscreens of their phones, while his toes press down on edges as thin as sticks of gum. Just watching a video of Honnold climbing will trigger some degree of vertigo, heart palpitations, or nausea in most people, and that’s if they can watch them at all.
Just reading this gave me vertigo. Scientists should study me!
Podcast: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Magic Lessons
Wherein Elizabeth Gilbert and her team of famous artist-friends coach and inspire people who feel creatively stuck. I started listening to Magic Lessons fully expecting to hate it with all the hate in my cold dead heart, but instead I fell deeply in love with the entire endeavor, and especially Liz Gilbert and her goofy laugh. The second season, which began August 5th, is especially joy-producing. I can’t recommend it enough.
Deactivating bitch shield,
Alice