The quality of light

Glints and shadows, plus my weekly shareables: Love in a nursing home, a battle over French bulldogs, and the story of Flo

Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, 1665

There’s a time of day where I can’t sit in my favorite chair because it drives our cat insane. It took me a while to figure out why he was going insane—howling and climbing on top of the long bookcase against one wall of our living room. Finally I figured out he was chasing light. The sun coming in through the window in the late morning bounces off the screen of my phone and onto the wall. I was moving the phone and the light was dancing on the wall and the cat was going nuts. So now, if I need to use the phone that time of day, I find another spot.

That’s not the case all year long. Every day the light shifts just a little, and yesterday’s shadows don’t look quite the same as today’s. Of course it gets dark earlier now … I’m writing this at 4 in the afternoon and you can already feel the sun getting ready to settle in for a nap. Not many of us keep farmers’ hours anymore—not even farmers do, now that they have headlights on their combines. But I’ve noticed my body clock changing as I get older. My body wants to go to bed earlier and get up earlier, even as I fight it on both ends.

I’ve always wondered if I could live in Alaska or Iceland or one of those places where you can go all day without ever seeing the sun. I suspect, in my case, the cold would be more of a dealbreaker. But I do find that I need the light—not just the sun itself but the dawning of it, the way it moves across the screen of my mind through the day, the sweeping hand of the cosmic clock.

Every day, at some point, feels like a Vermeer. Every day casts shadows like the ones in Plato’s cave. Every day is a chance to see the same world in a different way.

There’s a scene I think about a lot from a ‘90s movie called SMOKE. Harvey Keitel plays Auggie, who owns a cigar shop in Brooklyn. One of his customers, Paul (played by William Hurt), comes in one day and notices a camera on the counter. Auggie explains that he’s taken a photo of his store from across the corner at the same time every day for the past 4,000 days. They go through his photo albums together. At first Paul flips through the albums casually: “They’re all the same.” Auggie tells him to slow down, really look at the photos. And eventually, Paul understands.

There’s a quote on one of the IMDB pages for the movie—I don’t think it’s actually from the movie, but it might have come from novelist Paul Auster, who wrote the script. Either way, it makes sense here in this late afternoon with the light slanting in:

People say you have to travel to see the world. Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you’re going to see just about all that you can handle.

10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. My guest on this week’s SOUTHBOUND is Ellen Ann Fentress, who has a fascinating new memoir called THE STEPS WE TAKE and also curates The Admissions Project, a website where people talk about the segregation academies that popped up in the South after public schools were forced to integrate. There’s some rich soil here.
   (A quick survey for those of you who listen to the podcast: Do you listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, through the WFAE website, or some other way? Let me know in the comments.)

2. My weekly for WFAE was about David Tepper, owner of the Carolina Panthers, and how if you keep firing people, maybe you’re not very good at hiring people.

3. You probably don’t know the name Stephanie Courtney, but you know her character: Flo, the star of all those Progressive insurance commercials. Caity Weaver’s profile digs into what’s it like to have a certain strange kind of stardom. (NYT)

4. Love in a nursing home. Sophie Elmhirst writes this so simply and beautifully. It wrung me out. (The Guardian)

5. DOG NEWS: From now until DOGLAND comes out (April 2024!), I’m devoting this slot to dog stories. This week: The culture wars over French bulldogs. FYI, there will be a LOT about Frenchies in my book. (Vanity Fair)

6. A promising new Substack: My friend Melissa Ludtke has started a newsletter as a prelude of sorts to her upcoming book about working as one of the few woman sports reporters in the ‘70s, and her lawsuit that led the way to equal access for women covering sports. It’s a fascinating story and Melissa has led an amazing life.

7. Oliver Burkeman on how to experience life, not hoard it. (The Imperfectionist)

8. We thoroughly enjoyed the two available seasons of ANNIKA, a Scottish murder-of-the-week show featuring a lead detective who drops literary references and sometimes talks directly to the camera. It might be the funniest murder show I’ve ever seen. (PBS Masterpiece)

9. The star of ANNIKA, Nicola Walker, is such a compelling actor that we immediately started watching one of her previous series, UNFORGOTTEN. It’s a cold-case series that slowly interlaces several narratives over a season. Not nearly as fun as ANNIKA but just as interesting. (PBS Masterpiece)

10. A cover I didn’t know I needed, but will be playing on repeat this weekend: Lana Del Ray doing “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
    

    
    Have a great week, everybody.