Stripped by debilitating depression of the capacity to love meant healing inside before truly bonding with another
In seventh grade, I decided to try out for my school musical. With no prior singing experience or vocal talent whatsoever, I clearly didn’t think it through. As I naively stood in line waiting for my audition, the girls around me asked one another, “What are you going to sing?” They each named a different song from a Broadway play,…
Everyone does it: from the Burmese and Balinese to the Inuit and Icelanders. In the United States, almost half of us do it, making it one of the most common of our shared rituals. We give thanks for our food with prayer, with rituals and dance, before meals, after eating, and in praise of a bountiful harvest. We thank someone,…
It doesn’t take long to get totally freaked out and stressed out of your mind, does it? Hell, it happens to me at least once a week. I’m afraid I locked my keys in my car! My wallet’s gone! When these types of daily scares occur, relief usually comes fast once you realize everything’s okay. But when stressors gain a…
I am sitting in the Good Stuff Diner on West 14th Street across from Nicky Vreeland, a maroon-robed Buddhist monk with deep smile lines. A gifted photographer with an exquisite W Magazine-sponsored exhibit at ABC Carpet & Home to benefit the Tibet Center, Vreeland has mentioned that he finds harmony in his pictures. “Did that train you for life as a monk?” I ask. “I think that…
When Julia Child said “Never apologize,” she was addressing the tendency of cooks—often female cooks—to insist on the insufficiency of their creations. This isn’t the way I meant it to turn out. I hoped it would be spicier. I’m sorry about the frosting. It’s not as pretty as I thought it would be. She thought these apologies had no place in learning—or…
The British filmmaker Christopher Nolan has followed the conclusion of his Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, with Interstellar, a film that resembles 2001: A Space Odyssey in both its plot and its meaning: Humans get a message from beyond and follow it to deep space, where lies the destiny of the species. Matthew McConaughey is our captain, who leaves his family behind in…
Funny movie about madness and depression
A new book takes on the myth of the ‘lone genius.’
