I went to New York City and didn’t stop until I was forced to stop.
As suggested last week, I took a car to LAX, a plane to Las Vegas, another plane to JFK, then a car to a hotel, around the corner from one of Manhattan’s better slices of pizza.
I was there for a publishing event, also to attend the US Open. But first the 4 train in the morning to a lunch meeting in the Flatiron, then a long walk to a drinks meeting on the Upper East Side. Followed by a long walk to a work party in Midtown, a long walk to the pizza shop near the hotel, then bed, then back again the next morning: a subway to a lunch meeting in Chelsea, a walk to a coffee meeting in the Village, then a walk to a drinks meeting near Penn Station, a train to the US Open, afterward a train back to TriBeCa, more pizza, finally a train ride from Grand Central the next morning (with bagel, lox, cream cheese, tomato) to see family in Connecticut.
And then, a day later, about twelve hours before going back to the airport, I test positive for Covid-19 for the first time in nearly three years of pandemic.
Manhattan equals money. Maybe nothing in the five boroughs is not about money. The old granite hulks, the new glass towers, the matte sheen of party girls in full ironic, finance boys in vests, fashion boys in different vests. Was I seduced into not wearing a mask because no one in New York wants to wear masks anymore? I attended the tournament maskless and drank $18 Heinekens. Truthfully, I always find the US Open a little gross, so much corporate greed, so many country club board members. A lot of people see “New York” in the Open in its bawdiness, its Yankees-Stadium-drunk-screaming-ness, but I see it in the wealth.
Anyway, Covid-positive, I’ve spent the week isolated in my parents’ guest bedroom. (I am writing this newsletter there.) My parents are very sweet – they made the room into a miniature CVS, even found me a Nespresso machine – but of course it’s no fun. I missed an important meeting in Los Angeles. A last-minute magazine assignment came out of nowhere that I had to turn down. Truthfully, there is zero woe-is-me here; I’ve had no severe symptoms, and I’m in extremely lucky straits. But I was still annoyed and pissy, also feeling still a little tainted by the Open’s ickiness.
And then, on a walk, Tuesday morning, listening to a podcast I like but suddenly couldn’t stand – the episode felt like a tribute to materialism and Delta One – I stopped it halfway through and thought, you know who would hate this?
And there it was: this person.
I stopped in my tracks. This was a breaking point – a moment when I sensed something giving way. Here was a person I hadn’t thought about in several years. A person who, I realized, might be a perfect, complicated subject for a nonfiction book. Ever since I completed work on Everything Now, I’d been looking for another nonfiction project. Scouring. Digging. Knocking my head against the wall. With this person, there was only the one biography. No one had really written about them in a fashion to matter to the present moment, but they mattered in lots of ways, I suddenly knew. I sat in the grass of someone’s front yard and made notes on my phone. I got up ten minutes later, mind racing with ideas.
And throughout the week, Wednesday afternoon, Thursday afternoon, Friday, I’d walk to a public beach near my parents’ house, swim out into the ocean, float in the water on my back, stare at the clouds, and it all still held together.
Well, we’ll see.
But if it took Covid and a silly podcast, and some obnoxious white banker bros shouting at Frances Tiafoe, to get me there, a place I’ve been trying to reach for more than two years, I feel weirdly grateful to all three.
In tomorrow’s supplement for supporters
An artist scrapes Instagram for pictures taken near surveillance cameras.
Writing advice I actually like (from Nora Ephron’s mother)
What it’s like to run the John Muir Trail in three days.
Plus a bunch of recent favorite reads, podcasts and things to watch, plus things I’m looking forward to in similar categories.
If you’re not enrolled, the blue button aches for your touch! (There’s a free trial.)
What the what
“Meditations in an Emergency” is published Saturdays by novelist Rosecrans Baldwin, about things he finds beautiful, with a longer piece once a month for paying subscribers, written in the woods.
Also for paying subscribers, a Sunday supplement, three weeks a month, with three-plus ideas of things to love, no paid placements 💀
Rosecrans is the author most recently of Everything Now: Lessons From the City-State of Los Angeles, winner of the 2022 California Book Award, now available in paperback from Bookshop, Bezos Farms, or (preferably) your local store. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
Books mentioned in this newsletter are featured on a Bookshop list.
What’s the podcast? How Long Gone?
Cant wait to read this thing you’re working on! Always down for some eat the richness