A Postcard From Here: On Beauty

in lace, in time, and other things

Quick note: A big thank you to everyone who showed up to my talk with Aminatou Sow at Warby Parker SoHo this past Thursday. Additionally, a welcome to the new subscribers and the many paid who joined after last week’s housekeeping note. As a reminder, many of these posts will now be paywalled to help keep this a sustainable and generous offering. Paid subscribers get first access to my workshops (I just finished guiding a class, event RSVP’s, lists and letters, and so much more!) There’s much more after the paywall today, I appreciate your support of my work.

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BREW will close its doors permanently a letter reads, posted on Instagram. White text and black background make the statement form with a sobering clarity. That sentence is surrounded by a white rectangle highlight. Two years ago, before heading to Senegal and then Ghana for a trip, I stopped in Ode to Babel (which was having one of its final evenings), followed by a quick stop at Brew. To feel the distinction and the contrast between a summer’s night in Brooklyn and the evenings dancing in Ghana felt seismic. Although that trip to West Africa held such a deeply special place in my heart, it was the strange intoxication of my city of Brooklyn that resonated with me upon my return. It stuck to me even when the kids and I went to Europe the weeks after for a month. There was and is something about Brooklyn.

Since then, it would be an understatement to say things have shifted here and around the world. Before the new year arrived and what felt like the last days of “normalcy” or maybe, not outright corruption and and disruption for the sake of it, I spent an evening dancing in Lovers Rock with a few friends and someone close to my heart. Eight years prior, it was Lovers Rock that became a refuge when I needed it most, during the end of my marriage. When I look at the photos from that night I seem so young. I'm way less tired. And the fear was entirely different. I was hopeful, and not in the strange way you are when you’re young. It was hopeful in the way one gets when everything has flipped and there is no formal net to cling to. There was darkness, certainly. However, that evening, and the many ones since have offered beauty within that.