May 25–31

This week has been, in large part, a production week. The kind where you clear the table, put something on in the background, and simply work — methodically, for hours, in a way that feels almost meditative once you stop noticing time passing. The Experiment No. 2 compounds are coming together: the Rx pamphlets trimmed and sorted into their three stacks (Vague Unease of Unknown Origin, Summertime Sadness, Melancholia), the chamomile tea bags labeled and assembled, the match striker stickers — a dotted burgundy paper cut to size and placed on the back of each tag — all of it accumulating into something that, from a distance, begins to look like a real thing that exists in the world. The golf pencils arrived this week too. Black, with DARK PARLOUR SOCIETY printed in gold. There is something about seeing your name on a pencil that makes the whole enterprise feel very official.

A few times this week I escaped the production table for something more restorative. An appointment at a downtown Oakland medical office took me into one of the more quietly beautiful lobbies I've been in recently — dusty blue walls, copper globe pendant light, a pink wingback chair catching the afternoon sun. I photographed it immediately, because that's just who I am. And on another evening, a new friend prepared what I can only describe as a proper meal: salmon with capers, roasted asparagus, dressed greens, a bowl of cherries on the side. I do not take food I did not have to make for myself for granted.

While doing the long assembly hours, I've been keeping YouTube company rather than music. This led me, as YouTube tends to do, somewhere unexpected. I started by looking up how to build a tea garden on a balcony and fell deeply in love with a channel called Our Cottage Garden — a woman with a genuine zest for sharing what she knows and an infectious enthusiasm for what she's growing. She mentioned something I had never heard before: when you steep tea, you should always cover the cup. Covering it traps the volatile oils and aromatics, which would otherwise evaporate, and forces them to condense back into the liquid. A tiny adjustment that changes the entire chemistry of a thing you've been doing — a small act of honoring the ritual, allowing it to fully embody all that it can offer.

From there, the internet brought me a disgruntled Werner Herzog piece about his new film, Bucking Fastard, and his decision to decline an invitation to Cannes. Which naturally led me to look up what the film was actually about. Which led me to a short documentary made in the 1980s about the Chaplin twins, the real-life pair the film is based on, who died in 2020. Which led me to realize I have not watched a Herzog film since Grizzly Man in 2005 — which I remember as being so heartbreakingly good that I've apparently been preserving the memory of it by not revisiting it. That ends soon.

I also rewatched The Garden of Eden (2008), the film based on Hemingway's final novel — published posthumously, as his novels tend to end up being. I saw it when it came out and remembered loving the clothes and the locations. I remembered less of the plot, and this time I understood why. What it does do interestingly is sit with androgyny in a way that felt somewhat remarkable for a mainstream release of that era — there's a scene where the newly married couple bleach their hair to match each other, to become twins of a sort. Which pulled me sideways into thinking about one of my actual favorite couples: Katie-Louise and Lilian Nicol-Ford, married designers based in Australia who have been releasing capsule collections together under the name Nicol & Ford since 2017. Their most recent work does not disappoint. I am a devoted appreciator of a sheer bias-cut dress and a feathered hat, and their range of models across every collection is a genuine joy.

And finally, the most important news of the week: my five-year-old Otis has made his birthday cake selection. June 11th. Death by Chocolate. He has good taste.

Friday after work I was taken into the city — the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, which I had somehow never visited in the seven years I've lived here. I moved to the Bay Area in 2018. I have been to Golden Gate Park exactly zero times until this week, and I don't fully know what to say about that except: it was worth waiting for. The plants inside were unlike anything I'd seen before — a deep burgundy tropical specimen that looked designed by someone with very strong opinions, enormous Victoria lily pads floating in their round pond, a pitcher plant doing something quietly unsettling in the corner. Headed to the beach afterward, which turned out to be exactly the kind of gray, wind-whipped Ocean Beach afternoon that feels more like medicine than weather.

The weekend otherwise alternated between assembly and community. The production table has been cleared. The kits are assembled. Something is about to happen.

In between sessions I attended talks at the Bay Area Book Festival at the Brower Center — Saturday and Sunday both. The energy of being in a room with people who care deeply about writing and making and community is its own kind of compound. Noted.

And somewhere in there I started watching a documentary series on HBO called The Dark Wizard, about Dean Potter — a climber and BASE jumper whose entire life was organized around a kind of extreme seeking that I have no personal interest in as a sport and find completely riveting as a portrait of obsession. I'm two episodes in. When someone's passion is that total, that uncompromising, the story tells itself. I'll report back.

Keep an eye out for a midweek post — the official launch of Dark Parlour Society's Experiment No. 2 is coming, along with everything you need to know about how to participate and what to expect.