Hello dear reader,
Happy 2024! I’ve launched into quite the reading mode to start the year, with Tolstoy’s War and Peace by my side (highly recommend checking out
and for thorough and engaging read-along updates), along with an immersion into Carl Jung’s inner world. It’s spiritually rewarding, mentally stimulating, and emotionally enriching. Especially when the rest of me feels somewhat inexplicably flustered and out of place these days.Here are seven links to bits of the world I explored this week, shared with the hope that you will find them to be an inspiring springboard for deeper thinking.
On loneliness, Carl Jung had this to say in his book Memories, Dreams, Reflections: “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. The loneliness began with the experiences of my early dreams, and reached its climax at the time I was working on the unconscious ... But loneliness is not necessarily inimical to companionship, for no one is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely man, and companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others.” His was a loneliness that stretched as far back as childhood, when the vast age difference between him and his sibling left him somewhat of an only child. He recalled playing alone often, and this bit resonated with me, as my own margin in the book was quick to house my inner memory of spending hours alone in my grandparents’ apartment in Moscow building vast cities out of Lego and Kinder Surprise toys. To this day, one of my most treasured possessions is the little bag of mini statuettes — crocodiles and hippos and other members of the animal kingdom — that would populate my imagination on that living room floor.
G and I (finally!) wrapped up watching Suits. I found Harvey Specter played by Gabriel Macht to be incredibly charismatic and beautifully flawed—the connective thread in all nine seasons of the show tumultuously dwelt in the fear this otherwise fearless lawyer had in the realm of love. There’s such a thing as fearing love because one fears the loss of love; just as there’s the fear of starting something due to the fear of it being less than perfect. We don’t want to dwell in that space, but even so, love and loss form two sturdy variables of an invariable, invisible mathematical equation. Here’s Rob Henderson on the answer to that equation, grief. Despite this, we continue to love. And that’s the beauty of humanity.
April can’t come soon enough: Keeping an eye out for the release of Amor Towles’s new book, Table for Two, a collection of short stories set in NYC and one novella based in Golden Age Hollywood. Swoon swoon swoon. If you haven’t read Rules of Civility, I recommend you do, and here’s my case for it.
“Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on” — a find via
(thank you :))I’ll be spending the weekend answering these questions.
Picking up some books for 2024 from this 2023 list.
Sunday subs, see you soon!
Warmly,
Ani
I love writing these newsletters and creating deeper threads of connection for you in this absurd world of ours. It is my soul’s sustenance, but it is also an enormous endeavor with regard to time and effort. If you enjoy my writing, and if able, please consider supporting it by way of interaction—follow along on Instagram, YouTube, or leave a comment/like here—subscribing/upgrading to my paid-tier here on Substack, or buying me a coffee here! It is hugely appreciated, and I thank you.