IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Writer Patrick Fealey gives a powerful and harrowing firsthand account of what being homeless in America is like. An important, beautifully written read.
(Esquire, approx 43 mins reading time)
The definition of homeless is we have no home, no place to go. If “I think, therefore I am” is true, we are people who are. We are, and we stand on this ground. If you deny us ground, you are denying us our “I am.” Isn’t that negation of our existence? We are here and we are you and we are yours. Many of you could be where we are—on the street—but for some simple and not uncommon twist of fate. This is part of your rejection, this fear that it could be you. You deny that reality because it is too horrific to contemplate, therefore you must deny us. And the moneyed reject us because they know they create us, that we are a consequence of their impulse to accumulate more than they need, rooted in a fear of life and the death that comes with it. Nothing good comes of fear, only destruction, and America has become a society of fear, much of that fear cultivated to divide and control.
With the Vatican preparing to anoint its first ever millennial saint, Linda Kinstler investigates the process of canonisation to find out how new saints are chosen.
(The Guardian, approx 22 mins reading time)
The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints is located on the third floor of an imposing building on St Peter’s Square, immediately outside the Vatican’s circular colonnade, two doors down from a gift shop and two floors up from the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Most visitors arrive seeking to petition the dicastery’s five relators – priests appointed to oversee the canonisation process – to advance their chosen Cause. A table in the entryway is covered with brochures, prayer cards and flyers promoting the lives of aspiring saints. On my visit earlier this year, I picked up a bookmark advertising the Cause of a 20th-century Brazilian nun, and prayer cards for a 17th-century Italian priest, an 18th-century Malagan mystic and the late Pope Benedict XVI.
The dicastery’s daily operations are kept out of the public eye. Father Angelo Romano, the newly appointed general relator of the dicastery, would not allow me to take photographs inside or to record our conversation, and just as a prosecutor or judge cannot discuss the details of ongoing litigation, he could not speak to me about any saintly investigations in progress. “We are a very peculiar court,” he said. “There is no point when a Cause will be dismissed, and there is no statute of limitations.” Romano estimates that the office is now working on no fewer than 1,600 Causes, some of which date back to the 15th century.
The breakup business is booming, according to Jennifer Wilson. In this enjoyable investigation, she takes a deep dive into the gold rush of apps, coaches, dieticians, therapies and getaways aimed at healing your heartbreak.
(The New Yorker, approx 34 mins reading time)
Ovid wrote, “Love is a scam—every time, every case.” Was that true of love cures, too? I decided to investigate, one heartbreak hotel at a time. This is why I was heading to the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I would be taking part in a three-day workshop—Healing from Heartbreak: A Woman’s Path from Devastation to Rebirth. I had also considered a program called Renew Breakup Bootcamp, run by Amy Chan, a former marketing specialist who calls herself the Chief Heart Hacker. Her retreat, which alternates between Mendocino and upstate New York, is staffed by an expert on men’s “emotional physiology,” a movement specialist, and a dominatrix with a Ph.D. from Berkeley. I called Chan. “Why a dominatrix?” I asked. She told me that most of her clients are high-achieving but lose their power in relationships: “So I thought, Well, who understands power? She’s not necessarily teaching you how to handcuff someone. She’s drawing the parallels of ‘How do we have handcuffs on? How are we in bondage?’ ” I was too late to register.
Lily Sánchez writes about how the speed of modern life causes us to reach for convenience and miss out on the pleasure that comes from of slowing down and cooking from scratch.
(Current Affairs, approx 10 mins reading time)
I discovered that cooking always lifted my mood. The sights, sounds, smells, and textures of cooking were therapeutic; the transformation of ingredients from raw to cooked involves lots of sensory cues, too (greens wilt down, sauteed garlic smells tamer and takes on a golden hue, and with baking, a bunch of powders and liquids turn into magnificent cakes and cookies). And at the end of it all, I could get nourishment… and leftovers! Plus, cooking is a great way to nourish and take care of others around you. Sharing (and photographing and admiring) a home-cooked meal is immensely satisfying. (Never underestimate, either, the joy you can bring to office coworkers by sharing your own baked goods. Whenever I baked for my coworkers, they rushed to the break room and lit up with a smile as they reached for a cookie.)
Sarah Jeong gives a fascinating account of how the night unfolded on the ground in Seoul when the country’s president unexpectedly declared martial law this week.
(The Verge, approx 13 mins reading time)
When the South Korean president declares martial law on Tuesday night, I am fairly drunk, as is much of the city. By sheer coincidence, I am working from Seoul that week, and I have just met up with my boss — also, coincidentally, passing through the city while on vacation — for drinks. My boss’s boss texts me at 10:49PM as I stumble out of the subway station and into a convenience store where I proceed to buy an armful of hangover cures. “Did South Korea just declare martial law?” I laugh. Impossible. That can’t be true. “I think that’s literally fake news,” I text back. I’m walking on the street and everyone around me is behaving completely normally. There are no soldiers, no cops, no loudspeakers — absolutely nothing to indicate that martial law is in place. Nothing in the news leading up to the day suggested that this was in the works. There were definitely some odd things happening in Korean politics, but what else is new?
The veteran character actor, who is starring in Robert Eggers’s adaptation of the horror classic Nosferatu, reflects on his career and his approach to his craft.
(Vulture, approx 30 mins reading time)
When I came to New York, there wasn’t so much emphasis put on professionalism as it was the sincerity and the will of this person to get up and perform. Were they trained for that? No. Was it a career aspiration? It was an extension of their lives. Being around these artists was infectious. And when I was young, particularly, I flirted with this idea of being an artist rather than thinking about a career and making money. Having said that, I’ve never been interested in exposing myself in the way a lot of them did, because if you make it about you, you’re limited. You have to make it about other people and go toward that. That broadens you and makes you more alive and in tune with the audience, rather than getting in front of people and dazzling them with a skill. I would go home for the holidays when I was young with all my brothers and sisters, and they were far more talented than me. I’m not being falsely modest or anything. I had a different intention from them.
The couple that hacked into McDonald’s ice cream machines and started a cold war.
(Wired, approx 27 mins reading time)
Press the cone icon on the screen of the Taylor C602 digital ice cream machine, he explains, then tap the buttons that show a snowflake and a milkshake to set the digits on the screen to 5, then 2, then 3, then 1. After that precise series of no fewer than 16 button presses, a menu magically unlocks. Only with this cheat code can you access the machine’s vital signs: everything from the viscosity setting for its milk and sugar ingredients to the temperature of the glycol flowing through its heating element to the meanings of its many sphinxlike error messages. “No one at McDonald’s or Taylor will explain why there’s a secret, undisclosed menu,” O’Sullivan wrote in one of the first, cryptic text messages I received from him earlier this year.
Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.
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