a quiet existential unraveling
and monthly favorites
hello.
it started with the book of job.
as mentioned in previous newsletters, i decided to read the bible in all of its entirety over the span of this year—slowly and deliberately. when i entered into the book of job, i found myself starting to spiral. it’s not a comforting book my any means. i used to think it was. i grew up hearing it framed as a story of patience, of faith rewarded. but reading it now doesn’t feel like a lesson—it feels like a warning.
if you’re not familiar with the story, let me provide brief context. job is good. good enough that god points him out. and then god and satan make a bet, and job becomes collateral. his family dies. his body breaks down. his world ends. and when he asks why, no one gives him an answer. not his friends and certainly not god.
and then when god finally speaks—from the whirlwind, no less. he didn’t provide comfort or clarity, he just reminds job how small he is. “where were you when i laid the foundations of the earth?”
there’s no explanation. just scale. just a power trip from a god who claims he’s good, all-knowing, perfect, and things of that sort.
i’ve deeply internalized the idea that suffering should have meaning. that there’s a reason. but job doesn’t get one. and maybe we don’t either.
after that, everything else i read this month (mind you, none of it was on my tbr) felt like a response to this quiet, cosmic indifference.
before we continue, know that i’m a masochist, and my readings this month will represent the current emotional state i’m in. some of these books i’ve been chipping away at since the start of this year. but the amalgamation of them all created a catastrophe of existential and nihilistic dread that that has been haunting me over the past several weeks...
the world as will and representation by arthur schopenhauer
schopenhauer’s view of life is relentlessly bleak—existence, to him, is driven by the will, a blind, ceaseless force behind all desire. essentially, we want because we exist. and we suffer because we want. the only escape is to detach from desire entirely, to withdraw from the world as much as we can.
i didn’t agree with all of it, but there was something horrifyingly reassuring in his refusal to romanticize human striving. most philosophies try to offer some kind of balm, some way to make peace with suffering. schopenhauer doesn’t. he just points at it.
reading him after job felt like moving from myth to diagnosis. i’d gone from a god who won’t answer to a philosopher who tells you not to expect one. and somehow, that made sense to me.
confessions by saint augustine
after schopenhauer, i needed someone who still believed in god—not distantly, but personally.
augustine was a return to that. confessions is messy and intimate, full of longing and guilt. he’s obsessive and self-aware as he spirals through his past sins and mistakes, all in search of grace. what struck me most was how embodied his faith is—how tied it is to desire, to the flesh and memory.
tortured faith, searching, longing, deeply human. i didn’t always agree with him either, but i felt his desires. he made belief feel like a relationship again—complicated, uneven, but alive.
reading him made me miss believing in something that wasn’t abstract. but i feel as though my brain won’t ever allow me the capacity to make space for the intangible, especially by a deity who claims to be loving, perfect, just.
a grief observed by c.s. lewis
this book really undid me, and i knew it would which is why i’ve avoided lewis’s writings for so long.
lewis wrote it after the death of his wife, and it doesn’t try to be wise. it’s raw and uncertain. one minute he’s defending god, the next he’s furious. he describes god as a door slammed in his face. as silence. which is how i’ve felt multiple times throughout my life—a russian roulette of the highest of highs and the lowest of lows knowing that no matter how much good you do for yourself and others, you never know what card life will deal you in any given moment.
it echoed everything i’d been thinking but didn’t know how to say. the idea that grief doesn’t just hurt—it distorts your sense of meaning. it makes god feel absent, or worse: indifferent.
what struck me most is that he doesn’t resolve it. the book just ends. not with clarity, but with exhaustion. and in that exhaustion, something like faith still flickers. but it’s significantly quieter now.
dialogues concerning natural religion by david hume
a book i’ve been chipping away at for some time now.
if augustine was faith as longing, and lewis was faith in mourning, then hume was faith under glass—examined, turned over, quietly deconstructed.
there’s nothing aggressive in his tone. it’s all calm observation. he sets up a dialogue between three characters—each representing a different philosophical view on god—and lets them argue it out.
and somehow, that made it worse.
it felt like watching someone take apart an architecturally stunning and sacred cathedral deliberately, carefully, with reverence. not to mock it, but to understand how it was built. and realizing—maybe no one was ever inside all along.
i didn’t leave the book feeling triumphant. i left it feeling hollow. not because hume was right—but because he was kind. and that kind of questioning, that careful, thoughtful doubt, is harder to dismiss.
i suppose after all that, my brain needed something unhinged.
the monk is gothic chaos. it starts with a pious monk—admired, respected, untouchable—and ends with him committing murder, summoning demons, and descending into absolute moral collapse. it’s melodramatic, perverse, and darkly funny.
but strangely enough, it didn’t feel like a complete departure from the other books. it felt like the theatrical version of what i’d been quietly experiencing over the course of this month. i suppose this is what happens when belief becomes performance. when restraint becomes repression. when desire, denied too long, rots.
it made me laugh in a bleak way. like, yeah. of course this is where we end up.
again, i highly recommend not reading these in tandem with one another. i’m in a dark space and i’ve grown rather nihilistic. take them one at a time and pair it with something light hearted to take the edge off.
onto this months films and other things i found myself enjoying this month…
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films i watched this month:
a tale of springtime (1990)
a quiet, slow unraveling of social tension and mild emotional chaos in true rohmer fashion. a philosophy teacher ends up staying at a stranger’s house and gets subtly caught in something she doesn’t totally understand. nothing happens, and yet everything does. classic rohmer.
chungking express (1994)
dreamy and disjointed in the best way. two stories about love and loneliness in hong kong. the second half is basically just faye wong floating around to “california dreamin” and somehow making that feel like the saddest, sweetest thing you’ve ever seen.
alice’s adventures in wonderland (1955)
a curious girl named alice falls down a rabbit hole into a whimsical and nonsensical world, encountering talking animals, riddles, and chaos as she tries to find her way home. and everything feels a bit off—which is exactly how alice should feel. loved it and perfect for spring.
la notte (1961)
a beautiful, cold film about a marriage quietly falling apart over the course of one day. nothing gets resolved. it’s slow and detached but in a way that’s intentional and gorgeous. kind of like watching people drift through a museum of their own lives.
the aristocats (1970)
parisian cats, jazz, and zero existential weight. duchess is perfect, thomas o’malley is charming, and the geese are still funny. sometimes you need a film with no moral, just a cat playing the piano.
jeanne dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 bruxelles (1975)
three hours of a woman cleaning, cooking, folding things, and then—barely—falling apart. it’s hypnotic and strange and feels like time itself is slowing down. not for everyone, but if you’re in the right headspace, it’s kind of everything.
what i’ve been wearing: fragrances that made me feel something
smells like warm skin after a long, slow afternoon. clean but not sterile—like laundry drying near a stable, somewhere just barely rural. there’s hay, sunlight, something musky but gentle. it’s quiet and golden and a little addictive.
notes: fresh grass, bergamot, hay, jonquille, wet earth, haitian vetiver, tonka bean
cashmere over bare skin. soft, nutty, subtle in a way that feels personal. it has this warm, polished thing going on—like autumn light through a brownstone window. comforting without being sweet. low-key luxurious.
notes: magnolia flower, musk, orris concrete, french lavender oil, ambrette seed, lavandin absolute, white amber
i highly recommend the maison d’etto discovery set if you’re curious about their scents.
relique d’amour – oriza l. legrand
this one is haunted. it smells like a crumbling chapel—stone, incense, moss, faded lilies. sacred, but wild around the edges. like a place no one goes anymore, but something still lingers. if a ghost wore perfume, it would be this.
notes: pine, herbal notes, lily, incense, powdery notes, elemi, oak, pepper, myrrh, moss, woody notes, musk
smells like pencil shavings and pear, but in a good way. cool, intellectual, almost quiet. like sitting in a library alone, perfectly content. clean, modern, with just enough warmth to keep it from feeling sterile.
notes: pear, ambrette, carrot, iris, ambroxan, cashmeran
powdery, earthy, and kind of surreal. green tea, clay, iris, smoke. it feels like golden hour on bare skin—soft and a little strange. like a dream you’re not fully awake from yet. intimate in a way that makes you lean in.
notes: green tea, bergamot, orange blossom, iris, clay, rice, lily, turkish rose, white musk, sandalwood, olibanum, benzoin, guaiac wood, vetiver
candles:
byredo – altar
smells like a candlelit chapel at dusk—smoky, spiced, and quietly floral.
notes: clove, carnation, ylang ylang, papyrus, haitian vetiver
byredo – cotton poplin
crisp and comforting, like freshly laundered linen catching the breeze through an open window.
notes: blue chamomile, linen, white cedarwood, sweet musk
trudon – salta
a burst of citrus softened by spring florals—sunlight filtering through grapefruit trees in bloom.
notes: verbena, grapefruit, hyacinth
trudon- abd el kader
a desert wind laced with mint tea, sun-warmed citrus, and a sharp breath of spice—fresh, wild, and full of movement.
notes: blackcurrant, lemon, ginger, mint, apple, jasmine, vanilla
music (and podcasts):
piero picciono (if film noir wore silk, quoted anaïs nin, and cried alone in the bathroom at a gallery opening)
adore you )mubi podcast (for cinephiles)
snacks:
puffed wheat (kamut) cereal with applesauce, honey, and milk
baguette, salted butter, radishes (add this to your daily snacking to spark immense joy)
lately i’ve been craving homemade belgian waffles
fresh strawberries picked from the garden
these edamame snacks to take on the go
purely elizabeth granola and icelandic yogurt
these true lemon strawberry lemonade packets for when i’m thirsty but i don’t want to drink water
speaking of beverages, i’ve very much been enjoying this honey pear tea and this floral green tea
recently acquired:
my brother got me a microphone for all of my youtube and tiktok shenanigans and i’m forever grateful
this is my favorite home diffuser of all time. jo malone’s fig and cassis. it’s perfect for any season—not too sweet, not too green, not too fresh. it’s a balance that plays nicely with other scents. (and it’s on sale)
i was recently gifted a few goodies from quince that i’ve been loving (specifically this bag, these loafers, and this ring)
aesop reverence hand soap. i’m late to the game but i love the smell of this and how the little exfoliating beads make my hands feel soft and clean
oh! last year i spent a lot of time raving about this candle warmer. i need a new one for my living room and this one is high on my wishlist
not acquired—but some fun things in my ebay saved folder that i’m one existential meltdown away from purchasing: this moussy flight jacket, vintage longaberger library basket, stories from the new yorker from the 60’s, this book by sophia loren that i’ve had on my wishlist for about 2 years now, this family of six siamese cats drinking spilt milk figurine set, and this lot of philosophy now magazines
lastly some etsy finds in my shopping cart: this vintage wooden cabinet for my perfumes, vintage wooden breakfast tray for breakfasts in bed, my blythe doll doppelgänger,
okay, that’s all for today.
i’ve created a youtube video expanding on this newsletter if you’re interested.
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i love you.
bye.
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Okay you are so good at finding cool stuff on eBay! I love the cabinet, the library basket, the doll, and the breakfast tray! You should do a post on the search terms you use and how you find such cool stuff!
what illustrious company!! I am honored <333