Bookstores, Galleries and Timothée Chalamet

no, I didn't see him 😔. welcome to this midweek's recap

On the weekend we had one of those perfect days in Toronto— the world’s last gift of a warmth before the trees close up shop for next six months. So my son and I decided to take the bus downtown for a bit of a wander around. It was heaven. We spent the whole ride there in a wonderfully philosophical discussion on time and identity. He is analytical, practical— while I tend to have my head in the clouds, and my theories often veer on the side of fanciful and mystical.

By the time we got downtown we were starving! Apparently discussing our place in the Universe makes you hungry. So we walked over to Prince St. Pizza— yes,

☀︎ Toronto now has her very own Prince St. Pizza,

and I almost died taking the first bite (it was my first time). Thank God I survived to tell you: it’s sooo good. I heard that the owner even brought a specialized water filtration system to mimic the qualities of NYC’s water.

Then we grabbed two iced Matchas from what’s been our favourite little café this summer and

☀︎ headed to the Art Gallery of Ontario for a bit of a wander around.

We sat on our favourite brown leather couches there, then walked through a couple of exhibits we hadn’t seen yet. It might sound strange, but we often drop in to the AGO just to hang out for a bit. We don’t necessarily spend hours going from collection to collection or see every piece of art every time we go. Often, simply being there to gaze at a Monet for a couple minutes makes us happy.

There may be a scientific reason for this. The Mauritshuis, a museum in the centre of The Hague, commissioned a study that showed how looking at an original painting activated the brain differently than looking at a reproduction:

Neurological research has shown that looking at a real painting at the Mauritshuis activates the brain differently than looking at a reproduction of the same painting. The viewer’s emotional response is ten times stronger when they are face to face with the painting in the museum. Researchers used electroencephalograms (EEGs) to reveal that real artworks, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, elicit a powerful positive response much greater than the response to reproductions.

☀︎ And because we all know that bookshops are cool and are having their comeback,

we dropped into Flying Books at Neverland on the way home.

A book I’d like to recommend this week—I’m rereading parts of it to immerse myself in her creative genius:

☀︎ The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Jhumpa Lahiri has such a hypnotizing way of telling a story. She seamlessly moves through her characters point-of-view. Her writing is minimalistic yet she manages to fill the story with delicious details. An example here, pulled from the opening paragraph of the book:

ON A STICKY AUGUST EVENING two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl. She adds salt, lemon juice, thin slices of green chili pepper, wishing there were mustard oil to pour into the mix. Ashima has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble approximation of the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks and on railway platforms throughout India, spilling from newspaper cones. Even now that there is barely space inside her, it is the one thing she craves. Tasting from a cupped palm, she frowns; as usual, there's something missing. She stares blankly at the pegboard behind the countertop where her cooking utensils hang, all slightly coated with grease. She wipes sweat from her face with the free end of her sari. Her swollen feet ache against speckled gray linoleum. Her pelvis aches from the baby's weight. She opens a cupboard, the shelves lined with a grimy yellow-and-white-checkered paper she's been meaning to replace, and reaches for another onion, frowning again as she pulls at its crisp magenta skin.

☀︎ I was fascinated/baffled by an episode on Trevor Noah’s Podcast, What Now, on The Trad Wife Paradox with Anne Helen Peterson.

Apparently there’s a growing movement called the “Trad Wife” movement happening online. Sigh— to an outsider from another planet, our society must be fascinating to observe.

And on the theme of fascinating, look what popped up on

☀︎ my Timothée Chalamet news radar this week:

He’s filming a new period drama with Gwyneth Paltrow about a pro ping-pong player. What an interesting combo.

From Getty Images on Vogue .

☀︎ I will leave you with this quote by John O’Donohue:

I would like to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

May you, too, be surprised by your own unfolding. Wishing you a good rest of the week,

XO Ingrid

---

PS. An eye-opening article called: I’M AN UNDECIDED HOBBIT, TORN BETWEEN A DARK LORD WHO PROMISES AN AGE OF CHAOS AND AN ELF QUEEN WHOM I JUST WISH I KNEW MORE ABOUT by SAM WOODS.