Attention Inventory: Topknots, Color Theory, Scintillant Places

5 Interesting Distractions

Dec 18, 2025

∙ Paid

I hope this finds you where you’d like to be.

Here is this month’s Attention Inventory list, or: what I’ve been thinking about instead of whatever I was supposed to be doing.

And: there are just a few copies of the new “Prompts for Better Attention” booklet available. You may also learn more about it here. As a reminder, Substack paid subscribers also receive a free digital download of the book contents. The code is at the bottom of this email :)

1. OLD MUSE

I have returned to this picture many times because I like every single thing about it. Bringing back:

Hair in a topknot.
A sweater cinched tightly, at this angle, around the waist
The symmetry of: grey on grey; matching rouge and lips; double bracelets
Smiling. One thing I have noticed about Diana Vreeland is she was always photographed smiling and/or talking with her hands. Inspiring. (Examples: one. two. three.)

*“A puddle of calamine lotion next to a pink plastic bottle,” via the Wikipedia entry for Calamine Lotion.*

2. COLOR, IN SITU

I’m working on more Moon Lists printed books. (Um… but I’m slow. It takes me a long time to write, as it does to untangle the logistics of how to go from the idea of a thing to the actual analog thing).

Anyway, one of my favorite subconscious fascinations is color, and thinking about how they look next to each other (a friend told me she had all the Moon Lists booklets displayed in a row on her shelf, which pleased me endlessly!)

Here are some color references I have been collecting for… something, someday:

• Truly hypnotized by the color of this raspberry jam (especially against the passion fruit, and the silver).

• The yellow of this industrial laundry cart.

• The green of Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand’s 1952 built-in cabinets.

• The photo of Calamine lotion and the plastic bottle on the Wikipedia page.

• Chocolate and gold.

3. SPACE TO RECEIVE

“Yes indeed, the world is a scintillant and fascinating place when a half-remembered mystery leans within reach.” — from Claire Louise Bennett’s Pond.

I quite like this whole story. Particularly, I have been thinking about something it touches on in how we’re expected to respond to everything in the moment. For instance, to open a gift and react correctly, as if it is universally possible to summon our authentic feelings on demand.

There is something very generous and rare in the permission to receive without performance. To let a moment arrive and remain untranslated.

And on the abstract topic of gifts, here are some little things I like to give others:
A case of Bjorn Qorn. A list of reading recommendations that reminded me of the recipient. Instant coffee packs to keep in your bag (because sometimes you arrive at the AirBnb and there is only a Keurig with Dunkin’ Donuts pods). A beautiful facial oil, specifically blended for the season. A jam made with fruit from a far-away place. (Or, perhaps a shell or interesting little stone you found with the same kind of memory attached.)

*An arnica tincture, from the National Museum of History archives*

4. IRRATIONAL REMEDIES

Remedies, by Julia Blackburn, is a repurposing of 9th-century “cures” drawn from an Old English book of invented medicine.

Blackburn cites Byzantine Era physician Alexander of Tralles, who believed his patients “must be defended by anything that gave them the courage to go on living.” He observed that images, amulets, and strange remedies often helped… even when (and mostly when) there was no rational reason they should.

The book is full of such proposals, i.e.: take a nail from a shipwreck, turn it into a bracelet, wear it on your left wrist, and “be astonished by the result.”

(Another line I wrote down: do not entice the fox with old bones.)

What sustains us doesn’t always require proof.