Berlin. Sydney. Or wherever I’m with my son.

What is the most beautiful object you own (or have owned)?

A rose, hermetically-sealed in a display box/frame, saved from my mother’s funeral. And this knockout of a secretaire.

What is a DAO? Wrong answers only

That last piece of naan bread that’s been halved and halved and halved, because everyone’s too polite to take the last bit.

What do you admire most about the others in Bloom?

The courage to be seen in toto. The generosity and grace to see others.

What are you reading at the moment?

Re-reading Isaac Babel, Fictions, and Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness.

What is your most overused emoji?

❤️‍🔥

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

The flavour of acute depression consisting in agitated mind, catatonic body, dissolved soul.

What is your greatest extravagance?

I don’t know… which makes me want to revive a former Saturday ritual with housemates in New York — Chinatown day spa, facial and manicure, then Old Fashioneds at the Randolph.

What's the last meme/reading/song you shared with Bloom?

Who are you?

A happenstance, here for a while. A potpourri of wishes and wants. A dad. Working on belonging with Bloom, Medley, and the Mirror DAO.

Austin. And: Maine, Ireland, Istanbul, DC, Chicago, North Carolina, born family, chosen family, the internet.

What is the most beautiful object you own?

A small tinfoil-and-wood icon from a monastery outside Iași, Romania. It was given to me more than 30 years ago, when my family was living in Bucharest, and it’s traveled with me as a talisman ever since. That little icon has seen most of my life!

What is a DAO? Wrong answers only.

Tinkertoy-ing the revolution.

What do you admire most about the others in Bloom?

(deep inhale) OpennessCuriosityAmbitionforremakingtheworldHumilityinbringingtheworktolifeVibrant capacityformakebelieveHardearnedwisdomDrivetowardbeautyResilienceComfortwith thedeepCommitmenttofollowingtheheistStrongopinionskindlyheldGenerosityCourageTotaldisregardforsocialconvention…

What are you reading at the moment?

I like reading “building books” alongside “wandering books.” 📚🌱

Currently: Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming (Dunne & Raby); There Never Was a West (Graeber); From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (Doughty); Wintering (May)

What is your most overused emoji?

🤍

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Feeling trapped, out of options, with no sense of agency. Closely followed by feeling utterly alone, or being bored of myself.

What is your greatest extravagance?

Attention, given or received.

Booking a beach house for loved ones to get away from the demands of life and work … taking a friend on a date to learn a small new cool thing together … choosing to stop ignoring the mess in the kitchen and instead attend to the light, textures, air, sounds, living things and cherished objects while cleaning the space … actually listening, distraction-free, when someone shares pieces of their life … these are all extravagance to me.

What’s the last meme/reading/song you shared with Bloom?

Who are you?

A coffee-stained map

A science lab covered in vines

A dog-eared book with pages furiously scribbled over, annotated, underlined

Exploding noisemakers in a magical toy shop

The first light of spring