liking clothes does not obligate you to add more clothes to the world. What does sustainability look like beyond materials and supply chains? How do you slow culture down without freezing it? How do you participate without pretending purity is possible?

Fun fact: those McDonald’s jeans are part of the standard uniform here in Colombia. I’ve tried at least 16x to ask where they source them, if I can buy them from the manager, even going McDonald’s not to order food but just to ask for the jeans. I asked someone high up in their marketing dept here to see if maybe they know which company sourced them, and still couldn’t get my hands on a pair. Apparently employees only get one pair per year. They’re slightly high-waisted, they taper very slightly, they’re always kind of high water at the bottom, and they’re the perfect light jean color. They’re not stiff, they’re not that stretchy, they’re the perfect denim material. They come with a cloth belt that’s either yellow or turquoise, and the stitching on the M is almost sensual. I will not give up theres a hourse in the dirve through

> Lately, he’s been bugging his parents not for a new video game or an upgraded phone but for a mainstay of their own childhoods: a bicycle. He wants to hang out with the new friends he’s made at school on the weekends.

The essential ingredients of mythmaking are down here on our tangly planet, species whispering and muttering about each other. Really good gossip across species becomes a story and eventually a myth. So what are the stories that will come from the mysteries of our present moment? I have become more eccentric since my time in the forest, clearer and occasionally kinder. Life doesn’t feel certain, but it feels succulent. Life doesn’t feel assured, but it feels vivacious. - Move from just seeing the world to beholding the world. Seeing is assessment and analysis; beholding is wonder and curiosity. - This kind of work creates a root system that is clear and well watered. Eventually it could create an old-growth human being. Let’s stop devouring for a second and take stock of the innumerable benefits we have already received. This begins by lowering our gaze to what’s beneath us. - Don’t brush your tastes away. Take your delight seriously. You could reach out towards historical figures, cloud formations, and badger tracks in the snow.

In towns like mine, outsourcing and automation consumed jobs. Then purpose. Then people. Now the same forces are climbing the economic ladder. Yet Washington remains fixated on global competition and growth, as if new work will always appear to replace what’s been lost. Maybe it will. But given A.I.’s rapacity, it seems far more likely that it won’t. If our leaders fail to prepare, the silence that once followed the closing of factory doors will spread through office parks and home offices — and the grief long borne by the working class may soon be borne by us all.