BY Nicolaia Rips ILLUSTRATION Katrina Wardhana DESIGN Kathryn Li
Economists have some number for how much money it takes to make a person happy. Money can buy happiness, up until like $75,000. Then it plateaus. From that point, your quality of life does not increase constantly with the more money you earn. Once you’re a millionaire, the difference in happiness escalates by degrees.
Candles, Please “Exhale.” The crowd—upwards of forty years old and clad in a variety of branded spandex—sighs. “Tighten your left buttock.” My knee creaks. Stupid willful knee. Have I not done enough for you.
I use as coasters. They are scattered in my apartment, unopened but mottled with round stains. Set reminder: buy coasters.
“And, bending your knee, tuck your heel under it. “So, the camera crew’s arriving at eleven. We’re going Lengthen from the base of your spine, not the middle. to start outside and follow you through the house on a Breathe. In. Out.” handheld. I’m going to be next to the camera the whole time, but you’re going to direct your answers straight The woman I’m shadowing has her face in her vagina. into the lens. Your agent should have sent you the list While impressive, it’s also disquieting. I look around of questions?” and everyone, all the spandex yoga women, have their faces between their legs. Missed the self-fel- She nods. latio commandment. I bend my head down and the instructor comes up behind me, knees into the small of “Fantastic!” I say. “If you want to freshen up before they my back, willing me forward. I don’t want to do this. I arrive, now’s your chance.” want to be inflexible. There’s real skill, power even, in inflexibility. In a WWE fight who wins, the rod or the As she goes, I readjust on the couch. There’s a candle blade of grass? on the glass table. I sniff it. Smells like orange blossoms. I feel completely transported to a place I have never Back at her house/apartment/compound (walls been and probably doesn’t exist. It’s the scent of Eat, covered in ivy can’t disguise that there are walls every- Pray, Love, of Armie Hammer’s gently sweaty shirts where) she nestles into a white couch, a coffee table in Call Me by Your Name. This candle promises eternal book of Weimaraner photography open between us. I summer without the bacne, roasting a whole suckling have a dab of blue ink on my index finger and I have pig on a log fire, forgetting the moral dubiousness of somehow managed to smudge it on the otherwise eating meat under these environmental conditions. Its pristine couch. To compensate, I am now sitting at an label is egg shell and says something angle to cover the blue speck. There is no lumbar in Cyrillic; under it, the scent: support in this couch and I struggle not to be Lavender and Orange. I swoon. completely enveloped. Google tells me the candle is Anna has offered me a glass of water on a $80. coaster. I have a stack of books that
Similarly, once past $30, candle quality evens out. Up until that, the difference in “candle quality” is huge. The $5 scented candle is a throwaway gift. My friend in high school would get me vanilla candles from Bath and Body Works for every birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah gift exchange, and I would never ever light them. To light such a candle was to be enveloped in a noxious saccharine shroud, fumigating your own connection to nature. What they sell you is the lifestyle behind the candle, the $80 candle lifestyle. A lifestyle of pseudo-minimalism and faux-efficiency, streamlining everything you consume to create one whole persona. They sell you the candle promising the compound and the white couch I’m sitting on. A Swell bottle is not a vessel but a sip of icy water on the beach. Every item says something about who you are, you as the individual, you as unique, that is different from everyone else’s unique. I watch all of us antagonistic agnostics believing not in divinity but ultimate determination, in wellness and acquisition, in the most holy of things: branding. Ultimately though, this is all a sham, you will not be happier, you will not have the lifestyle, you will still have your roommates, and your underbed storage from IKEA, and your bacne in the summertime. Candles cannot fix your creative block or your armpit rash or the stash of contact lenses your ex left under your bed. Things cannot fix things. More things are simply more things. Instead you will be left with an $80 lump of beeswax and a wick, burnt sparingly in an act of preservation, for the candle, yes, but more for yourself. I want it so bad. I want it all so bad. Anna is now dressed in a white sheath dress. I am still contorting on the couch to cover up the ink stain. I look up at her, radiant in eyelet. Restless misshapen thing I am, repentant, readily reshaped, squeeze me, reteach me, I have the capacity but not the time. “Are we ready to start?”
07
LITERARY
28 FEB 2020
