When I happened upon The Beach Book, it was like discovering a note in a bottle, a buried treasure, a time capsule from the 1960s. Where could I find the queen of the second wave, the woman of staunch convictions and serious ideas, in the book’s embrace of the superficial and silly? Is The Beach Book merely the juvenilia of a woman who would go on to co-found Ms. Magazine, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and publish seven subsequent books? Or is there some relationship between this Dionysian version of the beach and the more serious work of activism? It came down to this: Is it possible—or is it even necessary—to understand how The Beach Book fits into the arc of Steinem’s career as an iconic activist?
Listening is the dark matter of conversation, a mysterious activity that shapes the cosmos of any society or relationship. A friend who is a good listener can turn an ordinary conversation into a life-changing one, though we’re more likely to recall what they said (the evidence of their listening) than the listening itself. We shout, we sing, we whisper, we rhyme, but describing our listening is difficult, and its lexicon less obvious. What if we thought of ourselves as ‘listening’ animals, equipped and adapted to receive language, rather than as animals that talk? Would we talk about listening more precisely? Would we want to?
Nowadays, though, I look at a menu and the dozen-odd drinks will all be new to me, which takes some doing: I’ve been writing about cocktails since 1999 and drinking them a lot longer still. If there’s a classic, it’ll have undergone a Shakespearean sea change. As for any original cocktails, they certainly are that. These will have five, six, seven or more ingredients, many of them obscure or house-concocted, and all combined in ways intended to startle. Say, marigold-blossom infused espadín mezcal mixed with Alsatian kirschwasser, Strega liqueur, house-roasted sweet-potato nectar, sercial Madeira and yuzu bitters. They’re built to say “hey, look at me!”
On a hill at the edge of the desert stands a wooden edifice above a simple tomb. It consists of four slanting poles that come together in a frame, inside of which are bundled sticks that resemble kindling. It seems a puzzling marker for a grave until you learn the legend of whose body lies inside: Gayōmart, the first human, neither woman nor man, who was created from mud by the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda. Zoroastrians venerate fire, so the structure makes sense. It is a symbolic beacon waiting for its flame.