With only four days left in the year, anything is possible right now. You have an idea of how things will work, what the expectations are, what the challenges will be, but you are working from archive material. Memories, experiences, and educated guesses. “2025 will be very difficult for me.” Last night a friend spoke seriously about completing everything he had to do this year. You’re looking to take your business to a new level and consider moving. These sounded interesting and interesting to me. It was a fascinating look into someone else’s life.
We’re all sitting here now with the same number of days in the year, the same calendar in front of us. What activities and events will it be filled with? How do we face the material of our time? What meaning will we give to it?
I recently saw Christian Marclay’s installation “The Clock” at MoMA. It’s a 24-hour montage of thousands of clips from movies and shows. Each clip contains a clock, watch, line of dialogue, or other timepiece. The film is synchronized with real time so that every scene depicts the moment you are watching, so ‘The Clock’ becomes a clock that runs on its own. You’re watching a movie, but you’re also looking at the clock for hours.
The museum will be open 24 hours a day for a special winter solstice exhibition, from 7pm on Saturday 21 December to 7pm on Sunday. On my way there Saturday night, I found myself rushing. It was 8pm and it was late! But I stopped. It didn’t really matter when I arrived. People will come and go throughout the screening, all night long and well into the next day. Here was an invitation to rethink how I thought about time.
Three, four, five hours later, as I sat in the audience, my attention still unwavering, I considered this proposal again. Maybe you did something wrong. Should you pay attention to the plot, characters, and dialogue in each clip, or should you pay attention to the clock? 11:22, 11:23, Did I miss the 11:24 clock on the screen while trying to figure out which movie the last scene was from? (I later learned that there’s an entire wiki dedicated to “The Clock” with each clip’s source confirmed. 11:24 includes scenes from “Shanghai Knights,” “Malice in Wonderland,” and “Se7en.”) Can you guess it wrong? , by paying too much attention to what passes by, or not enough?
“The Clock” obsessively turns the successive scenes of our lives into stories, projecting cause and effect onto everything that happens, assuming that everything has meaning and then determining whether that meaning is positive or negative. Forces you to meditate on it. We are the artists and architects of our lives, examining the day or year ahead and trying to figure out what story it will tell. Will this be a good year? Will it be difficult? Who decides?
I stayed in “The Clock” until Sunday morning when I started to doze off and start dreaming. Marclay advocates falling asleep during the movie. “That’s what you have to do. Let it go and absorb it and feel like you are part of this,” he told my colleague Marc Tracy. If I had remembered that, I could have stayed longer. Instead, I stumbled out into Midtown Manhattan in the early hours of the first day of winter.
It was two weeks ago. Since then, the sun has risen and set 13 times, ending one year and beginning another. I’ve been trying to pay attention to time, but not obsess over it and watch it too closely to notice it passing by. The year lies ahead of us. A lot is penciled in, but nothing is certain. As my friend predicted himself, it could be difficult. And in the words of a Morning reader who writes in to give the best advice: To me, the question mark is what makes this good advice, as if the idea that things aren’t terrible is a revelation. “Could it be good?”
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Cultural Calendar
🏆 Golden Globes (Sunday): The Globe family, once the glamorous, drunken cousin of the more rigorous Oscars, is on life support after a series of ethical, financial and diversity scandals. The show has new owners (the Hollywood Foreign Press Association no longer exists), a more diverse pool of voters and a new network. But will these changes and the list of A-list candidates be enough to keep viewers interested? The event airs tomorrow night on CBS and Paramount+.
Recipe of the Week
Split Pea Soup
Suddenly the holidays are over and the lively sparkle of December gives way to the cozy, quiet days of January. That means it’s time to pull out your biggest pot and boil Ali Slagle’s Split Pea Soup. Her rich and flavorful recipe includes three different chives (chives, onions, and garlic), carrots, and thyme, which add sweetness and depth to the thick broth. Many split pea soups call for ham or bacon, and you can use one of Ali’s flexible versions, or leave out the meat all together and sprinkle with smoked paprika. Either way, adding a squeeze of lemon at the end brightens things up.
real estate
Hunt: In Harlem, two friends joined forces to purchase a townhouse. Which side did they choose? Play our games.
What you can get for $1.3 million: Denver’s Queen Anne House; The top floor unit of a 1916 condo building in Chicago; Or a 2020 ranch style home in Austin, Texas.
Valuable Imports: Saffron is difficult to harvest. But in the United States, more small farmers and home gardeners are growing spices for profit or simply for pleasure.
Platonic Romance and AI Clones: Experts share their predictions for the future of dating.
Not just leggings Some women’s activewear is becoming looser and more comfortable.
Do you want scotch?: Luxury brands use alcohol and sweet treats to keep customers engaged.
Wirecutter’s advice
How to Clean Your Refrigerator (Easy)
There’s a good chance you’ll have leftover food in your fridge starting in November, packaged Tetris-style and leaking. To clean up your mess, follow these tips: Mentally divide your refrigerator into small sections that you can tackle in five-minute increments. Leaving the door open any longer is not ideal. Then set a timer and clean each area one by one. Meanwhile, wait at least 20 minutes for the refrigerator to come back up to temperature. You can do it all in one day if you want, but to me the real appeal of this approach is that it turns a difficult task into something you can easily do in a matter of days. — Rachel Wharton
New York Rangers vs. Washington Capitals, NHL: As we approach the halfway point of the NHL season, the Capitals are a team to watch. They sit atop the Eastern Conference and are ranked No. 1 in The Athletic’s latest power rankings. And Alex Ovechkin, in his 20th season in Washington, has a chance to break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time scoring record. It airs today at 12am ET on ABC.
