While most of us are salt-dusted with the dried remains of late July sweat, wearing our Cheeto-crusted uniform of two-days-worn pajamas as we do our best not to die, Martha Stewart is living what looks like the best summer of her fucking life. From dunking on Chelsea Handler by the pool to possibly holding a few employees hostage, Martha’s days seem absolutely packed right now. And though her Instagram posts are tinged with the same ennui from which we all suffer this miserable summer, shots of Martha sunbathing followed by shots of well-muscled young men literally trimming her hedges roll out one by one, like a seductive French indie film drizzled with sort of ennui that might end in a passionate affair or possibly a sexy murder or some combination of both. And like an art-house movie, the action of her Instagram frequently cuts away to desperately perfect aerial shots of bleeding berry cakes or the roasted flesh of juicy meat barely clinging to the bone. It is a darkly glamourous mood for a period of time that is mostly just dark.
Obviously Martha Stewart’s Instagram is my main source of entertainment right now, and here is the narrative I have thus far been able to construct from seven days’ worth of dispatches from Martha’s farm girl summer of luxurious lassitude.
Day Seven: “A little bit of powdered sugar sprinkled on the hot custard really gilds the lily,” Martha tells the camera in a stultified yet seductive drawl, suggesting the thrill of gilding has lost its shine, the sweet and tart turned saccharine and sour by the cruel irony baked into the monotony of abundance.
Day Five: A bag stuffed with living refuse. Aren’t we all.
Day Three: An ungilded lily, red and raw, just out of reach. Something like a marathon gone wild. Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms wider.
Day Two: Borne back ceaselessly into a past now discounted on QVC.
Day Two (continued, neverending): Seared flesh cleaving to juicy remains of stagnant muscle. What pulsed with life now melts from brittle, roasted bone. The present must digest the past to birth the future. Change is nigh.
This day, this hour, this moment: Facial prophylactics protect what will be from what could be. But what of a body that seeks adventure? What safeguards our secret hearts, buried deep between the wings of our private jet, still more privately seeking the refuge of newness on the far, wild shores of distant Maine?