The Importance of Gazing at the Day’s First Light

“When Margaux died, I thought, Oh, no, it’s my turn. I’m going to get the sickness,” Hemingway told me. “Honestly, I thought I could catch it.”

She has built a life of preventive measures. The morning I visited, we all piled into the car, a white Mini Cooper with a spider-web crack fanning across the windshield, to head to one of the couple’s “sunrise spots” in the Santa Monica Mountains. They believe that gazing at the day’s first light benefits the endocrine and immune systems.

The New York Times Magazine this week profiles Mariel Hemingway, the youngest granddaughter of Ernest who takes healthy living to its WASPiest possible conclusion (Amanda Fortini on Hemingway’s morning routine:”She fills the hummingbird feeders with organic sugar water, feeds organic soy-free meal to the brood of egg-laying hens that live in her backyard and heads back to the kitchen to prepare a smoothie.”) That said, Mariel has been through it (her sister Margaux committed suicide in 1996, just a day before the 35th anniversary of their grandfather’s suicide; another sister, Muffet, is bipolar and schizophrenic; the “Hemingway Curse” list goes on), and this new documentary about her coming to terms with her family’s history looks very sad and very good. [NYT Magazine]