As a great American poet once said, “Life is a mystery / Everyone must stand alone.” And doesn’t that hold up? Life’s mysteries are vast, and though most are ultimately unknowable, it hasn’t stopped the great thinkers from working out their thoughts in quiet contemplation. Why are we here? What are dreams for? What makes the sky blue and some men’s skin orange? Why was Jennifer Lawrence at the New York City Marriage Bureau with her fiancé, art-gallery director Cooke Maroney, on Monday?
To get to the bottom of all life’s big questions, we may reach out to others, in the great Parisian salons of yore, in freshman seminars, or Instagram polls, but any answers one finds are between one and one’s god. So we can’t tell you what to believe about Lawrence and Maroney’s trip to the Marriage Bureau in the city. Are they married? Who knows. Are they merely getting their paperwork in order before the big, official nuptials? She’s said she has a dress and a venue. Will it be Dior, and will it be on Maroney’s family farm, which is also a wedding venue? Mysteries beget mysteries, I’m sorry to say.
Are they participating in a kind of diversion tactic, running interference to free up private space for the real thing? Why did famed photographer Mark Seliger reportedly accompany them? Who was the unidentified “friend” who put up her hand to a paparazzo lens so that only her half-smile was visible in the resulting photo? Was the fact that they were out again in New York that night, she wearing a long black maxi, he in a green top, related to these events or nonevents at all? Has the Daily Mail ever written a headline I won’t click on?
Maybe it’s enough that one of America’s most successful actors has found somebody to partner up with. “I just met Cooke, and I wanted to marry him,” she’s already said. “We wanted to marry each other. We wanted to commit fully.... He’s my best friend.” The secret’s already out: they’re in love, and they’re going to get married. That’s one mystery down. As the great American poet also said, “I hear you call my name, and it feels like home.” Maybe it’s just nice that someone has someone else with whom to face all of life‘s mysteries.
— Our cover story: Lupita Nyong’o on Us, Black Panther, and much more
— The 2019 Vanity Fair Best-Dressed List is here
— The nine-figure bill for Trump’s “very inexpensive” golf habit
— Lori Loughlin finally gets a win
— The Hamptons chose its presidential candidate
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily newsletter and never miss a story.
