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Overheard

Overhearing a conversation on a Friday morning in October while more than a little tired.

How are you?

Oh, you know.

Yeah.

You know. To be real, today I am a little bit tired.

I know it.

Truth be told, today I noticed that I am almost always extremely tired. Like, more than I have ever been, is that possible? Don’t answer, of course it isn’t. I mean, you remember what it was like, way back. When–– I know I was more tired then, I must have been. And yet. I can’t help it, I just —

Endorphins, maybe?

What?

They say that it’s something about the endorphins that make new mothers forget the pain.

Of childbirth, you mean? But I’m not talking about––

No. I mean, sure, that was the reference when I read it who knows how long ago but think about it. You could apply this to other things.

Don’t tell me a puppy because I don’t even want to––

No, but being a teen, maybe. I mean really, it was awful but that’s not the first thing you think.

True.

And some of those all-nighters when we were nineteen, twenty? Some because we had to but then we would go do another one just because, when the whole world was constantly falling apart, not to mention all the bombs, remember? They were like every other day in the news then, it was just what we lived with. But looking back, what do you remember?

I remember dancing and singing the lyrics at the top of my voice, even when I didn’t know them.

That’s it!

Especially when I didn’t know them.

Exactly!

Haven’t done that in a while.

Well, there you go, then.

Maybe that’s why––

You’re so tired?

No, I know why I’m so tired. I could give you a list, but you’ve got your own. But I mean––

Why it feels like this?

Yes, like more than ever before.

Because ––?

Because I don’t have the scream-dancing at the same time. I’m just––

Trying to survive?

Yes, like this. Coffee, I feel like I live for this––I know it’s more than these sips, obviously, but when I can’t remember what that is exactly––not by name, anyway, that’s when I really don’t want to talk and I definitely don’t want to have to put down the cup. I just want to be in this space where I’m still at the edge of a dream, and no one is poking at it, letting the air out.

How’s that working out?

Well. There are many rough edges.

How many?

Too many to count right now. I’ve still got half a cup. Can you just––.

Would you like one of these?

What is this?

A bunny. I found them at–––

No, see, that’s what I mean. Why are people collecting these bunnies and handing them out?

They are soft.

I don’t even––

Feel!

News from the Health Well

Once again, my favorite online message board offers a cornucopia of transformative options.

While I regularly turn to Craigslist on mornings when I’m looking for some element of local flavor and character drama with my news, I realized this morning that my tendency to gravitate immediately to “lost and found” and “missed connections” has me potentially missing some fruitful connections in a section intriguingly named “health/well.” Since one of my recent horoscopes came with strong advice to broaden my horizons, today’s news comes from the health well.

When it comes to health, you may feel less than optimal because you are not aware that some services are available. But as life coach Miguel points out, “Knowledge is key!”

With this in mind, you may want to consider these options: Plumbing plus MORE! Tarot card readings! Plus, a narcissistic recovery coach on call, prepared to cater to some very specific needs––personalized, of course, and on-demand. It’s all about you!

Feeling out of alignment with your highest self? Try Reiki. Wanting to test your alignment in general? This aerial circus personal training group may be just what you need. Now there’s a fitness session you can’t get at your run-of-the-mill gym down the street!

You may not know this, but there is someone less than thirty minutes away willing to come juice for you. Right in your own home! Unfortunately, the link wasn’t working, so I am unable to verify if such an offer is a euphemism for some not-yet-imagined service, which might be the key.

Stressed? Try a free hypnotherapy session! You can control unwanted behaviors. You can even rent this salon space and start making money. Now!

If you are thinking of being a life coach, you may want to get some headshots in order. Apparently, the ideal way to market yourself (so far, I’ve seen only male coaches in the health well) is with a neatly trimmed beard, smoky eyes, and with your collared shirt open three buttons at the top to reveal a deep V of confidence. However, if you are a woman considering the service of a coach, I suggest patience. There is currently a market surplus in this industry, and no shortage of men willing to give out this sort of thing for free to any woman not currently in the middle of a sentence. In fact, such offers are so abundant you can probably keep talking and still receive a bounty of unsolicited (and 100% free!) advice.

Want something more physical? Jon, a personal trainer, introduces himself as a “32-year-old human male.” One has to appreciate the transparency of his advertising, which includes species specification. It seems to matter to Jon not to mislead his clients by leading them to believe that he is an enthusiastic Labrador who has unlocked the fountain of youth via exercise, as some characters will do. For emphasis, he includes a photograph of himself standing on what appears to be a stage in workout attire. Jon is very tan.

But perhaps, as I am, you are having some trouble prioritizing areas of need. Fear not! There’s a one-stop-service provider that advertises energy, mood, focus, weight loss, AND mental health, all in one place! Now that is good news.

***

I suppose we all have our quirky obsessions, and this one of mine has become glaringly obvious to me since starting these posts. More craigslist-inspired posts can be found below:

Bathe Like This

To see a baby elephant splashing and take it as a suggestion.

May I know it for answering thirst, and to wash; for cooling feet, brushing teeth, boiling food; for baptism. May I swim to you through it. May I always remember the depths of its substance, the hidden multitudes beneath its infinite unknowns, and the speed at which I might be swallowed whole.

And yet, let me also remember what this little one knows at first touch, when she is feeling only surface, undistracted by depth: how it presses back against skin, against the pressure of whomever leans in. How this willingness to return touch magnified makes it best for splashing.

The first praise song ever uttered goes like this: Splash, tap, tap, splash! Open hand, open mouth, open foot. Again, again! Not to make a point, but for the delight of having none, but this.

***

Inspired by this video of Chaba, a rescued baby elephant, enjoying the water in her new tub, which I encountered on My Modern Met:

Horoscope Buffet

Some days, just one isn’t enough.

What’s wrong?

I don’t think my coffee is working. Did you switch to half-caf again?

No way. How about some astrological guidance? Let’s see. . . Here’s Cancer.

Mmhm.

Begin an honest discussion.

What else?

That’s it.

Well. I’m going to need a little more than that today. Read the others.

You mean the other signs?

Yah. Start from the beginning. I’ll sip, you read. We’ll see what takes.

Okay. Let’s see. . . Ram says once your priorities are straight, it’s smooth sailing. New information is coming to reveal a higher purpose.

Then, according to the bull, an ounce of prevention now will save you lots of headaches later.

The twins suggest adding beauty to your surroundings. The lion suggests exercise.

What else?

Who’s this one, Virgo?

The nurturer.

Well, she’s saying you’re about to have a change of heart.

Hope so. Keep going.

The goddess of justice wants you to do more research and this scorpion forecasts a gift on the way.

Vacation?

No, it says it may actually look like extra work, at first.

Hmmm. Next?

The centaur is of a mind that a good walk can help you process your shifting emotions. . .

And?

Wants to remind you to ask for guidance.

Exactly. Keep it coming.

The sea goat insists on expanding horizons. Plus, standing your ground. But they don’t specify the order of operations on this one, so it’s not exactly––

What else?

The water bearer says it’s time to relax your expectations.

Of?

Um, others. And there’s one more. This from the fish. They say, whatever you’re doing, it isn’t working. So––

What? I thought these were supposed to be encouraging!

They are. They say try something else.

Earthling to Moon, on News of its Departure

Imagining some awkward breakup conversations inspired by the moon’s inevitable departure from Earth’s gravitational pull.

At first, I didn’t believe it. My gravitational gauge is oversensitive sometimes. I always think things are closer than they are. For this reason, I avoid parallel parking when possible. (“You’ve got like, three feet! Seriously!” a helpful person will try to explain. “No, no, never mind!” I’ll say, preferring to walk a few more blocks as needed to avoid what looks like a near collision.)

Needless to say, the idea that you’ve been drifting away this whole time comes as a bit of a shock.

You say it’s “just gravity” but isn’t that sort of like one of those noncommittal statements that really mean a whole other thing (“It’s not you, really, It’s me,” or “I just have a lot going on”)? Isn’t gravity what we had going on? I mean if that’s getting weaker, what are you really saying?

I know there’s something you’re not saying. Was it all the photographs? I know, I know. It’s a lot, but you were always changing––color, size, shape; we couldn’t get enough.

Was it how were always projecting our own insecurities, variabilities and hopes onto you? I know it’s a lot: our moods, our energy levels, certain personality traits.

Wait a minute, now that I think of it, what did you mean when you did that thing at the festival? Well, I know it wasn’t You-you, but c’mon. I mean, that thing with the balloon at the parade? That huge one that looked just like you, with craters and everything? How it broke free and started rolling in the street, remember that?

I bet you do. People ran after it, but it never came back to the parade. They called it “a mishap” but you planned that, didn’t you? ––As, what, like a hint? Like a sign of things to come? Is this your idea of communicating?

I wasn’t alive when we were supposedly much closer than we are now, but I love the idea: once we needed only a ladder and a willingness to leap, and there we were, scooping cheese from your surface and hurling it back. Thank you, Calvino. I love to imagine the small earthlings, like jellyfish and children floating into you until they are caught by someone on a boat.

Apparently, the same forces drawing you away are slowing our days. We can barely feel this, of course. When does anyone ever feel when this happens, in real time? Once it was four hours from sunrise to night-time, and what were we doing then?

Just wait, someone tried to say. They called it our honeymoon phase. We laughed. But, I wonder now, how will we explain the totality of what we felt here, when you were close enough to block the whole sun?

Inspired by Marina Koren’s Atlantic article The Moon is Leaving Us. Also, the thought of moon distances shifting inevitably calls to mind Italo Calvino’s wondrous story, “The Distance of the Moon.”

Saint of Creatures

On remembering each creature as its own message.

You offered, in your daily practice, some reminders, such as: each creature carries its own message, its own metaphor, and how to recognize the animal soul.

If you have men who will exclude creatures from the shelter of compassion, you said, so will they do with other men.

You would speak with birds, who stayed with you until you said goodbye. You called after a cicada, saying Sister, sing, and she did.

Even worms, moving close to your path, were moved by you. Be safe, you would tell them, setting them back from the approaching feet.

Flash of ferret, oriole oracle, what you remembered with the rabbit; insect insight, iguana inspiration; the vision of vipers; signs and symbols you shared with the swallows.

Wonder of wolf, its terror transcended to peace in your presence; how did you know?

Had you a microscope, I wonder, what might you have made of the tardigrade, its ability to live in what others would call hell. What epiphanies would you have seen in these; about the limits we imagine for the living?

And I wonder what you would have made of the yeti crab, who appears like a child’s pet monster, hovering near the ocean’s hydrothermal vents? The mineral level is poisonous, but she carries colonies of bacteria in her pincers to null what would kill. What songs could you hear in her patient waiting in those depths?

And I’d love to know what you’d make of the sea creature that reverts to infancy after maturity, who renews herself again and again, body without a seeming end. What would you say to her, and how would you learn to listen, over time, to the bass-beat of her endlessly whispered devotion?

Notes:

Inspired by the coming feast of St Francis, as illuminated by Richard Rohr’s Every Creature is an Epiphany, from his Daily Meditations series at the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC.org).

and also by Mihei Andrei’s article Meet the World’s Only Immortal Animal on ZME Science

Headlines Almost Missed

News of the world, in miniature.

This morning, catching up on news from past months, I find some worth sharing.

Orange Orb Owning Onus of Our Origins, Outcast Among Us.

Dancing bears circle: stomp, push, shove; their mother waits. I watch through a lens.

Baikal babushka crosses the lake on skates her dad made, after war.

Second Looks: Einstein Edition

Even after these phenomenal scientific breakthroughs, he’s still a guy: music, hair, misunderstandings.

You know what I love about Einstein?

Relativity?

Of course, but it’s hard to love something you don’t know well, and I can’t say that my understanding of any of his theories goes very far beyond the basics of dinner party repartee.

That’s still happening?

Relativity? I assume, I mean, no one’s exactly––

No, dinner parties and such.

Well, I don’t know. I haven’t exactly been to too many since––

Just wondering. Anyway, what do you love about him, then?

The other things. Like how he played the violin and wrote all these letters back and forth with his wife, even when they weren’t getting along. Plus, of course his hair. I love that he makes this phenomenal scientific breakthrough, but he’s still a guy. With his music and his hair and his misunderstandings. It makes him even better somehow, knowing that.

You know, he spent a number of years working on refrigerators, too?

Huh. Well, everybody’s gotta start somewhere. I didn’t know he was a repairman, though.

No, I mean inventing a better one. And this was after he was the famous Einstein.

So, he just got it in his craw to start tinkering on home appliances? Did he do toasters, too, because this one I’ve got is a real––

He read a story about a family that got killed overnight from a leak. Back in the day, they were using chemicals like ammonia and sulfur dioxides as coolants. So, you can imagine.

I am trying. So, you mean to tell me, my fridge is an Einstein invention?

Well, no. He got his patent for an induction cooling system right around the time that the great depression hit. Also, freon came around, and that took the issue of poison out of the equation. So, his invention wound up being applied to nuclear breeder reactors.

I see. What about the rest? Did he keep on with the letters, the violin, the hair?

I like to assume so. We never actually met.

Me too. I like it when something or someone looks like one thing up close, and then when you zoom out and take them in––

They are so much more?

Exactly.

Cheers.

Have you had dinner yet?

Let’s go. Call it a party.

Notes:

Inspired by Steve Silverman’s Einstein’s Refrigerator and other Stories from the Flip Side of History (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2002), which I found at a library used book sale some years ago, and opened for the first time today. You just never know when you will have your day brightened by a a book like this, which is why I love used book sales.

Second Looks

The trick is to learn how to look from a distance while close to the pieces, and to account for the movement of light.

Huh.

What?

There are faces.

I don’t see any.

Look here. You can’t see them as a collective. Go one at a time.

All I see is wallpaper.

Step back. There is a face.

I’m not––

It’s in the shadows.

The face is?

The shadows make the features. It only works at a distance.

Like memory?

Exactly.

I read something about mosaics recently, just like that. By someone who was learning the art. How the trick is to learn how to look from a distance while close to the pieces, and to account for the movement of light.

There’s a little winged man in the garden sometimes.

––The art of broken parts, she said.

In the clouds, a giraffe. The lights in the sky, like a bird in flight.

There’s a green haired man in the rocks.

Madonna in a gourd, toast Jesus, the grilled cheese miracle.

There’s a rabbit on the moon. Or a man.

A man, you think?

Well, a face anyway. Like this. Step back a little more. Right here. Relax your eyes, like a cat.

I ––oh. Wow.

Yes.

It’s there.

Right there.

I almost missed it.

Keep looking.

Notes:

This piece is inspired by an article about artist Lee Wagstaff’s recent work, in which “hidden faces” emerge from canvases of repeating geometric patterns, and also by an article about the human tendency to see patterns.

Margherita Cole’s September 29^th article in My Modern Met: “Hypnotic Portrait Paintings are Based on AI Generated Faces.”

Larry Sessions’s Earthsky article, “Seeing Things That Aren’t There? It’s Called Pareidolia,” (November 2020)

The reference to mosaics is inspired by Terry Tempest Williams’ Finding Beauty in a Broken World.

Listening to Lepidoptera

We appreciate the beauty of butterflies, but what else? What of the moths disguised as tree bark, and what do they say with those wings?

For most, a typical response to a tray of specimens can be a ranking in order of beauty. This because, what else? Butterflies and moths cause no marked aversion; they do not sting or make terrible pests. We do not eat them.

What, then? Initially, we have no other means, beyond the appeal of their colors, to appreciate them.

In North America, there are more species of butterfly on the endangered list than any other insect. Not everyone gets field experience, so look.

Why are the wings so large? They speak with them.

Consider these canvases, painted differently on each side, according to audience.

Where are the moths in daytime? In the day, they become tree bark, lichen, twigs.

Consider one hundred caterpillars, wrapped or naked; cylindrical or bulging, immaculate or marked. See the chrysalis, head down, unclothed, posing as a leaf.

Some ride mice to safety, to lay eggs in an underground den.

One makes no sound, but what about a chorus of millions?

Here is a waterfall.

Patience now. A more complete discussion will be possible after secrets are revealed.

Notes:

This morning’s post is assembled from found phrases in the opening chapter of 100 Butterflies and Moths: Portraits From the Tropical Forests of Costa Rica, by Jeffrey C. Miller, Daniel H. Janzen, and Winifred Hallwachs. I came across it in the used bookstore adjacent to the library in the year before the pandemic, and was taken by the color images. It seemed like the sort of book to keep on hand for future inspiration. Waking especially groggily this Wednesday morning, I pulled it from the shelf to see what I could find.