Little Weirds

by Jenny Slate

I was born happy but when anything that is large, alive, and wild gets hurt and confused, I feel so sad, and I notice that I wish I could nurse big scared things.

And it is worth mentioning that “big scared thing” is one way to describe how my heart often feels.

That is an act of power, showing what you know, giving it to another person, realizing that as you spread it, you get to keep it but watch it grow, and by watching others have it, you learn new things about the original thing.

This is what makes my mother my mother. She loves the flower and she wants me to know this flower, but she will only smell it once, and then give it to me for unlimited sniffing pleasure and she will be happy about it all.

how I saw her became an instantaneous prayer of gratitude and awe for her style of motherhood and unique humanity. And inside of myself, I knelt down in honor of this style of care that is her brand of nurturing, care that urges creativity and thinking, that is selfless and classy.

When you call my parents on the phone, this is what my father will say: “The tulips are really coming up. We had the rabbits eat a bunch of the bulbs, but we still managed to get so many flowers.” And this is what my mother will say: “It’s so sad. The rabbit must have been eaten by the fox, because there are so many more tulips than usual. The rabbit must have been eaten. There are too many tulips.”

All I can do is believe in the tides, the big drawing in and drawing out that is a type of planet clock. All I can do is let the waves of this whole damn thing flood in and out. If I could remember anything, I would remember my belief that my extra love could just be used on myself. But when I stop feeling pleasure and stop imagining things I also forget my beliefs, the things that float my spirit on this sea.

I want to be a baby fawn on the lawn, to have

my heart is getting soft dark spots on it like a fruit that has gone bad or is soft because too many hands have squeezed it but then put it back down not because I am not ready but because they were not ready for my type of fruity flesh.

I am a plant and I have a fragile green stem and my flower is still in the pod on the top of the stalk, unopened, when the dawn strolls in over the horizon. My blossom spreads out during the day and it goes into the pod at night and then it goes again the next day and all of the days.

Preferred: Lovebugs, creatures, boo-boos, rigorous thinkers, wild-hearts, gentle-minds, pets. This exercise is actually too sad to do. All I want to do is disappear deeply into my own thing and you can decide whether or not to join but I’m pretty much going to enter my own vortex.

There you are, do you know what you are doing? You are finding the new air for yourself. What a useful, good action to take. You are a person who got up and found the air. Take at least ten breaths. It’s a fact that this is the main thing that you need to do to stay alive, breathing, and now it is a treat. Look at you! You have done what the earliest geniuses have done: You have taken the most basic thing and elevated it. If you are sweet inside of yourself for the most part, this is the truth you will know.

I started to spend my extra time caring for myself in little ways that reminded me of the generosity of my dream-dog who shared his seatbelt. The big pet. My dream-dog. I think he was training me in my dreams so that I could eventually play well in my days.

A stranger helped me. Specifically, he helped me look into outer space. I said thank you, obviously.

It is very warming to think of the adults going to places to get the paper glasses, and to think of the adults who own a small store or bodega, and that they heard about the eclipse and then ordered the paper glasses, knowing that people would want to watch the rare thing that was going to happen.

Even though everything he was saying was being said to dismantle and delegitimize the humane system I believed in, the one that demands equal rights and good old-fashioned empathy, the one that would strip him of his excessive privileges, the one that celebrates things being various, multi, plural, open, and requires him to explore being truly vulnerable. I wanted him to understand that “being vulnerable” is a different thing for everyone, is a developed and specific skill involving personally specific actions that are terrifying.

But then again, I didn’t want to seem like I wasn’t being attentive, because recently I had let the man in on the terrible secret, which is that many men interrupt and disregard women and do it religiously and don’t even notice that they’re doing it but also gain power by doing it even if they do it without thinking, without what I guess you would call “consideration.” And so now if I ever interrupted the man, he would tell me in my own language how painful it is to be interrupted. He would explain, in a voice that sounded so much like my own, how I am not considerate, even though I am considering a lot.

As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love.

Clean a room and tidy it with an air of fairness, like you are doing what is fair for the room. Say something like “There you are, now,” to the room when you are done fussing over it. Sit in the room for at least a few minutes and listen and do that and only that, which is actually hard and different than spacing out. It is hard to sit still and listen to everything you can listen to on purpose. If there is an animal to hold and soothe or just smooth the fur, do that. Turn your head to the side and give yourself a little kiss on the shoulder. Wash your face and hands. Put on an outfit of all one color. Only do a little gossip and make sure it doesn’t make any dents in anyone.

I said things to myself like, “Stop looking for things to be sad about, that’s not what it actually is anymore,” and of course I was right, that’s not exactly it. There is nothing sad anymore, there are only tiny and tart truths. I saw that I was wise to instruct myself in this way. So I said, “And furthermore, start looking for eggs.” I did. I found myself some eggs, and tender butter-leaf lettuce and a prissy endive and some jokey Kirby cucumbers and some standard butter and a new giant olive oil because I was anticipating filling my mouth with salty, lemony, glistening leaves.

I picked two Meyer lemons off the tree outside of my house where I live alone and where you do not live with me. There are other ways to say that but since I was still a bit sour I had to frame it up like that, make a statement in black-and-white. But it can never hold, that black-and-white way. I never want it like that. I’m just too much of a color wheel now to limit myself to statements like that, and I know it, so I buck up and I say, “Well, what can you do? What will you do now with all of this tartness and all of this yellow?”