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Minor but instrumental!
They tested worms in the city sewers and found they contained high concentrations of Paxil and Prozac. When birds ate these worms, they stayed closer to home, made more elaborate nests, but appeared unmotivated to mate. “But were they happier?” I ask him. “Did they get more done in a given day?”
My # 1 fear is the acceleration of days. No such thing supposedly, but I swear I can feel it.
“Suppose you go with some friends to the park to have a picnic. This act is, of course, morally neutral, but if you witness a group of children drowning in the lake and you continue to eat and chat, you have become monstrous.”
A few days later, I yelled at him for losing his new lunch box, and he turned to me and said, Are you sure you’re my mother? Sometimes you don’t seem like a good enough person. He was just a kid, so I let it go. And now, years later, I probably only think of it, I don’t know, once or twice a day.
“These people long for immortality but can’t wait ten minutes for a cup of coffee,” she says.
When electricity was first introduced to homes, there were letters to the newspapers about how it would undermine family togetherness. Now there would be no need to gather around a shared hearth, people fretted. In 1903, a famous psychologist worried that young people would lose their connection to dusk and its contemplative moments. Hahaha! (Except when was the last time I stood still because it was dusk?) …
“The work is going well, but it looks like it might be the end of the world.”
We walk down the street beneath the flowering trees. No one else is out except the gardeners. Legions of them on the lawns, working quietly. There is one house where a famously liberal rich person lives. On this lawn, the gardeners are allowed to play their Mexican music.
In ancient times, the gods used to test mortals by arriving on their doorsteps clothed in rags to see if they would be welcomed or turned away.
Q: Why do humans like applause? A: I suspect it is because we are at a disadvantage compared with much of the animal kingdom. We lack sharp teeth or claws. We are not the biggest or the fastest. And we evolved in an environment where we lived nomadically and were exposed daily to the terrifying forces of nature. Accordingly, we banded together in tight-knit groups to better protect ourselves. We built fires and told stories to make the dark nights pass by. Applause may be a way for us to make our weak hands sound thunderous. By the end, it was like this. Q: How did we end up here? A: We can,
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“How do you sleep at night knowing all this?” “I’ve known it for a long, long time,” she says.
It affects her in other ways, I think. Sylvia always wants to go see things, some nearby, some far away. The requirement is that they are disappearing faster than expected. The going, going, gone trips, I call them. She picks me up early, then we drive and drive until we reach the designated place. Then we walk around and look at things and I try to feel what she does.
I remind myself (as I often do) never to become so addicted to drugs or alcohol that I’m not allowed to use them.
He’s not doing well with this sleep deprivation. There’s a reason it’s used as a tool of torture. But still, everyone I know is trying to sleep less. Insomnia as a badge of honor. Proof that you are paying attention.
“Do you really think you can protect them? In 2047?” Sylvia asks. I look at her. Because until this moment, I did, I did somehow think this. She orders another drink. “Then become rich, very, very rich,” she says in a tight voice.
The one that does the trick is about a dog who is on his way to a dog party being held at the top of a tree. On his way there, he meets other dogs headed to the festivities. They stop to talk. Do you like my hat? I do not. Good-by! Good-by! This is my dream of how neighbors should talk to each other.
Margot tells Henry that the worst thoughts must be spoken out loud. If they are held back, they will only grow more powerful. It reminds me of something my mother used to say—Gods suppressed become devils.
It is important to be on the alert for “the decisive moment,” says the man next to me who is talking to his date. I agree. The only difference is that he is talking about twentieth-century photography and I am talking about twenty-first-century everything.
“No set line between lost and not lost,” he tells me,
“What are you afraid of?” he asks me, and the answer, of course, is dentistry, humiliation, scarcity; then he says, “What are your most useful skills?” “People think I’m funny, I know how to tell a story in a brisk, winning way. I try not to go on much about my discarded ambitions or how I hate hippies and the rich.” “But in terms of skills,” he says, and I tell him I know a few poems by heart, I recently learned how to make a long-burning candle out of a can of tuna (oil packed, not water), I’ve learned how to recognize a black walnut tree and that you can live on the inner bark of a birch
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My question for Will is: Does this feel like a country at peace or at war? I’m joking, sort of, but he answers seriously. He says it feels the way it does just before it starts. It’s a weird thing, but you learn to pick up on it. Even while everybody’s convincing themselves it’s going to be okay, it’s there in the air somehow. The whole thing is more physical than mental, he tells me. Like hackles? The way a dog’s hackles go up? Yes, he says.
He tells me that at the wilderness camp they teach the kids something called “loss-proofing.” In order to survive, you have to think first of the group. If you look after the needs of others, it will give you purpose and purpose gives you the burst of strength you need in an emergency. He says you never know which kids will do well. But in general the suburban kids do the worst. They have no predators, he says.
Funny how when you’re married all you want is to be anonymous to each other again, but when you’re anonymous all you want is to be married and reading together in bed.
I played the one by that disaster psychologist again. He explains that in times of emergency the brain can get stuck on a loop, trying to find a similar situation for comparison. This is why you must make a plan before disaster strikes.
The thought of having to be with someone else long enough to deserve it again. That’s what feels impossible. Because the part where they are charmed by you, where you are every good thing, and then the part later—sooner, maybe, but always later—where they tire of you, of all your repetitions, of all your little and big shames, I don’t think I could bear that.
I wanted every day to be like this, to begin in shame and fear and end in glorious reassurance. … Do not believe that because you are a revolutionary you must feel sad.
The core delusion is that I am here and you are there.
