#20 - Wacky Tottering
An Attitude of Gratitude; How Ideas Spread; I’m Sorry, Tiny Spider
Hello, my friends,
I don’t always know how I feel these days — sometimes I’m pretty good, occasionally frustrated and sad, often tired, mostly it’s a sloshy cocktail. Michael woke up at 3:30am with an earache a few days ago. This is the first time an ear infection has caused him to cry out at night. A depressing first. Yet, the next day I was able to take the day off from work get him checked out, pick up medicine, and he’s feeling pretty good today. The important thing is that he’s healthy for Friday when his school is having a “Cool Critter Show.” Michael has been excited about seeing the Tarantula and I suspect that his excitement at thick, hairy spiders is my fault #SorryNotSorry. Anyway, we’re both lucky — I work for an organization that lets me take sick time for childcare and doesn’t guilt me about it and Michael will get to see those cool critters. Sometimes it’s hard to sort out how I feel but I know that I am enlivened by those facts.
An Attitude of Gratitude
Despite this section’s corny title, my Positive Psychology course on Kinnu maintains that the acts of 1) Focusing on strengths, and 2) Writing down three good things that happened to you has been proven to have tangible stimulating properties for well-being. Last week, we focused on strengths together so this week here are three good things that happened to me:
During my lunch break today, I sat on our balcony and finally finished reading On Leadership by John W. Gardner. Heaven is to have a place to sit in the sun.
A post that was shared on Facebook by the Miskatonic University Library like a month ago persuaded me to start making the bed every morning to “keep things nice and clean for the tiger.” I work from home so seeing the bed so neat all day is satisfying to my
monkeytiger mind. And you know what? I don’t care that it was an internet meme that made me do it. I’ll take inspiration for good habits wherever I can find it.Over the past week I memorized “Modeh Ani,” a Jewish prayer said in the morning upon awakening essentially thanking God for returning the soul to the body. It’s very short, but the notion that I can memorize something at my advanced age is nice. I can see you smirking through the screen: “Advanced age, he says…” Hey! In medieval times, I would be middle-aged by now.
How Ideas Spread
In many forums, there’s talk of disciplinary silos and perceived value of various fields over others, the theoretical is lambasted in favor of the practical, and the avant-garde is regarded as out of touch. While the latter is true (but in reverse, since the rest of us are simply not in-touch), the others miss the point about how fragments of deep and complex ideas, through various intermediaries, burble to the surface of culture. Walter Benjamin’s aura of objects is distilled in a bumper sticker that says “drum machines have no soul,” mountains of theoretical work on possible worlds theory from the 1980s (which I discovered a decade ago during a foray into narratology) is now casually the plot of popular Spider Man movies, and so much more.
Genius interlopers from across the worlds of art and science study each other’s work and are influenced by it. What they gain from exploring esoteric and challenging works by their peers across the knowledge web sprouts in unexpected places and ways, but it does grow. Eventually, those deep insights make their way to us hoi polloi to muck around with as we do.
So when people say, “Oh, that’s the kind of book that’s only read by seven or eight people in the world.” It really depends on who those people are!
I’m Sorry, Tiny Spider
I’ve been making thyme tea by steeping sprigs of the herb that’s growing on our balcony in hot water (with a little honey). This morning, as I brought the cup to my mouth I noticed a minuscule spider spinning in the liquid. Silently, I apologized to the little guy for inadvertently ending his life. I guess he was just in the wrong place at the wrong thyme.
I'm sorry for the tiny spider, too. Thank you for honoring its life. I do the same. I used to be terrified of spiders, but four years in a yurt and Rudy Francisco's brilliant poem changed all of that.
“She asks me to kill the spider.
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.
I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.
If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,
I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.”
In other thoughts, I too pay attention to the way great work comes from the intersection of two things thought by others to be incompatible. For awhile, I was fascinated by the friendship and professional collaboration between Carl Jung and physicist Wolfang Pauli. Their series of letters to one another shows that there is intersection between the collective unconscious and theoretical physics and the correspondence is both beautiful and illuminating.
And of course, you know my obsession with Lennon/McCartney, and that's relevant here because it's in large part the intersection between music hall/vaudeville and rock and roll that created the definitive body of masterwork that became their catalog. And on a more whimsical note, I'm now thinking of the old commercials for Reese's peanut butter cups in which the peanut butter and chocolate collide and create.. well, okay, let's maybe leave that one off...
Thoroughly enjoyed today's edition of Hello, My Friends! until the end and the demise of the tiny spider, though the apology was appreciated.