lovenotes: colossal blink! paradigm shift!

I do think it’s right to enjoy things, and I don’t think it cheapens the enjoyment to have efforted it there, at least to start (try smiling when you don’t feel like it until you do).

I can’t help but feel that it’s a trap, finding your own hard-to-pleaseness a sign of intelligence. I can’t say for sure, but I feel that way. I think it’s good to be impressed. Or maybe not, actually, because of social media? Or maybe yes, especially yes, because of social media. Just because it’s easier doesn’t mean it’s bad. Or maybe the delight is in its badness. I was talking to someone the other day who said that Instagram as a platform is “cheap”. Sure, I thought, free, even.

Social media is only a trap insofar as its value is overestimated. People get into trouble when they pretend it’s anything like real life. You wouldn’t pick up a couch that’s been left out on the curb and then become tortured, really tortured, at how un-couch-like it is in practice, how uncomfortable the cushions, how unstable the legs; you got that thing for free. Maybe the bugs got to it first. Relish in that for what it is, or get yourself a different couch.

I am of the mind that we can enjoy these things, in all their shoddy craftsmanship. My apartment is full of things I got from the street, and my Instagram feed is (mostly) full of things that delight me as much as anything on my phone can (the limit here is low, but there is some delight). I use the app to send a lot of pictures of animals (lately, videos of previously-injured turtles at the Ogasawara Islands who get rescued, rehabilitated, and cleaned via toothbrush before being sent back out into the deep) to my boyfriend. He, incidentally, has recently come to be in control of an Instagram account with a few hundred thousand followers for his job. It’s like suddenly being told that you’ve inherited a large sum of money. Or maybe more like an estate, some place you have to now tend to for the sake of others, but you also get to enjoy. I find it delightful, of course. Those couple hundred-thousand followers have no idea that it’s him they follow now. It’s the kind of secret that didn’t exist in previous generations: it’s a bona-fide, chrome-plated secret of the Now. Surely there are categories of secret we’ve lost along the way, too, like what the world looks like from space (round, blue), or the circulatory system (sinewy, vital), or are there more colors that we don’t know about (yes, ask that shrimp).

I think it’s good to get wrapped up in these secrets sometimes, and I think there’s genuine merit to it. I think people like to roll their eyes too much on one end of things, and on the other end of things, the conversation turns a little too stoned. I don’t need to blink, bleary-eyed at the ecstasy of things, but it’s nice sometimes. Not for nothing, either—things are pretty fucking cool, and not in a haha damn we’re really just on a rock in space, huh, way.

To this end, I’ve been watching a lot of David Attenborough, interspersed with a lot of the Jurassic Park franchise.

Something that happens in the former is a wide variety of avian mating rituals, each more striking and provocative than the last, all underscored by Attenborough’s Winnie-the-Pooh’s-dad cadence.

Something that happens in the latter is that scene where someone is in a helicopter or a gondola or a van and something about it isn’t working, it’s smoking or beeping or sparking and the person(s) inside are fretting (understandably) and then: silence and heavy breathing. An enormous eye appears in the window, dwarfing the fretter(s) inside. The eye does a massive Blink, and you know the guys inside are toast.

Something that happens in both is the paradigm shift that comes when you begin to confront the scale of your problems up against the size of a single rib of some of the creatures that are out there.

Jurassic Park’s very own Jeff Goldblum is the tattered, tea-stained treasure map guiding my pursuit of being easily moved by things without losing my ability to think critically about them. That guy rocks. He’s remarkably weird to the point of being inimitable. There is no one I can think of who lives like he does, constantly wowed. His Instagram is a treasure-trove of earnest amazement, mild middle-aged thirst-traps, and this. He, for one, is using the app correctly. Evidently, I am not alone in admiration: he has a show, The World According to Jeff Goldblum. It’s not great, but it was fun to see how much mundanity really does thrill him: sitting shotgun in an ice-cream truck, utterly floored at the process of putting on a seatbelt, for instance. If I could have dinner with three famous figures from pop culture, past or present, I’d skip it for a hike in the woods with Jeff Goldblum, turning over stones.

I’m not sure what I’m arguing for here. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I haven’t written one of these in a while (sorry). I’ve had a hard time sitting down and writing. Things have been happening and I haven’t had the time or space to really synthesize any of the happenings. But I’m going to be more diligent for the rest of the summer because I really do enjoy doing these and I like this little community we’ve created here on substack dot com. Maybe you can tell me something you’re curious about and I can do some pondering, jot it all down, and get back to you on it? I hope you will!

More soon (for real this time).

Until then, you can listen to this if you want!