EPISODE 516: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE GOOD
You know you've been in lockdown a while when the high point of your day is that the tomato soup is extra creamy.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hi! Welcome back! You know, I don’t know if you read this, but our mass sheltering at home has changed the environment so much, even the baby dinosaurs are venturing out into public.
So, 2020 continues! And we do too! I hope on days when it seems to rise up like a giant cartoon vampire you’re taking the time to step up and punch it right in the throat.
(True story: in the earliest Dracula stories there were actually three things that could destroy him: Sunlight; wooden stake; and a solid throat punch. Van Helsing was actually an MMA fighter.)
(Important Question: How is there not Jean-Claude Van Damme Dracula movie?)
It’s fair to say that 2020 definitely continues in its quest to break us down. Meanwhile we continue to respond by discovering lots of pockets of wonder and life. Like this short video of the flora and fauna of London right now.
Or some of the incredibly sweet signs to be found on New York City businesses:
Or the videos in this article about New York accents (it was a very New York City week for me), which make me so homesick for the five boroughs.
It’s about the delivery, usually offered by someone leaning in to the conversation, some combination of excitement and bristly attitude. Sometimes it’s about the liberal sprinkling of sounds and catchphrases, the salt and pepper on a conversation that actually becomes the dominant flavor. Sometimes it’s the fluent cursing.
(I am always grateful for the fluent cursing.)
This week I did very little writing, which is bad, I’m sorry, but also man oh man did I love just sitting around reading novels. After finishing The Outsider I’m now deep into Stephen King’s Bill Hodges trilogy, a Nnedi Okorafor novel and a couple other things.
Note: If you or children in your life need something really great to read, check out Okorafor’s Binti novellas or Akata Witch. Her books are like Harry Potter novels but with black people. And sometimes in space. And there are fewer of them. They are awesome.
I did, however come up with this Very Useful Thing For You:
Ways to Begin a Zoomservation that are not “How are You?”: May 3rd, 2020 Edition
Strategy One, Star Wars: Hi! Hey, which version of Rey are cosplaying for May the 4th – Earnest and Lovely Force Awakens Rey; Jedi Padawan decidedly frustrated with her Master Rey; Unexpectedly Conflicted Rise of Skywalker Rey; Rey Palpatine; Darth Reydious; Smoochy Face Ben Rey; or Rey Skywalker?
What if that old lady at the end of Rise of Skywalker who doesn’t make any sense because a) what is she doing out in the desert? And b) Of all the things she could legitimately want to know, why is she obsessed with Rey’s last name? is actually REY FROM THE DISTANT FUTURE, OMG WHAT IF RISE OF SKYWALKER IS JUST A REALLY BAD PREFACE TO AN AMAZING SECRET STAR WARS FILM?
Hey, what’s your email address. I need to send you my fanfic.
Strategy Two, Marvel Super Heroes: If you could give any super power to your worst enemy right now, who would it be?
Who is your worst enemy right now? (Note: If you think the answer is “You”, have a quip ready, and ideally also a villainous act to perform.)
Do you think Snidely Whiplash had any choice but to be a villain with a name like that? (Is Dudley Do-Right actually a tragedy?)
Strategy Three, Food: Do you think the term “rack of lamb” is a reference to the medieval torture device?
What’s your favorite/least favorite form of medieval torture?
How about the most torturous relationship you’ve ever been in?
(Note: Do not ask if you think the answer is likely to be “This one right now”.)
Is it me or does every week seems like a whole new universe of experience? It’s fun, I guess? I never really expected to visit Pluto, but you know, while I’m here I might as well sample the cuisine.
I will say the gravity at times this week has felt stronger. Like it’s a wee bit harder to just keep doing what I’ve been doing for the last seven weeks.
But you know, maybe that’s a good thing. There are moments where I have the sensation I’m holding my breath, trying to keep it all together. And maybe that’s not necessary, or even helpful. I was saying at Mass this morning, maybe it’s okay to just be a mess when you need to.
(Actually the term I had was “the full burrito”, as in Everyone loves a full burrito until they bite into it; then they think, Wow, that is too much burrito. But the fact is God made us all full burritos and loves us that way.
I have no idea where the analogy came from, and I take no credit. But I love it even if it makes me want to go break into an abandoned Chipotle.)
Here’s my thought: on the other side of being sad or frustrated and just letting yourself feel that way is something new. Greater freedom, I think. I find myself asking at times, why am I living the way I do? And I don’t just mean, in my room, surrounded by peanut butter.
(While everybody else was buying all the toilet paper, I was the guy buying the Costco gallon drum of Jiffy.)
Is this all just me?
(Not the peanut butter, the rest.)
All I know is, I feel like there’s a chance in all this for each of us to come out the other side of this less captivated by people who want to get us angry or talk nonsense, less trapped in old patterns or fears that aren’t sustaining us; more kind, more in touch with what’s actually important in our lives, more free. And that’s what I’m hoping for.
It sounds like California is starting to move toward easing some restrictions. Honestly, I’m a little anxious about it. It’s not as though I (or most other Californians) are planning to immediately begin running toward every group of people I can. And if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have to go far; I live with 30 people.
But half of them are over 70, and others have significant health issues. And so I keep thinking even as restrictions come down, I’m still living in a bit of a time bomb, and afraid that I’m going to pull the wrong wire or step on a hidden plate or INSERT YOUR OWN FAVORITE BOMB ANALOGY.
But you know what’s a good distraction from that anxiety? Planning how to survive other potential life-threatening situations.
Like plunging from a waterfall:
Always swim away from the falls, people!
Or learning how to make sushi:
This was actually a live feed of me yesterday, minus the part where I’m trying to learn how to make sushi.
Or there’s always encountering a bear.
The one quibble I have with this 2015 piece from the New Yorker about what to do if you see different varieties of bear is that it does not include the Koala Bear.
I have taken the liberty to fill in this important gap.
Koala bears are grey-ish. They hang from eucalyptus trees, often quite low to the ground, so low you could go right up to them, lift them from their branches and take them home. And when you see a koala bear, everything in you will want you to do that, because unbeknownst to you since birth you have been programmed by a subset of the teddy bear companies known as Big Koala to believe koala bears are actually adorable living dolls, not wild animals with eyes like cats and claws like panthers.
Having said that, probably you could pick up a koala bear, because koala bears spend their lives high off the eucalyptus leaves they eat constantly or asleep, which may be the same thing. Just know that if you do pick it up, while you stroke its so soft while carrying it back to your car it is imagining mauling you in the most colorful and fantastic way possible, and ooops, now it’s asleep.
What Every Koala Thinks It Looks Like When You Approach
What They Actually Look Like
Just one other thing for you today, a little gift from Julliard and Keigwin+Co Dance Company. For many years now Keigwin has been producing a series of dances built around ordinary things like going to the beach and set to Ravel’s “Bolero”,
Last week they released a new version for life as we find it now. And man it’s beautiful.
Some days are good, and some are not. And that’s okay. You are getting through this. And if you take nothing else from reading this I hope you hear that wherever you find yourself, you are not alone.
Let Mary Oliver be your guide:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Love what you love. I’ll try to do the same. And I’ll see you again next week.
PS I’ve been saying Mass on my Facebook page on Sunday morning at 9:30am CST and again at 10am PST. This Sunday those Masses will be dedicated to students who are graduating, their families and school staff.
If you know anyone that might appreciate being a part of something like that, feel free to send them to my page. It’s all open to the public.