A lusty experience
Midweek grab bag of middle-aged thoughts
Use the fine silver
Take your time. Light taper candles at breakfast, even though your kids nearly set their heads/sleeves on fire every morning. Don’t drink bottled water. Don’t use paper napkins. Drink tea in your grandmother’s china teacups that she had your grandfather smuggle back from Tokyo during the Korean War. Cut the flowers and put them in a ceramic vase, even though it’s Tuesday and even though no one else will see them but you. Have a big dinner party for no reason at all except joy, abundance, and camaraderie.
As Didion said: Every day is all there is.
Simon Sarris expanded on Saint Joan in his recent letter:
“Joan Didion used fine silver every day because she was open to delights beyond convenience. She saw the pleasure of detail. It carried something visceral to her senses, something not trivial, that she noticed enough to cherish. To gratify our own senses we must cultivate this attention to detail. Eating a boiled egg is 6 grams of protein and 5 grams of fat. Eating a boiled egg from a nice egg cup, with a little spoon, on a picnic blanket outside is a lusty experience.”
I’m old. Life is short. We have so much to steward. Sign me up for a lusty experience at the expense of convenience.
Related
Talk to someone on an airplane, you might just cure AIDS
I spent an hour interviewing a brilliant chemist whose institute is poised to end HIV, forever, on the African continent.
The interview, if you can call it that, was a chance to hear his detailed, personal stories: about the origins of the institute, the development of their many breakthroughs, and the possibilities for innovation in the future.
He’s jailbreaking drugs from the death grip of Big Pharma and making them cheap and easy to produce everywhere in the world. It’s wonderful, revolutionary. And all of his success, in his words, kept coming back to being in the right place at the right time with the right people.
He was being modest—he’s an incredibly accomplished chemist, professor, and entrepreneur, with a rules-be-damned attitude that makes him stand out in academia—but there was something that kept ringing true in all of his anecdotes.
If you aren’t around people, in the flesh, nothing great happens.
If you never leave the lab, if you never leave your home, if you never leave your laptop or phone, you’ll never make anything. At least anything worthwhile.
To a story, every breakthrough he shared came down to a seemingly chance encounter: Sitting on a plane next to someone who knew someone and striking up a conversation. Chatting in the hallway on your way to a meeting and being introduced to a vital stranger. Connecting with a old friend, who knew someone who knew someone, and getting the funding you needed. Picking up a voicemail from your brother, telling you to hire his wunderkind intern, whom you would, and that intern would discover the drug that’s positioned to end AIDS.
Be out in the world. Talk to strangers. Start conversations. Don’t do it on the computer. Yeah, we’re probably not going to change a continent like this guy, but who knows what we could accomplish if we’d just go outside and talk to people?? (Maybe we’ll find the cure for Morgellon’s disease, I dunno!)
I write this as a rebuke to my “introverted” self, who often prefers to stay home. I know it’s not always good for me. I appreciated this recent reminder to not keep to myself so much.
Related
Other inchoate thoughts
Does everyone, deep down, actually despise women? Even women? Seems plausible.
Does any parent think they’re doing a great job? And if such a parent exists, should we assume they’re insane? Does being a parent mean you’ll always feel like you’re on the verge of messing it all up in a cosmic way?
Given the pace of derealization, what extreme acts might the next generation take to protect their souls? (And should we be taking some of these acts ourselves, right now?)
Why did none of you tell me about IRIS MURDOCH?
Currently reading
On the Calculation of Volume I, Solvej Balle
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, Aldo Leopold
A Severed Head, Iris Murdoch
"Does any parent think they’re doing a great job? And if such a parent exists, should we assume they’re insane?" LOL Thank you.
I'm glad you've discovered Iris Murdoch. When we read Under the Net in book group I really didn't know what she was up to, but now she's my favorite novelist as well as one of my favorite thinkers, period. I've read 13 of her novels and much of her philosophical work, which is heavily influenced by Plato and Simone Weil, and I can't say which I love more. Also her letters, official bio, memoirs by friends, and essays on her thought. There is even an Iris Murdoch Society podcast!