On notes in the forest, how we occupy space, and that which attracts and repels
February 28, 2019
Dear Eva,
This week, I am thinking about fear. Specifically, the kinds of fears that have nothing to do with our physical well-being and everything to do with our relationships and interactions with other humans. Fears that are rooted in the possibility of shame, loneliness, regret, embarrassment, exclusion. In other words, the fears that are the undercurrent of our daily lives.
Somewhere, in-between our recent conversations, the Fearology episode of your favorite podcast, Ologies, the movie Wonder I watched with Jonah last Movie Night, I could suddenly see how much of our lives are affected by these fears. When we are adolescents, the social pressures are blunt and obvious. With time, they don’t go away; they just take new shapes. We hide a tattoo from a grandparent. We avoid a cocktail party. We don’t speak up at a meeting.
A couple of weeks ago, we both wrote about the energy it takes to be around new people. When we don’t know someone well, we can’t default to the shorthand we use with those who know us best. We don’t have the ease of saying things any old way because we know our loved ones know exactly what we are talking about anyway, already agree with whatever opinion we are spouting off. We can’t rely on the common ground of shared memories. But I wonder now if the subtle discomfort of interacting with new people is at least partially rooted in some low-level fear. Will they judge me too quickly? Will they be able to see the real me? Will I be able to get them to understand my point of view?
It seems to me that it is an extension of these same fears that can keep us from wanting to be at the front of a room, literally or figuratively. Up there, the judgments come even faster, the pressure to explain and persuade is even higher. It is easy to see why people resort to trying to control the narrative, manage the image — out of fear. I think quite a bit about what it must be like to lead a public life of any kind. I try to imagine the armor one must grow to withstand the relentless critique and judgment, especially with the internet there to magnify and compound it all. Just the thought can make me want to resort to the cabin in the woods we often joke about.
And yet.
Awhile back you made a comment about not wanting to be seen by too many people, but also not wanting to be invisible. This letter exchange feels like a good way to dip our toes into visibility. In the early days of the internet, I used to think publishing online was like publishing on a billboard. Now I know it is a lot more like dropping a note on the ground in a planet-size forest. Most likely it won’t be seen by many. But it will be out there, waiting to be picked up by passers-by. And in the meantime, we are practicing what it feels like to express a voice, to be a little vulnerable, to know with certainty that the more people read the words, the more people will critique and question and judge, and to do it anyway because it is this same risk / reward that lies beneath every human interaction we have every day of our lives.
To not fleeing for the forest!
Your friend,
Sarah
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Dear Sarah,
My head feels full again this week! Spurred by what looks like a potential upcoming move for M and I into a home of our own, I’ve been thinking about design, and space, and furniture, and objects. Windows and colors. I remember reading somewhere that when Steve Jobs and his family moved into their new home they were without furniture for a stretch, searching for the perfect objects — I think it was a case of high ideals bumping up against the realities of what exists, or maybe that is just how I interpret that story, vaguely recalled? There is something both thrilling and mildly dull in buying furniture and assembling a room, slightly less dull, perhaps, if the objects are collected over time. In other words, there is something boring about buying an array of new furniture chosen from what is available right now. Though maybe my boredom is a function of the idea of “nowness” — if you had had a home built new in the middle of the last century and outfitted it with completely new furniture of the time it would have been new all at once, new and “now,” and thus dull in my view; but if you happened today across that home full of once-new midcentury furniture you would be pleased by its completeness, its age. Perhaps I am less confident in the designs of today (but why)? I suppose more people are making more things today, so perhaps in the future there will be less of a distinctive mark of this particular design moment? Or maybe it will be impossible to tell until time passes and we see what is remembered, treasured, what sustains, what is reborn some number of decades hence.
I have a desire to make or commission all kinds of furniture objects, though that can get expensive, and perhaps strange — there is something about the idea of creating furnishings from scratch that seems almost arrogant in some way. Maybe I don’t think everyone should be so bold? But why limit what others can produce from their own heads and hands? Maybe I want to do it but am talking myself out of it? Just because I often find myself editing things out of existence before they’ve even seen the light of day doesn’t mean others should too!
I have a specific dream of being able to put everything away, close it away behind a door or surface. This is slightly at odds with my joy in stacking things — I’ll stack books on books, papers, more books, boxes — these are all the best things for stacking. A tall and tidy stack is a delight. I was never much of one to play with blocks or Lincoln Logs, in my memory — but colorful, perfectly aligned stacks of books suit my way of thinking and seeing. (My niece has MagnaTiles, neon transparent building tiles fitted with magnets at all their key points, and they seem like the best toy. Truly fun for all ages. I am fascinated with magnets, even as I go about my regular business. What are they, really? Why? Have I already spun up a magnet monologue in another of my letters to you?) Magnet interlude, courtesy of Wikipedia: A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. The field is invisible, but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet — a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials (such as iron) and attracts or repels other magnets. I hadn’t really thought much before about the fact that a magnet both attracts and repels — in order to attract strongly it must also repel. To be attractive it must also be repellent. I’m playing here a bit, but when I think of something magnetic — an actual magnet, or a person — I think of using the word “magnet” to indicate the attraction, and I suppose one could just as easily, if somewhat theoretically, use the word to indicate something repellent.
In your letter last week you talked about the human rings around your life — family and close friends, other friends, professional contacts, neighbors, acquaintances, and on. There is some attractive magnetism at work there, I think — you draw and keep those in the closest ring close to you, and the bonds, the pull, grows looser as the field expands. I’m thinking of those people you describe who prioritize the far rings while neglecting their inner rings — it’s true, and what does it really mean? The inner rings can feel obligatory from time to time, rather than intentional — family, the people you were born into (as well as those you create) — while somehow prioritizing the general human, the unknown human, can seem grand, intentional, differently important. Every unknown human is known to someone. Who helps whom? When do we stay close and help those closest to us, when do we reach and help those with whom we have no immediate connection? The questions seem to me to have changed as our presence today expands to reach not only those with whom we live on a regular basis, but those around the world whom we can easily contact through an array of technologies linking us up virtually and in person.
The wider questions come back around for me to a lingering question of where to focus, exactly what to do, whom to be for. So many possibilities in each of our lives, so many permutations as the possibilities multiply in combination with each other. This letter is a bit of a rambler, and I thank you for reading it through! I’ll see about tidying the stack of my thoughts a bit more as next week rolls around.
Until then,
Your friend,
Eva