/reader

 

“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote.

From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of them a lexicon of feeling, part code language and part blueprint to the secret chambers of the heart.

The symbolic language of flowers peaked in Dickinson’s time, seeded by Erasmus Darwin’s radical romantic botany a century earlier and popularized by books like The Moral of Flowers, but humans have long heavied flowers with the responsibility of holding what we cannot hold, saying what we cannot say — the funeral wreath, the bridal bouquet, Georgia O’Keefe’s calla lilies channeling the divine feminine, the white hyacinth Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman made the emblem of their uncommon love. We need flowers for the same reason we need poems, or paintings, or songs — because what we can feel will always be infinitely vaster and more complex than what we can name, because words will always break under the weight of the immensities we task them with carrying, will never fully answer the soul’s cry for connection, for consolation, for mercy.

Artist Tucker Nichols was in his late twenties when he found himself in a strange hospital room in a strange city with a strange diagnosis that confounded even his doctors. Nobody knew what to say. Nobody knew how to make it okay. As he fumbled his way to remission, he was saved again and again by the power of human connection, by the many languages of solidarity and sympathy when words fall short.

Half a lifetime later, as the pandemic swept the globe with its tidal force of terror and uncertainty, Nichols drew on that experience in a tender gesture of sympathy: He began sending small flower paintings to sick people on behalf of their loved ones. (I am thinking of Walt Whitman and his Civil War hospital visits, writing letters and poems on behalf of wounded and dying soldiers.) He painted for friends, for friends of friends, for strangers. His wife and daughter helped mail the paintings.

As word spread of his project, these intimate and specific consolations began to feel unequal to the scale of suffering — we so easily forget that everyone is suffering in one way or another, often invisibly, always ultimately alone — and so he began painting flowers for entire categories of human experience ranging from the depths of despair to those quiet joys that make life livable.

The result is Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say (public library) — a floral counterpart to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, radiating the recognition that no matter how singular what we feel may seem, and how lonely in its singularity, it is just a garden variety feeling, felt by innumerable others since the dawn of feeling, being felt by someone somewhere right now. Out of that recognition unspool the golden threads of connection that bind us to each other and hammock the free-fall of our fear, our uncertainty, our loneliness.

His paintings, loose and bright, become analogues of how abstract yet vivid the most interior experiences are — amorphous shapes saturated with feeling, blurry arrangements of contrasting parts of the self.

Complement Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say with the story of how the evolution of flowers gave Earth its language of love, then revisit The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Art © Tucker Nichols courtesy of Chronicle Books

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For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.

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I wrote a while back about how one of my favorite things about traveling is getting to microdose on cluelessness. These past few days in Japan have taught me that there is such thing as too much of a good thing. The last time I was in a place where I didn’t speak the local language was seven years ago (France and Italy), and there I could at least read, if not understand a little. In Japan many people don’t try to (or simply cannot) accommodate you if you don’t speak English, an unfortunate detail exacerbated by my Japanese-passing looks. People speak to me in Japanese and expect me to respond to them in kind, not changing their approach even after it’s apparent that I cannot.

This morning I visited a tiny onigiri restaurant and tried my best to order from the all-Japanese menu. The cook spoke to me only in Japanese even after I said nihongo wa wakarimasen (“I don’t know Japanese”) and stared blankly in response to his prompts, repeating everything as I tried to guess what he meant. After a difficult few minutes ordering, an Australian lady walked in and ordered in English, to which he responded… in English! Granted, it was very broken English, but still—why weren’t we afforded the same cooperative treatment when we were clearly struggling? Mom says it’s because we’re Chinese. I’m vaguely aware of the history between Japan and China, but I’m not convinced it’s to blame for what I saw this morning.

Because of this and all the visible and invisible social rules, I feel like I am overdosing on idiocy here all the time. I get in people’s ways, walk on the wrong side of the road (on accident), and get in a lot of sumimasen-filled awkward interactions. I’m grateful for the opportunity to get out of my comfort zone, but I also feel overwhelmed by not knowing the social norms and the local language. I’d have such a rough time if I moved here.

The writerly side of me wanted to write a nice eloquent post after each day of travel; the lazy (more realistic) side hasn’t felt like writing at all. They compromised and wrote a bulleted list of observations, which I suppose beats not writing at all.

• It really is as clean and safe and convenient and organized here as everyone says. Even the garbage trucks don’t smell, it’s absurd.
• The sheer number of vending machines took me by surprise. I knew they were common but not THIS common. I feel like I see more vending machines than tourists.
• There are no trash cans anywhere.
• Being a fan of the concept of bidets does not make getting used to them any easier.
• Public bathrooms are much easier to find than in Europe or the States.
• The subway system is such a joy to use. Jingles, safety barriers, not having to ever wait more than 3 minutes for a train? Good public transit is a godsend.
• Cycling infrastructure here is glorious. Protected bike lanes? Bike racks everywhere? Yes please!
• Accessible design here is head and shoulders above anything I’ve seen elsewhere. Help buttons and assistance rails in the bathroom. Truncated dome mats all over the sidewalks. Smoothly paved roads with ramps for wheelchairs. Information double-coded everywhere. Subway lines are colored and lettered, and stops are named and numbered.
• It will take me a while (read: forever) to get used to walking on the left side of the streets and to look right before crossing; I’m used to looking left, then right, then back left again.
• You can get tax waived on many purchases over ¥5500 if you show a foreign passport! You can also land small discounts at places like UNIQLO (10%) on top of that. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shop guilt-free at UNIQLO stateside ever again. Most higher end brands are about as expensive as they are back home though, sadly.
• Food is cheaper. Except for $100 mangos and melons and $3 strawberries.
• Bread here is so good. Japan could give France a run for their money.
• Most people are friendly enough, but some aren’t accommodating at all when they realize you don’t speak Japanese. They’re not obligated to, but from a practical standpoint why would you keep speaking in Japanese when people clearly don’t understand?
• Ginza is like a better 5th Ave, but still pretty boring. Next time I’m here I want to get out of the city, or at the very least visit some parks and less touristy areas.
• Tsukiji outer market is overrun with tourist traps and overrated. While still very touristy, Ameyoko had a better variety of vendors and wares.
• 2000 yen notes are rare.
• The food court of the Mitsukoshi department store is hands down the most beautiful display of food I have ever seen. Vendors hawk croquettes, skewers, noodles, raw fish, and pastries from cultures around the world, all too pretty to eat. The food court in the Tokyo Solamachi (mall at the base of the Tokyo Skytree) is similarly dazzling. The decision paralysis is enough to slow my brain to a halt.
• Japanese people are ridiculously well-dressed. I didn’t spot anyone who was less put together than me all day. Maybe this is because I’ve only been here during the work week?
• Double transit time estimates when you’re not completely familiar with the transit system and don’t speak the language.
• Don’t travel during rush hour. We did anyway and I always noticed.
• Being in Japan is the first time i’ve felt this uncomfortable in a long time, maybe ever. I get sensory overload everywhere (always getting in others people’s way and my brain can never move fast enough).
• I’m always second guessing myself here trying to avoid committing faux pas — is it rude to leave some of my noodles if I can’t finish? I know it’s rude to eat and walk, so where should I eat this thing I just bought? And so on.
• It can be so difficult and stressful to coordinate meetups with other people in a foreign country without a data plan! Street names are unwieldy to use (many don’t have names here) and many popular tourist attractions are large and not specific enough to use as meeting places. What3words would have been useful for meeting up on a busy market district with no easy Google Maps landmarks.
• Just functioning is difficult when you’re without internet in a foreign country. I couldn’t even use Google Translate when I needed it.
• Food has been good, not spectacular. I’ve not been going out of my way for great meals. I could subsist on konbini food forever. Because I can’t eat much meat or fried, my diet is entirely carbs (bread, rice, noodles), salt (anything brined or pickled), and sugar.
• Taking meds is difficult when you switch timezones. Do I keep taking everything on my old timezone? Taking blood pressure medication before I go to sleep doesn’t make much sense to me…

It’s 8 PM and I’m falling asleep. Photos and updates forthcoming, I hope.

1. A work of art can largely confirm the expectations of those who encounter it, largely thwart those expectations, or touch any point between those extremes. This is true of all the arts, but for present purposes I will speak only of fiction.
2. These expectations can be of many kinds, but the most commonly invoked expectation involves difficulty: How hard-to-track, hard-to-comprehend do we expect and want a book to be?
3. The reader who demands that all of his or her expectations be met is often called a lowbrow reader; the writer whose work habitually meets such readers’ expectations is often called a lowbrow writer.
4. The reader who craves surprise, excess, extremity, who is impatient with work that confirms typical expectations, is often called a highbrow reader; the writer whose work consistently violates norms and transgresses standards is often called a highbrow writer. 
5. N.B.: Higher-browed readers often want to have their aesthetic expectations challenged, but not their moral ones. Almost no one wants that. (But they get it sometimes, from some writers. George Eliot and Vladimir Nabokov are good examples — I’ll write about them, in this regard, one day.) 
6. “Highbrow,” “middlebrow,” and “lowbrow” are all characteristically pejorative terms, meant to insult, though in some cases (e.g. the piece by Woolf above) a writer will claim and even treasure the insult. See for comparison the history of such words as “Quaker” and “Methodist.” If Virginia Woolf does not think that your novel sufficiently resists your readers’ expectations, she will call you and your readers middlebrows; Graves and Hodges in the same circumstance will call you and your readers lowbrows. (They don’t mention C. P. Snow in their book, but if they had they’d probably have called him a lowbrow writer, but something like The Search is clearly meant for the educated reader.) 
7. The three brow-terms are most commonly used by people who are or believe themselves to be highbrows, though they may dislike that language and (implicitly or explicitly) put ironic scare-quotes around it.  
8. Even the most challenging writer will not always want to read works that constantly challenge or repudiate his or her expectations. Auden used to say that great masterpieces demand so much of their readers that you simply can’t take one on every day, not without either trivializing the experience or exhausting yourself. 
9. It is characteristic of highbrows’ use of these distinctions — see the Woolf letter quoted above and T. S. Eliot’s encomium to the music-hall entertainer Marie Lloyd, which employs the related socio-economic terms “aristocrat,” “middle-class,” and “worker” — that they articulate some alliance of themselves and the lowbrows against the middlebrow.
10. Lowbrow readers do not know, and if they knew would not care, about this supposed alliance.
11. Middlebrow readers and writers alike are often aware of the disdain of them felt by highbrows, and may respond either by defensiveness or mockery. (Think of Liberace’s famous response to his critics’ scorn for his music: “I cried all the way to the bank.” Funny to think of that line having a known origin, but it does.) 
12. For a long time now there has been no genuine lowbrow reading. Those who insist on all their expectations being fulfilled can get that hit much more efficiently through movies, TV, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
13. The brow-discourse is conceptually distinct from, but overlaps considerably with, genre-discourse. For instance, detective novels that adhere strictly to the conventions of the genre — the Ellery Queen stories, for instance — will often be called lowbrow, while those that frequently deviate from the conventions — the later novels of P. D. James, for instance, or Sayers’s Gaudy Night — may get called “highbrow” or, more likely, “literary fiction.”
14. The tripartite brow-discourse is much less useful than a more nuanced and more detailed account of readerly expectations, one which is sensitive to the ways different genres can generate different sets of expectations, and respond to those expectations in diverse ways.

Caleb is courting the ladies. Much watch T.V.

Notes:

• Thank you Kiki for sharing the video.
• Post Title: Background on Caleb/Wednesday/Hump Day Posts and Geico’s original commercial: Let’s Hit it Again.

BTW, I was struck that famous editor and writer Ben Smith said he was ashamed at starting out as a blogger, on an MSNBC show hosted by a true hack. The quote was from Jeff Jarvis, who like me, cross-posts to a variety of social webs, presumably manually. Where did I put my comment? Hell if I know. Heh I found it. My comment: "I didn’t know he had been a blogger. So my respect for him went up dramatically in an instant, and in another instant, plummeted. What’s wrong with people?" Bad news for Ben, he's still is a blogger, btw, in his heart. I can tell. And true journalists and true bloggers share an ethos that the fakers like Morning Joe will never understand. So I guess when you're on with Joe you have to pander. Just remember Ben, we know who you are. Even if you have forgotten. 😄#

Rustic Co-op City#

• I asked ChatGPT for "a rustic street scene in Co-op City in the Bronx."#

• An actual street scene in Co-op City.#

• I fooled it. Co-op City is in a part of the Bronx that is not old. There's nothing rustic about it. Or even possible. #
• Before Co-op City became a massive housing project it was an amusement park called FreedomLand. #

I ended up buying a teleprompter (this one) and mounting it on a pole thing attached to my desk. I needed to put an iPad into it, so that it could reflect off the mirror and I could be looking at it while a camera behind it was capturing through said mirror. I happened to have an iPad that I don’t use much, so that worked out, but it was still awkward. Leaving it there all the time felt like a waste, and running a power cable into the teleprompter was awkward. Taking it in and out was awkward too. Thank gosh Apple has Sidecar because at least then I could have it act as a second display to my actual computer I was video calling on without running another cable.

I’m sure you can guess: the whole operation was just too weird to leave up all the time. The fact that it was this giant contraption hanging off my desk at all times was ultimately what did it in. I gave it away to someone else who wanted to try it.

The fact that Elgato makes one now makes it a little more appealing. Check out how much more chill it is:

There is still an issue with it though. You’re only going to look like you’re actually looking at people if you’re looking right at the teleprompter. The fact that dude above has two giant screens in front of him with an exciting video game on it means he’s going to be looking at that primarily. If the goal is not being distracted and actually looking like you’re looking at someone directly during a call, I don’t think this is going to cut it.

It’s almost like you need a camera right in the middle of your dang monitor.

It’s almost like you need a camera right in the middle of your dang monitor.

That’s what the Center Cam does! It’s literally this dingus that drops down a camera right in the middle of your monitor.

It seems so silly but also kinda like the only thing that would actually work, until they find some ultra clever way to put a camera behind a screen. I don’t think I’m going to pull the trigger on it right now, but if I had to do a ton of interviewing or something, I’d be tempted.

• Is that thread asking me to reply with a picture of myself at 18 (or 21, or from 1977, or…) really just for fun or am I training an AI for facial recognition to ultimately be used against me?

• Is the movement to write in “uncommitted” on the ballot really a progressive grassroots effort about sending a message regarding my country’s response to a war or is it an attempt to influence a major election?

My point being is that we should all be asking such questions in today’s day and age. We have copious example from our last two (at least) major US elections that similar tactics were used and the results were impressive/devastating. We’ve obviously learned nothing about being suspicious of the things we see, especially on social media, and not immediately calling into question the source and the intent.

This is why I generally refuse to participate in such things online. Perhaps doing the same is worth your consideration. At the very least, think through the “what if” when you do.

We needed the extra income and this was something I could do on my own terms, at home. When I started there were plenty of oddball offers and pennies-per-page gigs and scams but there was also a lot of legitimate basic work. I could earn enough money to make a difference.

Over time I developed more skills and gained more experience. I specialized and raised my rates. I got referrals and set up long-standing agreements with clients and editors. Things got steadier and easier but I still had lots of projects, lots of clients, lots of flexibility. Also, lots of logistics, lots of deadlines, lots of emails, lots of juggling, lots of urgency.

Late last year, I started a full-time role for one of my clients and I’m quite happy with it. Everything is simplified and I like that. I used to love the experience of diving into a new project, getting to know new clients, understanding a new vertical or specific subject area. Now it just makes me tired, honestly. I’m less interested in broad and much more interested in deep.

I still work remotely, asynchronous. On my own terms, in charge of my own schedule. I’m not required to track hours or log keystrokes (thank god). But without the urgency of juggling multiple deadlines for multiple clients all the time, sometimes I really struggle to stay focused, to say no to distractions, to keep myself on task, to not jump up for every interruption. To have boundaries, in other words. To be a little more rigid, so I can protect my time and my attention.

I didn’t realize how much I relied on urgency as a substitute for structure. It wasn’t good. I don’t recommend it. So now I’m learning, or trying to learn, how to give myself structure, how to set limits. Flexibility has served me well. I needed it. Now I need to shift into something different.

Today’s song is “Why We Cry at Movies” by As Tall As Lions.

I know we sometimes get a little silly and hyperbolic around here, but I hope you'll allow me a moment of absolute, complete, undeniable sincerity so I may opine about one of my closest held convictions: the dissolution of the band, As Tall As Lions, is one of humanity's great tragedies. Yes, I am aware of the other ones.

Never in my life have I ever experienced emotional distress about the news of a band breaking up like I did with them. In fact, growing up I distinctly recall watching Apollo 13 repeatedly, and I always thought it seemed ridiculous that Tom Hanks's daughter was so upset about The Beatles breaking up. I didn't understand how anyone could love a band so much. Like, I understood loving music, but the music lasts forever! But the band? Some people that I never knew? Frankly, it felt like none of my business! Why should I care?

But in 2010, I finally understood.

Okay, wait a sec—quick aside! I would normally put this in a footnote, but I think this warrants greater attention. As Tall As Lions broke up in 2010. 2010. 14 years ago (13 and almost a half years ago if you wanna be really pedantic about it). It is 2024. 2024 minus 2010 is 14. 14 years. They broke up 14 years ago. I was 24 years-old. Twenty-four! I wasn't even married the first time yet. 24 years old and this band went away, poof. 14 years ago. This is impossible! Is it trite to be nearly 40 and lamenting the unyielding march of time? Is it cliché—passé, even?—to highlight how the older we get, the more that time compresses, until it is flattened into an impermeable disc with no beginning, middle, or end? That something that feels like it just happened yesterday, is in actuality, something that occurred nearly a decade and a half ago? DO NOT ANSWER RHETORICAL QUESTIONS, IT IS OBNOXIOUS. Just let me process.

Between 2003 and 2009, As Tall As Lions released three LPs. The first two are perfect albums.¹ Back-to-back winners. 21 unskippable tracks between the two of them. Early 2000s kinda-indie-rock-kinda-emo anthemic audial bliss. Ethereal, meandering guitar riffs. Reverberant drums like firecrackers. Slow, epic builds that layer and layer until they explode in climactic, triumphant emotional surges. And Dan Nigro's voice! Christ. A falsetto that cuts through me in the best possible way. One of the truly great voices of his generation. I have a hard time comparing him. The evocative quality of his singing feels unlike any other. Dan singing is experiencing every sadness you've ever felt. Dan singing is being cheated on and break-ups and apologizing and make-ups. Dan singing is lamenting all the love you ever lost and all the love you wished you had.

Feeling sad at music feels so good. I love feeling sad at As Tall As Lions. I love the sorrow "Why We Cry at Movies" makes me feel, and I love how when I share it with other people, it helps them see just a small glimpse of all the feeling I have inside me.

I love this line:

I guess there's no way to make love, not break our hearts

I love that a line so cheesy, when sung earnestly, feels so perfect.

I love their debut album, Lafcadio, so much that I bought it on vinyl when they pressed a limited release back in 2018. I don't own a record player! I don't even know how to use one! I know you put the thing on the thing, and then you put the other thing on the thing and it should work, but that's something I gotta figure out! I bought the record to encourage myself to by a record player and learn how to use it. I can't wait to someday have one in my office so I can listen to Lafcadio in all its analog glory.

I love As Tall As Lions so much I saw them live! Twice!² That's a record for me. I don't like concerts very much. Too loud. Too many people. So many germs! And also I'm kind of a weird purist. I get attached to studio recordings, and, as a result, live versions often feel like a great betrayal. But I saw As Tall As Lions twice, and I fucking loved every second.

I was at Bottom Lounge on April 6, 2010, to see them play with A Lull and Bad Veins. I can still feel A Lull's percussion vibrating in my chest. I can still hear Benjamin Davis of Bad Veins singing through this weird telephone-looking thing to create the tinny, distorted vocals on "Gold & Warm." I can still feel my heart in my throat as I held back tears while Dan Nigro's falsetto cut through me during "Stab City." I wish I could go back there, now that I've learned it's okay to cry.

I was there on December 19, 2010 to see their farewell show at Lincoln Hall. There was no way I was going to let them fade away, never to be heard from again, without having one last memory of seeing them on stage. It was up there with the one time I saw Girl Talk live. An incredible show that (I hope) will live with me forever.

I actually hadn't ever watched that video before I started writing this. Until today, that performance was mere memory. It's funny reliving it. I recall them sounding better in person. There is something to be said for getting swept up in the moment.

Regardless, I was there. You can't see me in that video. I was in the balcony, but I was there. That pervasive melancholy that fills the air? That was me. That was the love I left there.

FOURTEEN FUCKING YEARS AGO.

¹ The third, You Can't Take it With You, is... fine. It's the album a band makes before they break up.⬏

² It was supposed to be three, but I broke up with my girlfriend days before the first concert, and we decided it might be best to give my ticket to someone else. Good call!⬏

 

I asked ChatGPT for "a rustic street scene in Co-op City in the Bronx."

An actual street scene in Co-op City.

I fooled it. Co-op City is in a part of the Bronx that is not old. There's nothing rustic about it. Or even possible.

Before Co-op City became a massive housing project it was an amusement park called FreedomLand.