CREDITS: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Hi friends—
I met a new person today — an amiable, musical person with kind eyes and a great laugh. As we stood in the middle of their apartment, I was awestruck by their collection of guitars, drums, and records. I’ve always been caught in a state of wonderment when I meet someone who can play music. I consider it magical. Eventually, when asked, I told them I write (for some reason revealing this always feels like an embarrassing confession), they responded, “That’s so cool, I don’t know how you do that.” I smiled and said I don’t know either. I meant it. This past week my desk might have been best described as a graveyard of discarded ideas, deleted words, and empty coffee mugs. At times, deep in self-pity, I wondered if the planets aligned themselves to block any words from finding their way to me. I actually googled whether Mercury is in retrograde (answer: not until September 9th). At other times, I worried if I wasn’t trying hard enough, depending too much on an idea magically coming to me rather than putting in enough self-effort — maybe that was partly true. When writing is this taxing, I can trick myself into thinking that I’m not cut out for it or that I don’t love it enough. Then when I wake up in the morning, I still can’t think of anything else I’m compelled to do during my short speck of time on Earth.
I recently read Natasha Rodriguez’s thoughts on searching for a writing process. Rodriguez explained, “My best work has been produced at four in the morning a couple hours before the deadline and my worst has been when I’ve had too much time to work on something. (This isn’t me jumping to my own conclusions, it’s based on feedback from peers, professors and editors.) I am an overthinker and a perfectionist. Once I’ve written something, I will read it over and over until I hate it again. If I have time to play with my words, to cut my sentences and rearrange my paragraphs, you will be able to tell that my words are too cautious, trying too hard to impress, to be liked.” When I read this, I felt every word. And I thought, same.
In truth, when I’m stuck writing a piece these days, I should go for a head-clearing walk, but I take my laptop to the couch, turn on the television, and continue my rewatch of AMC’s Mad Men. The show is set in 1960s New York, following ad-man Don Draper’s journey during a time when American culture is rapidly transforming. Throughout the brilliantly written seven seasons, we witness characters grappling with societal expectations, the “should’s” and “should not’s,” sometimes embracing those very things or abandoning them for a new definition of meaning, humanity, and purpose. Spoilers incoming. In Season 7 Episode 4, “The Monolith,” we watch as a character named Margaret rejects the institution of marriage, runs away from being a housewife and mother, and searches for belonging with an upstate commune. She turns from Margaret to Marigold, trading in her fur coat and gold jewelry for fringed leather and tiered homespun dresses. When her father tries to coax her back to the city, joking that the Margaret he knew would have never even considered camping let alone living on a commune, she offers him this explanation: “I used to think the country was lonely. Now I realize the city is. I mean, look at that.” The camera cuts to a clear view of the stars and moon lighting up the night sky. A quiet pause. Marigold continues, “I’d like to go to the moon.”
I rewatched this episode a couple of days ago. This particular moment between Marigold and her father made me think about the amazing images revealed by the James Webb telescope last Tuesday. Images of distant galaxies and stars often effectively pull us into this reflective state about purpose and meaning. Met with the vastness of the universe, we ask what matters truly? Sometimes these questions can send us on a chaotic hunt for answers. Sometimes they induce a fear of insignificance. We are so small and we process feeling small in a variety of ways. In 1994 Carl Sagan wrote, “The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena,” inspired by the image captured by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. Earth appeared as a tiny point of light. A pale blue dot. “It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world,” Sagan continued. “To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
When I think of how much is out there, I feel relieved. The deleted words from the past days don’t weigh on me as much because it really doesn’t matter. That type of insignificance is comforting. I think about how much beauty there is in this universe and here on our pale blue dot called home. When I’m searching for meaning, I usually go to books where the words pull at my heart and make me cry. A good cry always turns me connected and grounded. These telescope images have arrived during a time when I’ve been thinking about what it means to be actively living. As I broach year twenty-five, I fear I’ve lived so passively. I comb my memory for evidence of aliveness. I realize I’m very much not alive when I’m doom scrolling on my phone, which happens too often these days. That feeling of disconnection is terrible. I realize I am my most alive self when I’m in the presence of love and warmth with another person, when I’m laughing, when I feel a golden thread of connection to an author who lived a very different life than me, when I’m looking at the sky or the ocean. I’m trying to pause more these days in acknowledgment of those precious moments.
And I think my old saying that I don’t like people very much has never actually applied to me. I’m embarrassed I ever boasted about that kind of self-imposed isolation. In truth, I’ve always loved people, but I was afraid of precious connection and being seen. When I stare at NASA’s images, I realize I’m already so small, I don’t need to make myself even smaller, even more hidden. The universe has already accomplished that for me. What I can do is fully cherish this home, this time of being alive, and the beauty of other people. I can spend my life leaning in rather than pushing away.
And I think that if the universe is so vast, our interior space must also be immense. We have so much capacity inside ourselves for love, beauty, grace, imagination, and change. I find that inspiring. And I love that with the help of time, we can also see inside ourselves more clearly. We check in with ourselves and find new details that were always there, waiting to be discovered. Like the Webb telescope showing us never-before-seen details about our universe.
I love this feeling of hope and wonder. And all I want to do right now is sit underneath a tree and feel how alive it is. And I hope when night falls the sky is clear so that we can look up at the stars. And in the words of Ann Friedman, “Oh, the sweet relief of being a brief speck!”
–A
Thank you for reading! Next week letters will begin arriving on Tuesdays (I’m still experimenting with what day of the week works best for this newsletter).
Luminous Reads
"In Search of Touch" by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo for The Offing. A recount of dating during a worldwide health crisis. A meditation on touch and loneliness.
I love memoirs and I just started reading In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. 50 pages in, I can definitively say the writing is breathtaking, exact, and honest. A little from its description: “Machado traces the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, and struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. Each chapter in this inventive memoir is driven by its own narrative trope–the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman–through which Machado holds her story up to the light and examines it from different angles.”
Parting Quotes
“You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”― Carl Sagan, Contact
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” ― Carl Sagan, Cosmos