Friends, a quick note: Since my Substack live conversation with Darien Gee I’ve been thinking about a phrase she used: quiet contemplation. She said she likes the “quiet contemplation” essays too, meaning quiet little essays about quiet little things.
I keep thinking about it because I love writing weird little quiet essays. (I once wrote a 2000 word essay on popcorn. Why? Because I wanted to.) Often on Substack I feel like I have to save the world. Have to write about the newest atrocity, the latest upheaval, the most recent grift. But one of the reasons I fell in love with essay writing is because of the freedom—I can write about literally anything I want to, and I’d like to get back to that a bit more.
All that said, I am considering a new segment—maybe it will spin off into a new Substack—called Quiet Contemplation. This is an introduction. What I would like to do, eventually, is have a recurring Substack of quiet little essays on quiet little topics with quiet little titles like Notes From My Front Lawn, or The Squirrels in My Backyard. My Favorite Plant Species and Why. All About Acorns. Why My Left Foot Looks Funny. Buttons. My Favorite Fountain Pen.
For now, this will just be a type of essay I occasionally write. But as I expand this (hopefully), would any writers in my subscriber list be interested in contributing quiet little essays? Let me know in the comments or slide into my DMs, as the kids say.
Thanks for being here.
At least one morning a week—usually Saturday—I sit outside before dawn and watch the world come awake. We live in a medium-sized Midwestern city so there’s not a lot of wildlife, but I like to watch the sky gradually lighten. As the sun’s radiant heat draws the far horizon into shape, the birds begin building their morning song and the rabbits come out to nibble the honeyvine Jenn’s been trying to protect. The leaves on the trees lift in the slight morning wind as butterflies light on the orange lantana. There’s a fox that lives in our neighborhood and every once in a great while I see his black shape slinking through the morning shadows.
Most mornings I think of my grandfather and uncle, old men already by the time I came along, who would sit outside any time they weren’t working. All seasons, in the sun and rain, and it took me a long time to understand they were looking at the land. They were sitting in the weather, watching the seasons, wondering what it means to walk around on this good green earth. They grew up without tv. Without advertisements, without constantly being told what to eat and what to buy and what to wear and what to do with their lives.
I grew up in the modern world, with all its advertisements and attractions, so it took me longer to learn how to look. To carefully observe the world without distraction. It’s something I practice every Saturday morning, since all writers are looking. Mostly I think we are looking for something we can never define, which means we are just looking. The journey, not the destination. The simple fact that looking is what keeps us alive and inquisitive. Young and intelligent. It keeps me hopeful, and happy, to observe the world.
I like to think, these early mornings, about what we can learn from careful, quiet contemplation. I’m interested in what we can see when we really begin to look at the world. I fear we have lost our sense of wonder. That we have allowed ourselves to always be entertained to the point that nothing is entertaining. We always must be doing something, consuming something, whether it’s reading or rewatching classic films. We have created a world where we must be checking off lists. Getting shit done. We must be accomplishing goals if we want to get somewhere in this life.
What I’m trying to do, early Saturday mornings, is recapture the sense of wonder I used to carry with me everywhere. As a child, learning about the world was all we ever wanted. To touch and see and experience things for the first time. To be drawn into the world for the first time. To grow older and be allowed to do more things and go more places. When I walk with my grandson I try to see the world through his eyes because what he sees is a magical land teeming with wonder. A mushroom growing after the rain is a revelation, while a pile of dog poop is a warning. He watches the wasps on the front porch like a movie. It’s only been a few weeks since he’s seen me, but he rushes toward me like it’s been forever, and let me tell you, friends, how that hurts and heals all at once.
When he points out the dog poop as if I’ve never had a dog or had to steer clear of dog shit, the earnestness on his tiny face, his eyes the same color as mine, remind me I’m so fucking tired of the world we have created. The buying and consuming, the trying to reach some unachievable, undefinable goal. I’m so tired of advertisements telling me I need some new thing to be happy when I can be entertained for hours by my grandson pointing out dog poop.
I need fewer things in my life. Less stuff. Fewer interests, fewer ideas, fewer advertisements telling me how to be happy. Fewer commercials for clothing and body soap. For cars and Capitol One, and I don’t care how many celebrities they roll out, the commercials are still shitty.
I’m trying to find more things when I go on a walk at work. I stop to look at ants. At the worms stuck to the sidewalk after the rain. At mushrooms and spiderwebs strung out in the morning dew like Charlotte’s web, only instead of spelling words they spell out the geometry of creation. Last week I found a mushroom that looked more like a loaf of bread. Another week I came across a woman who had stopped her car to carry a turtle across the road, and watching her I felt a sense of cosmic companionship, that here was another sad soul who just wanted to look out for the little people. For the hurt and the hungry, for the turtles who have trouble crossing the road without getting smashed fucking flat by the big wheels of commerce.
I like to see the sun coloring the far horizon, the mist rising from the river on my way to work early in the morning. I like to sit in the silence of the morning and wonder how we might make the world better. I don’t want any more AI in my life. I don’t want a phone app to identify animals, or birdsong. I don’t want two-factor authentication or politicians texting me or signboards out along the interstate telling me about Jesus.
I want the darkness before dawn. The sun coming up to warm us all. I want us to see the act of breathing as being enough. That our presence here is enough, the simple fact we are alive. We don’t have to own everything, we don’t have to leave anyone behind, and we’d all be better off believing that.
I want politicians who care about us, not those preoccupied with lining their own coffers or promoting an ideology steeped in hatred. I’m tired of that too, tired of inequality, tired of inequity, tired of working and working and working with little reward. Tired of war and tired of men who wage it for no reason other than their own tiny egos.
I’d like us all to realize we live under the same sun, on the same spinning planet. I’d like us all to realize there ain’t none of us getting out alive. That we can’t take it with us. That all we can carry into the next life are the miracles and mundanity of this one.
All its magic, like morning. Like the sun continuing to come up every day and the earth spinning around in the heavens, despite all the things we keep doing to it.
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