Distance can be endearing.
I picked up two books at the library yesterday afternoon about noticing.
One of my favorite living writers, Rachel Syme, has a sophisticated and niche taste, so when she recommends something, I listen. She posted last week about Maeve Brennan’s collected writings from The New Yorker—and while I was deciphering the Dewey Decimal system to find Brennan’s book, the title Orphic Paris caught my eye in that iconic NYRB font.
From the back cover:
Cole writes of Paris, “For a time, I lived here, where the call of life is so strong. My soul was colored by it. Instead of worshiping a creator or man, I cared fully for myself, and felt no guilt and confessed nothing, and in this place I wrote, I was nourished, and I grew.” Written under the tutelary spirit of Orpheus—mystic, oracular, entrancing—Orphic Paris is an intimate Paris journal and a literary commonplace book that is a touching, original, brilliant account of the city and of the artists, writers, and luminaries, including Cole himself, who have been moved by it to create.
I’m already obsessed, of course.
Syme noted that the act of noticing can make one a better writer, but for me, it also provides relief from my misanthropy. People annoy me in general, but sometimes their particularities are delightful. Here are a few scattered vignettes—things I’ve noticed recently. If your family starts to grate on you over the holidays, maybe you, too, can abstract them—think about them like a novelist or journalist would.
Distance can be endearing.
***
A short and wiry man unlocks a yoga studio on the east side. His body resists him still, the evening after a holiday party where he had too many drinks. His nails are painted a dark green that turns black against the rubber floor, as he waits for students to trickle in. There aren’t many. ’Tis the season. His energy builds as he turns on the music and starts class. There’s a young man who hasn’t lost his baby fat on the far end of the room, looking a little out of place, but he keeps up with the flow. After class, as people wipe up their sweat and I reclaim my belongings from the cubbies, the two men chat as if they might have met each other before.
There was a handsome man reading in church this morning. I don’t know anything about him, and I haven’t seen him on any previous Sunday. My friends asked me my “type” the other day, and I didn’t really have an answer for them, but based on my immediate interest in this man, I think tousled hair must be high on my list of qualities in a potential partner. Also: a strong jawbone and an obvious aesthetic sensibility.
I’m envious of the girl in the septum ring behind the bookshop’s counter. She’s worked at the store since it opened—a job I’ve coveted just as long—and I wonder if she recognizes me from how often I loiter along the shelf-lined walls. I’m buying a copy of the Ottessa Moshfegh book that’s recently been made into a movie, and the girl comments as she rings me up on her adoration of the author. She says all of Moshfegh’s characters are so “sleazy and greasy,” which she happens to love. I reply that I’ve avoided reading Lapvona—the book that’s set in the Middle Ages—because the reviews all caution how flat out nasty it is, though I’m hopeful the realism of Eileen might be more to my taste.
A tall redhead in a beanie puts my groceries in paper bags. I forgot my reusable ones, and for a second, I’m embarrassed. What will this hot cashier think of me? He asks me what I’m doing the rest of the day, and I cite a recipe for a lemon and dill chicken rice bake. That might impress him. It’s impressive enough to me—I’m finally getting the hang of cooking for one and budgeting for groceries. When he smiles back at me, his face sort of reddens. We’ve built a rapport, talking to each other over my bags of groceries. I wonder if he could be my type.
The next time I’m at Trader Joe’s, a different cashier—shorter but with the same trendy mustache, you know the kind—double-bags my bottles of wine (paper, forgot again). He asks if I’m going to “break any of them open tonight,” and we talk about the most reliable price range at which to buy Trader Joe’s wine. As I put my bags in my car, I wonder if he was being flirty or if I was making it up ... then I realize I’ve fallen for the trope of the flirtatious Trader Joe’s cashier two weeks in a row. People make viral TikToks mocking how suggestive the cashiers can be, joking that it must be part of their job training to seduce customers. I’m laughing out loud at myself as I drive home.
I learn this week that someone I know unexpectedly does ketamine therapy. They’re one of the most grounded and joyful people I know, so it must be doing something. Still, I never would have guessed. When I tell my mom, she spends the next half-hour sending me articles about how Matthew Perry died on ketamine.
A man trails his toddler son as he tries to catch the crow that’s flying around the library’s rooftop garden. I remember the children at church this morning, their cacophony joining with the sound of coffee beans grinding as we’re called to worship. By the ending benediction, a father has given up on keeping his toddler from crawling all over the floor. In fact, their seats in the front row of folding chairs seem like they could have been specially chosen to give him room to wiggle during the homily. The towheaded child prostrates himself in front of the altar, naively adopting a posture of prayer, his little bottom in the air and his forehead on the floor.
I don’t know if any religion has it right, but there must be truth to the theory that humans have an innate curiosity about the divine. Even children have the instinct to look up at the stars. Even primitive beings had ritual, painting cave walls in layers so that the figures would appear to move in the flickering torchlight.
