this glorious place

Hi, friends!It can’t possibly be interesting to hear, each time I send one of these things, that I’ve been intending to write it for a long time. And yet it’s hard for me to begin anywhere else. I just discovered a note on my phone—from 9:03pm on Thursday, September 14th—that I will reproduce here in its entirety:

A New Tinyletter

Well,

…clearly whatever burgeoning idea I was compelled to document did not make it into the annals of posterity. I didn’t even start this with “well”!

But I do have news to share—news that almost certainly would be of interest to anyone who’s bothering to read this—and it’s that Dear Businesslady is back! I’m writing for The Stopgap now, which is more like a resurrection of The Toast than anything else I’ve found on the internet. My first column accidentally became a manifesto on capitalism and work/life balance, and now that it’s out of my system I can tackle less unwieldy topics. So please send me your letters! Email me—[email protected]—or just reply to this note. My next one is dropping soon, so watch that space.

With that bit of business(lady) out of the way, what more is there to be said? My localized world is full of joys large and small—tempered by occasional periods of intense frustration—thanks to the three-year-old goofball I live with. And the broader world is replete with truly awful, depressing realities. Neither of those topics feels super appropriate to this particular venue, and yet my mind keeps turning on something that manages to braid the two together.My kid has become obsessed with the Dr. Seuss story The Lorax lately, and (as I’m sure many of you already know) it’s rare when a piece of media can withstand the crucible of toddler fixation. One previous object of intense attachment was the Paul McCartney and Wings album Band on the Run, which played in my household no fewer than three times per day—and often many, many more—for a period of several months. It’s still in heavy rotation. And yet I never really got sick of it. I would eagerly welcome the opportunity to listen to something else (including silence) after the second or third rotation, but that’s as far as it got—and it wasn’t an album I was particularly into before my toddler discovered it. So I’ve been forced to conclude that it’s…I wanna say…a masterpiece?? (I say “it” as though it’s a coherent entity, even though—as my kid will happily explain to you—the U.S. version that’s on our iPod has “Helen Wheels” on it while the U.K. edition that we have on vinyl does not. I embrace both track listings equally.) All of which is to say, child-prompted iterative immersion gives you a new perspective on art.I loved The Lorax long before I became a parent, but hadn’t reread it in close to thirty years. I’m assuming most folks are familiar with the story but I’ll share the description that accompanies the 1972 cartoon adaptation because it’s hilariously succinct: “A ruined industrialist tells his tale of his environmentally self-destructive greed despite the warnings of an old forest creature.” (That creature, of course, is the titular Lorax.) You would be correct to conclude that it’s a metaphor. And for the first several read-throughs after our kid discovered it, my spouse and I had a hard time getting to the end without crying. This book about the importance of sustainability and environmental consideration was written more than fifty years ago. One of the concluding lines—“nothing is going to get better. It's not”—is tempered by an “unless,” but that optimism can feel a bit hollow. Still, it’s an amazing piece of writing and illustration. I may get dispirited by the enduring timeliness of its message but I’m never annoyed or bored by the text itself. There’s a reason Dr. Seuss is an iconic children’s author (problematic elements notwithstanding) and while I still have affection for a lot of his non-offensive stuff, I’ve concluded that The Lorax is his magnum opus.At least partially thanks to the suffusion of Lorax in my brain, the other day I experienced some cognitive dissonance I haven’t been able to shake. First, I went to a great antique store (Behind the Iron Gates in Syracuse, NY) whose vibe is basically “an extremely well-organized hoarder is selling all their possessions.” Its holdings are such that you could probably supply a dozen households with a full set of dishware—maybe not all matching, but close—before you began to make a dent in the stock. They have an unbelievable number of teacups and matching saucers, mostly white with pink flowers. There’s a room full of old toys and dolls. A room of bar signs and tools. Et much cetera. I purchased a dispenser for perfume oil—something I’d been wanting but had forgotten about until I saw it in the display case—and three plastic cups featuring Kermit the Frog on the cover of Muppet Magazine wearing a sash that reads “Editor of the Year.” (That last sentence is irrelevant except to explain that it was a good antiquing trip, and to brag about how cool my pro-editor Kermit cups are.)I’ve only gone to antique stores a few times since buying a house, and the fact that I now have some surplus storage space at my disposal can make me feel responsible for rescuing all these items—still usable, still noteworthy, still interesting—from obsolescence. I know that’s a ridiculous thought, but it was still lingering in the back of my mind at my next stop: HomeGoods (a purveyor of discount home furnishings), which was selling…sets of pink-and-white floral teacups, each adhered to its saucer with a plastic wrapper. My god, I thought, just down the street you could buy a HUNDRED of these. They didn’t even need to be manufactured! It’s such a small thing—there were only nine of these sets on the shelf (I took a photo)—and yet it’s so sharply emblematic of the moment we’re in.There’s not an easy solution either. For all I know those teacups at the antique store are covered with poisonous paint; for all I know the ones at HomeGoods are uplifting a marginalized community through their production and sale (though I’d be shocked to learn it). I’m not the most eco-conscious person myself and I don’t begrudge anyone their decision to buy from Amazon or a big-box store instead of hunting through piles of dusty irrelevance for the thing they need. And yet. The fact that we’re producing new versions of mostly decorative items when there’s a glut of those same items available seems…bad. Unsustainable for sure.This little microcosm of contemporary commerce now churns in my mind when I read The Lorax, accompanied by rising dread about the burning world my child will inherit. Afterward he often asks, “Is this a sad story?” (I know that has the stench of Made-Up Anecdote for Viral Tweet but it’s absolutely true.) I usually tell him yes, but that it’s hopeful too. I don’t always believe it myself but three feels too young for nihilism.Of course the shopping trips and Band on the Run listen-throughs and reading sessions are but tiny parts of my everyday life. A huge percentage of our household’s shared downtime is spent building things and then destroying them—sometimes with MegaBloks or Duplos, but most often with Magnatiles (or rather, knockoff versions made overseas and purchased off Amazon by various grandparents). Magnatile structures, for the uninitiated, are extremely unstable but have the potential to be visually stunning—geometric cityscapes of tall, multicolored, translucent towers refracting sunlight before they’re accidentally bumped into or deliberately demolished. My toddler (who is both a perfectly average child and also the most exceptional person I have ever had the pleasure to know) has gotten remarkably good at building these things, despite no particular parental pedagogy being involved. The other day I walked into our library/office (or so we named it back when we had an infant; now it’s an overflow space for toys) and was greeted by a series of towers and walls that he’d built. He was eager to show them off—“Look at this glorious place, Mommy!” (Again, not a made-up anecdote.)He comes by his verbal precocity honestly but even I was thrown by that declaration. (His pronunciation isn’t the greatest either, so I had him repeat himself several times to be sure of what he’d said.) Where’d he get THAT?? I wondered. Eventually my spouse helped me figure it out, and maybe you dear readers have too: it’s from The Lorax, at the beginning of the ruined industrialist’s tale. (“Way back in the days when the grass was still green, and the pond was still wet, and the clouds were still clean, and the song of the Swomee-Swans rang out in space...one morning, I came to this glorious place.”)Witnessing a kid acquire language when you yourself are a huge language nerd is a real headtrip, prompting you to reflect on questions like, “What does it mean to ‘know’ a word?” (Or did I just blow your mind??) Does my toddler truly know what “glorious” means? For that matter, do I? (I looked it up right after this incident and again just now.) The definition in M-W might not make much sense to him (and also he cannot read), but—as I regarded his shining, colorful, sunlit creation—I couldn’t argue that he was using it incorrectly. Especially not after he admired his handiwork while observing aloud to himself, “This glorious place is pretty glorious.”While the ostensive message of The Lorax is that things can always get better, it makes an even stronger case for “things can always get worse.” I don’t think anyone living through the past [however old you are] years would disagree. That’s not necessarily an optimistic notion, I realize. But it offers a perverse argument in favor of appreciating the good things about the fleeting moment you’re in, before they’re gone.…and that’s why you don’t wanna waste your time at WORK doing a job that you HATE, amirite folks?? Send me Dear Businesslady letters—maybe I can help you bigger your money, which everyone needs—and stay tuned for the next sporadic installment of whatever this TinyLetter is. Maybe I’ll finally tell my last remaining bat story.Oh and also, I’m on BlueSky now, so find me on there. (“Mr. Blue Sky,” incidentally, is another one of my toddler’s beloved songs, so guess what’s stuck in my head all the time lately.) I’ve got spare invitation codes if you’d like one. I’m still technically on Twitter and Facebook for the time being too, but with steadily decreasing frequency. 

~court

PHOTO TIMESpeaking of glorious places, I’m freshly returned from a family trip to the Adirondacks—to the same place I wrote about and shared a picture of five years ago. The fire pit there was the “happy place” I envisioned (as directed by my anesthesiologist) as I was going under for my IVF egg retrieval, and I went back right before the embryo transfer that ultimately resulted in the narrative engine of everything you’ve just read. This was the first return visit since the kid’s arrival, and he loved it as much as I’d hoped. Here he is on his second-ever kayak excursion—and my third one of the day, which is why I look so happy.