◑ eClips: Play
The moon is waning throughout this week, dwindling to its crescent form before it disappears from our sight. Supposedly, this phase is best viewed an hour or two before sunrise (cc: night owls and early risers), when the texture of its surface is easier to observe with a telescope or binoculars, because the craters and mountains cast long shadows. Let me know if you catch it.
It’s unseasonably hot for Seattle (like, in the 80s), except I’m not sure I’ve been here long enough to know what’s seasonable, or if consistent seasons are something we can count on anymore. Still, I’m happy for the sunshine. I’m eager to heal so I can go out and catch every ray of light these longer days have to offer.
While my sprain heals and I sit propped up in bed day after day to elevate my ankle, I’ve been fighting the urge to endlessly thumb through every social app I have, and scroll accordingly. My inclination when I’m stressed or in pain is to do the things that make me feel numb, instead of better. I tend to toss my self-care rituals out the window right when I need them most. “I’m way too stressed to relieve my stress!” So I almost doubled down on endlessly eating whatever my feeds served up over the past week — probably a nonstop reel of posts and videos that would feed my “I’m not good enough” and “I don’t have enough” demons.
To head this off and take care of myself, I logged out of Instagram and Twitter on my phone, but the apps are still there, and I still found myself reflexively opening them dozens of times per day, only to be blocked by the log-in screen. I’m not ready to delete my accounts completely, but I think this involuntary impulse is a strong case for doing so. The platforms are Pavlov and I’m the dog, conditioned to eat the virtual treats that track my every move and trap me in the belief that I can’t eat anywhere else. They’ve deeply rewired my appetite, or expectations — of my time, of myself — beyond conscious thought.
My sobriety has been an endless exploration of all the ways I’ve found to numb or run, and then trying substitutions that feel more nourishing. And substitutions for social media really just feel like — life. Like a return to the way I lived not so long ago, when I was more often willing to play and engage, to connect and create, not to scroll and consume, or arrange my life around how it’s perceived. I’m trying to get back to that, bit by bit, and mostly offline. But online, too — as a kid, when I’d take the time to dial-up, it was mostly to play weird games geared toward learning or creating. So, in place of all the scrolling I could’ve done this week, I’ve been substituting play — sometimes, with the following strange, interactive, sound-based web apps. I hope they bring out your playful side too. (Most of them work best on a desktop.)
◑ Revisualizer: A real-time meditative escape.
◑ Groove Pizza: A circular rhythm app for creative music making and learning.
◑ Sound Creatures: Drawings inspired by sounds.
◑ Patatap: A portable animation and sound kit.
◑ Typatone: A free online tool that converts text to tones.
◑ lofi.cafe: Lofi music streams for studying, working, and relaxing.
◑ Sober 21: A compendium of essays by, and interviews with, sober musicians.
Spotlight: Laura Brugger
Laura Brugger is a PhD student in public and social policy. She grew up in Nebraska, and lives in St. Louis, Missouri. [Laura and I met in high school after my family moved to Nebraska, and we became best friends fast; her strain of strange enhanced mine, and vice versa. She’s one of the great creative and comedic partnerships of my life; we constantly made funny things together. Her sister often filmed us in parody music videos that I’m grateful never saw the light of day on a platform where they could go viral.]
It’s springtime in St. Louis. How do you feel about spring?
I actually have had a renewed love of spring since moving to St. Louis. I kind of used to hate spring growing up in Nebraska, because it was always gross and muddy, and it made me think of growing up on the farm and having to come to school with muddy, wet jeans from doing chores. And I was like, this is the worst! This highlights my weird farm-kid essence! So I always hated it when people were like, “We love spring, it’s a time of renewal!” And I was like ew, no it’s not, it’s a time of my social ostracism. But moving to St. Louis, it actually took me a few years to realize that it wasn’t spring I hated, it was just Nebraska spring. It’s really lovely here, and St. Louis gets really hot and gross in the summertime. This year, we’ve had a lot of lovely spring days that are kind of chilly and nice, like you kind of need a sweater on the porch in the mornings, but it’s still really pleasant in the afternoons.
You can plant things pretty early here, so I planted all my spring plants and have gone on a lot of bike rides. Sleeping with the windows open … those are kind of my springtime vibes this year. It’s noisy because I’m right on a busy street, but I can kind of tune it out, because waking up to chilly morning air is just my favorite.
What animals and plants are you seeing this spring?
So, I live right across the street from a really nice park, and because of the pandemic, I’ve taken walks pretty much every single day after work through the park. It’s been my mental health saver. It’s really cool, because I’ve gotten to see, literally, the seasons change every day, in a way that I have not before. And now I’ve made it a full year, where I saw spring last year, and summer, and fall, and winter, and now back to spring again.
There are trees in Missouri called eastern redbud trees, and they get these brilliant purple-fuchsia buds on them, and they’re so lovely. They’re one of my favorites, and the leaves come from those purple buds, so as the leaves are blooming, it’s just these beautiful purple, green trees that I love. There are these pretty dogwood trees, they have white, fluffy flowers. And there are these bushes that have bright-yellow flowers. So the three of those things, the bright purple, the bright yellow, and the white dogwood trees, all of those create such a beautiful texture and variety of colors in the park, because they’re tall and bushy, and the yellow ones are short and squat.
I’ve got my hanging baskets that I fill up with petunias. Every year is a little different; last year, I was very much about symmetry, so I was like, alright, two of this color, and two of this color, and alternate. And this year, I’m like, no, I’m really embracing rainbows, so I just got one of each, and every one is a different color.
So I’ve got those, and I’ve got my little bed of native grasses. I love native grasses. If I had more time to commit to my garden, I would definitely have more. As it is, I’ve just got a little bitty flower bed.
Can you tell me more about why you love those native grasses?
Probably from growing up on the prairie. As you might remember from our childhood, I had that 500-page Native Grasses of the Midwestern Plains as my fun reading book, and I think that’s awesome. Like, what a weird little kid thing to do, but I still love it.
I love them, I think they’re so pretty. I don’t really have many flowers, because the rabbits — you want to talk about the animals that are dominating my season? It’s the goddamn rabbits! I love them, but they ruin everything that’s beautiful! So I’d have coneflowers, but they’d get eaten by the rabbits. So I’ve got fountain grasses, and I’ve got a couple of other random prairie grasses. And a whole pot of wildflowers that’s kind of like a smorgasbord.
Is there a particular plant you’re connecting with? Would one of the plants you just named be the one to come up?
I haven’t talked about her yet, but I’m so proud: I got my elephant ear plant to bloom from a bulb! I kept it from last year — so that’s, you know, the opposite of a native plant, it’s a tropical plant. But I got it on sale last summer, and I was like, these are usually 50 bucks, and it’s the middle of summer, and I don’t care if it’s probably going to die! But I kept it alive; I dug up the bulb, and kept it in a closet all winter, and planted it, and it’s thriving. And I’m super excited. So I’d like to say I’m connecting with that one, because I’m trying to channel this elephant ear to be like, yeah, this year sucked, but I’ll thrive at some point too.
Oh, absolutely! We’ve spent the whole year “in a closet”!
Exactly! But every time I come out here I’m like, don’t put too much stock into that, because if it dies, then that might be a little rough. Like, “Oh, wow, you really couldn’t cut it.” But I’m just super tickled that it’s doing so well, and I’m connecting with that one a lot.
My favorite of all time is an indoor plant. It’s a dieffenbachia from my mom [pictured at top]. It’s a cutting from her, and I’ve had it for years. I had it in college, and I moved it to St. Louis and through multiple different moves, and if it died, I would be devastated. It’s like 5 feet tall now, and my mom has the original, and each of my siblings and I have a cutting from it that we’ve grown, and I just think that’s super sweet.
It’s seen so much of your life!
I know! That’s so sweet to think about too. It’s right by my reading and journaling chair, so, you know, if that plant could talk, man!
I talk to it too. I actually feel like I love that plant. Whenever it puts up a new leaf, I pet it and I’m like, “You’re doing such a good job honey, go to work!”
I’ve read that plants really like that, that they’ll thrive if they’re talked to, genuinely!
I’ve heard that too, and that would make sense, because I do talk to this plant a lot, and I want to hug it sometimes, but then I’m like no, no, that’ll kill her. She likes her physical space.
Other than tending plants, do you have other rituals that mark this time of year for you?
My birthday is this time of year, so normally, I reevaluate and do a check-in with myself, and I didn’t do it this year. When my family was visiting, they asked, “Do you want to do the birthday questions?” Because that’s a thing that we do — I have a series of questions I like to ask on a birthday — but I was like, guys, don’t ask me these this year, I don’t want to reflect, OK! But normally, that’s a thing that I do, and this is a good reminder that I need to do that. That’s more my marking of time passing than the New Year.
I spend a ton of time outside right now, because it really is unpleasant once it gets a little later in the season in St. Louis. I’ll still do it, but it’s gross. I like to go on a lot of bike rides — that’s not really symbolic, but that’s a thing I’ve been doing, just spending a ton of time outside.
I do a traditional spring cleaning too, restoring the order, decluttering, making sure the things I have are not excessive or that they’re all necessary or things that I like. And try to cull things down.
This year, as we’re being vaccinated, it’s all kind of renewal. I’m seeing friends for the first time in a year, and kind of nervously making plans about going places. Normally, I go to Belize on a student trip in spring, and that’s such a nice way to mark the passing of time. It’s a good reset, a hard reset. But I have to find different ways to do that now. It’s harder to mark that passing of time.
What’s your relationship to the moon, or the stars?
I wish I had more opportunities to see them. I can’t ever see the moon or stars from my house. But I got to see a comet in August as it was passing by. That was the last cool star interaction I had, when I was camping. We just happened to see that this comet was going by, and that we could see it if we wanted. We looked with binoculars, and you could actually see the tail of it, which was crazy. I’ve never seen anything like that! It was super cool. That’s a thing I’ve missed, because I haven’t gone anywhere cool to look at stars, but when I do, I think that’s a fun thing to get lost in. Space, looking at stars, thinking you see them all but then you look a little bit further … it’s a nice way to wonder, especially after a year where there hasn’t been a whole lot of fun wondering. It’s been more like fearful wondering. So that’s a nice thing to reflect on, the unknown wonder that’s exciting, rather than the unknown wonder of living through a pandemic that’s terrifying.
Sometimes, you’ll send me pictures of yourself sitting by a campfire in your backyard. Do you still have that going?
Yeah! I love my little fire pit. I’ve worked really hard to craft an outdoor space because I hate being inside. I love just sitting around the fire and playing music. There were times, even in the morning, I would be mowing my lawn and be like, why not have a morning fire? Fires don’t have to be just for nighttime! So I’d start a little fire just to have while I was mowing the lawn. Something about that was very peaceful and comforting to me. I like the elements, you know. I’m like, give me fire, give me water, give me dirt!
I think, for real, those have saved my mental health this year. This was before the pandemic, but one of the first things I wanted to do for my house was to put in a little gas fireplace, because I get mad depressed in the wintertime, or can, at least. But I know there are things that can help alleviate that, like going out and being in the cold, even though it sucks. But also, fire! So, that outdoor fire pit, I’m like, OK, I’ll just go make a fire, that makes me feel good. And I’ve got my little indoor fireplace too. It’s a work in progress, I’m DIY-ing it, so it’s not finished, but I’m like, it makes the fire! And that’s comforting to me.
Is there anything else you’ve been thinking about that you want to share?
Talking about seasons, I feel like I’ve been a little bit of a Debbie Downer, but I felt a new level of anxiety with every season that passed this past year. I’d be like oh my god, now it’s summer and I’m still at home. Now it’s fall, and I’m still at home. And I was really, really worried about the winter. It was fine, it was much better than I thought it would be, but now it’s coming back on a year, and I just turned 32, and I’ve felt an anxiety about the passing of time that I note by the changing of seasons. One part of me really grieves the past year. Like, wow, what a lost year.
But I don’t really want to think about it like that. So, because it’s spring and the pandemic started last spring, I feel more that I’m just going to let it go and be like, yep, that was a year. Now, we’re reemerging with spring, we’re reemerging into the world, and it’s sad that the last year was really hard and painful, but I feel some peace about just accepting that the season and time have passed. And now it’s another spring. And that’s what I’m going to let it be. We lived through a pandemic, and that was hard, and of course time feels weird, and of course seasons passing feels weird, and I’m just going to embrace honoring those transitions in a new way, rather than feeling obligated or stressed that I’m not being as mindful as I was last year or in years past. I’m doing as good as I can right now. Hopefully that doesn’t sound too, like, wah-wah.
No, that’s just where people are at, and I really appreciate what you said, because I do think there’s this tendency right now to “make up for lost time” or to see this spring as a layer of two springs because we’re still in the pandemic, rather than it being its own spring that doesn’t have to make up for last spring.
Yes. [My sister] and I were just talking about how there’s a different comparison we’re feeling in our social circles. People are able to go back out into the world, people are doing things, but we’re like, we aren’t doing that, because we didn’t even see each other last year. Other people are like, we’ve been seeing our families, and now we’re going to go travel and shit! And we’re like, whoa, multiple steps behind that, we haven’t done anything. So it’s very glaring. I have to accept that where I am is different from other people right now. And the way that I’m going to make up for lost time is going to look a lot differently than other people this year.