THE GORILLA
Last week I was walking with one neighbor and came upon another neighbor, and these two neighbors did not know each other.
As I introduced them, I realized I was presenting a neuroscientist to a theoretical physicist.
My work is done here, ladies. Have fun taking over the world. If you need me, I’ll be chasing the groundhog out from under the porch and trying to get the sweet and sour sauce out of my cupholder.
While the two women exchanged pleasantries, my brain hurried off into the weeds, counting up all the neighbors it could think of by associated occupation: a neuroscientist, a firefighter, two physicists, a French chef, a pilot, two orchardists, two writers, five physicians… it’s not exactly a list you’d expect to pull from a lotto-ball machine.
Obviously, what people do for a living does not define them as much as where they fall on the issue of Cornish vs. Wisconsin cheddar. But it does tell you something, and what I felt like I was hearing was YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE UTTERLY FASCINATING WHY ARENT YOU TALKING TO THEM YOU ARE HALF WAY TO DEAD THEYRE NOT GOING TO STICK THEIR LIFE STORIES IN YOUR MAILBOX FOR YOU TO READ LATER WHILE YOU EAT PEANUT BUTTER OUT OF THE JAR IN THE DARK
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There’s a famous experiment about selective attention in which people are asked to watch a video of two teams passing basketballs and count how many times the players wearing white shirts pass the ball. During the video, a person in a gorilla suit walks through the middle of the game, pounds their chest, and meanders out of the frame on the other side.
**In the experiment, HALF of all people watching DO NOT SEE the gorilla.**
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Suddenly, at 42, it seems to me that nearly everything is completely fascinating. Captivating. Breathtaking. Mind-blowing. This isn’t good for getting places on time. (It does, however, jibe with my children, who would just as soon consider the finer points of stink-bug ambulation as eat, get dressed, or do anything else at all.)
Yesterday I was driving west-to-east on Route 79 into the town of Ithaca and completely lost my mind over the scenery. THE VIEW WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS VIEW AND HOW IS IT THAT WE GET TO LIVE HERE. I could have used some duct tape to get my jaw back up where it belonged (as it was, driving with my mandible on my knees was a bit tricky, and delayed me somewhat in my progress towards Wegmans, where I was to spend my life more appropriately searching for unsweetened soy milk).
It is EPIC, friends, the film in which we’re all clueless extras who have missed their entrances.
[Hot tip for runners: when you’ve hit the turnaround point of your rather-longer-than-is-comfy run, and nearly decided to walk it in because MEH, cue up the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack and JUST DANIEL DAY LEWIS YOUR WAY BACK TO YOUR CAR THROUGH THE DAPPLY WILD WOODS OF THIS CONTINENT BABY— but don’t forget to stretch your hip flexors before and after because Daniel is a bit faster than the stink-bug evaluation team.]
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Right now I’m teaching a college summer session of Intro to Creative Writing online. I just read the submissions in response to the first assignment, and already, after reading only one short story, every single student has identified, in their own way, that the crux of the matter is essentially surprise, or any species you prefer from the genus dislocation/disjunction.
If there isn’t something in the story that realigns us, that reorients us, that shifts our habitual perspective in some way, there can be no jolting return to the magic that is underneath, inside— that is— everything. Without a sudden “coming to,” there can be no unconcealing of the spectacular wonders of living.
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Gorillas are everywhere. The many absurdities, intricacies, and surprises, as well as the dumbfounding beauty and richness of the world, are parading in the trickiest place of all: plain sight.
While I’m watching the basketball game of my email, the gorillas of my children’s utterances are pounding their chests by my knee. (“It’s an angry seed. He’s wearing a ballet skirt,” says my daughter, as she chalks a new invention on the skate park pavement and I try to type something Very Important into my phone with my thumbs.)
I mean, who among us is not an Angry Seed in a Ballet Skirt? And if we took a moment to recognize this reality, to get slapped into technicolor appreciation of its charming absurdity, where might we then dance off to, supercharged by our refreshed consciousnesses? How high might we leap, in our chalk tutus, despite our grumpy visages?
Which neighbors might we speak with— urgently, hushed with awe over the muffin tin we’re returning, which is only a tiny bit more scratched up than before—as though that person’s story contained the electrifying everythingness of existence?
Perhaps we would speak, and listen, so patiently (like the slowest bug crawling into the sun-warmed swath of the boulder)— to all of them— each of them— now—
And that “now” could unfold, inside itself, into a sort of forever, perched on the happenstance of this brief, stupid, gorgeous morning, where children boycott dental hygiene, groundhogs sit up on their haunches to blaze with rebellious spirit, and whole hordes of gorillas run by.
But this time I catch the inky swirl of their fur retreating through the understory. This time I’m in hot pursuit.
A note to my readers: this part gives me a rash, but here we are: I am told that the more people who hit the “heart” button, the more people the algorithm demon will show my writing to. So if your pointer finger is feeling up to it, and this transmission didn’t leave your day any worse for the wear, go ahead and be a troublemaker, click the heart. And if you’re really a groundhog-level rebel, click “Subscribe now” or “Share.” And if you want to make me smile, leave a comment. Any comment. Thx. xx
"THE VIEW WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS VIEW AND HOW IS IT THAT WE GET TO LIVE HERE" -- I know the view you're talking about and I at least THINK about it a lot lately and my heart contorts a little every time now that I don't live there anymore and it's inaccessible to me. Why do many of these things you're talking about become more precious when they're in the past tense? I'm trying to be aware of this tendency I have to to love places, processes, even people in retrospect -- how can they be priceless right here right now? THANKS FOR TALKING ABOUT THIS!
THAT's the hitch! the catch! ...what sensitizes you so exquisitely to the gorillas running through this world's frame! You LIVE with TWO of them! Although I suspect that daily living is what could, and probably does also dull you to actually seeing the gorillas...unless on high alert for similar species you encounter, as if previously traumatized by gorillas...hmmm. It all seems so complicated...