Curious Animals is Dead, But I'm Not
Bringing my Substack back and moving to a new address
My last post on Substack for “Curious Animals” is from a year ago, and it said that I’d keep writing no matter what. Oops. “Curious Animals” died from neglect. My co-writer Ashley Briggs moved onto other things, and Margaret the Pug died. Anna and I have a new dog, and I have a new Substack — “Essays” — with a new focus — me.
I’m a giant Montaigne fan boy. I won’t bore you with who he was, but he wrote this to introduce his great work “Essays.”
“Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject. So farewell.”
I love how ballsy that is. He’s daring the reader to stop reading. Well, I am the matter of my Substack, and I’m pretty vain, too. I want to do this to have a conversation with myself. I’m intentionally not writing for any audience besides myself, but you’re welcome to listen in.
I’m really not writing at all, or I don’t want to. I want to have a conversation. Good conversation is rare, good writing is everywhere, though the majority of writing is too sure of itself for me.
“Only fools are certain.” Montaigne
I want to live my life in uncertainty. Doubt is my north star.
Good conversation is holy. Besides not writing for an audience, another rule I aspire to follow is that everything I write makes as much sense to atheists as believers. I want to be both a passionate believer and a passionate atheist at the same time. No other way makes sense to me. I don’t want to pick a side, or I’d miss half of the truth. I want to be in the middle, pulled in both directions at once. That’s more comfortable than choosing a side for me.
When I say God, I mean the same thing an atheist means when he says nature, or reality, or the universe—something that is, that keeps being, that makes and unmakes, that’s always changing but ever the same. Or less poetically, just “nature.”
So why is conversation holy, and what does holy mean to an atheist? For me, holy means things that don’t change. Every conversation is different, and yet always the same. Conversation is creative. It connects and builds, and it tears down and leaves things unfinished. It makes new things from constituent parts, and it rips firm structures to pieces. Sounds like God/nature to me.
There is me, there are my thoughts, and together they make a third thing, these flickering pixels. Conversation disappears. I say something, and it’s gone, forgotten. Conversation has no definite beginning or ending. Is this essay the beginning of a conversation? Or is it the continuation of one that began long ago? My vote is for the second one. Sounds like God/nature to me, too.
Conversation has little structure. Cause and effect are nearly undetectable in it. I have no idea why I said what I said after I listened to you — it just popped in my mouth. My pops and your pops make something neither of us makes alone. I can speak with myself, but it’s never the same as speaking with someone else.
But how is talking to yourself holy, since I’m talking to myself now? I am a mystery to myself. Everyone else is a mystery, too. I understand no one, including myself. Mystery sounds like God/nature, too.
The speed of light never changes. I’m an English major. I understand science poetically, which is to say incorrectly. The speed of light probably does change somewhere, but I understand it as a constant, never changing thing.I could look this up—and yes, light is slower in water than in air—but that would interrupt my thought.
I believe there is such a thing as truth. Things that never change are the truth. The speed of light is truth. It’s not relative to other things. The sides of a right triangle always have the same proportionate lengths. It’s not “it depends.” Context is important, but some things are true, others are not. Some things are good, others are not. There are absolutes. Things that don’t change are holy. So that’s my depiction of holy for atheists - things that don’t change. The speed of light. The Pythagorean Therom. You can see I’m not much a salesperson for atheism.
I am a mystery; I’m always the same, and I’m always changing. Seeking to understand mystery, to make it plain and understandable is a holy pursuit. And that’s why conversation is holy. A conversation with myself is a prayer. What’s prayer for atheists? Talking to yourself.
I’m writing about 700 words a day. It takes about 30 minutes. If I like something I’ll put it here.
Gertrude Stein says she wrote 30 minutes a day and never revised. Did she write slowly or all in a rush? Montaigne had to write by hand with a quill pen. How fast could he scribble? I think he wrote slowly, but he didn’t revise much either, though he definitely did revisions - additions and deletions. I wish I could write with my eyes closed. There’s so much poison in my mind. Is it better to write quickly in a rush? Slowly and thoughtfully? Or fast and fearless?
What’s me, and what are my influences? Or am I my influences? Maybe I haven’t done much writing because I’ve nothing to say. Why did I stop? I got out of the habit. Travel. Laziness. Avoidance. Baseball. All the things I thought I’d rather do. Misprioritization. What’s most important? What’s the most important work I can do?
I hate advice. Advice is mostly theoretical. If something has worked in my life, it’s no guarantee it will work in someone else’s. My advice might be fiction. My memory isn’t reliable. Maybe the advice I’m giving is just something I thought I did with an outcome that didn’t happen, but I remember it anyway? Advice assumes too much. When I advise, I assume it’s wanted and helpful, and it may be neither.
Advice is rude. Advice doesn’t consider the other. Advice is a statement of power, an affirmation of the adviser to himself. “If you do this thing, I will be happier.” That’s advice. Or “The action I’m telling you to take will produce your desired outcome. I know because I have the power of knowing all desired outcomes, for my life and yours.” That assumes far too much, too much to be kind.
I have thoughts without any idea what thought is to follow. And then there’s another thought that might not be related to the first thought that leads to another and this third thought is at least two steps removed from the first. I might have made a straight line or I might have gone from Jupiter to Mars, or from Mars to laundry. Conversation does the same thing.
I can make a misstep in reasoning and still get to a better destination. Suppose I see a path across a stream - six rocks, and I reach the other side, dry. One of the rocks is actually a turtle. I step on one the turtle, but it’s as good as a rock for me. When I pick my foot up it moves. I got to the other side and didn’t get wet, but no one can follow my path because the turtle moved. Mistaken reasoning is like my path across the stream. I make mistakes, lean on falsehoods and wrong assumptions as part of my argument, but the argument can still get me to my desired place anyway. Think of religion that way, you atheists. It’s all lies to you, but it works for others. And think of atheism that way, too, you believers.
No one can follow me because I was mistaken. The rock was a turtle. The replication crisis. “You can get the same results in your experiment we got in ours if you make the same mistakes we made. “
I don’t understand what I wrote, but I’m going to leave it because I like it.
“The worst person to ask what something means is the person who wrote it.” — Plato