Just Motes: That butt! That snail! That crawling child!!!

Dear Reader,

This Sunday, we bought our own Christmas tree, something I’d never done before. With a three-year-old in the house, it seemed like the thing to do. We drove the tree home on the top of our car. Then I hauled the big, fragrant creature up two flights of stairs and into the apartment.

Once I got the tree to its appropriate spot—right where the kid usually parks his trike—I was surprised by how alive it seemed. It loomed there on its stand, big as a person: a real live tree, stripped of its context. The noble fir smell was all around me, heavy and piney and wet. The all-around-you smell, hanging there like a big wet dog smell, made me feel claustrophobic. I needed to get some air. I wondered if I would get a headache. I wondered if I would have scary dreams.

That night, after the kid went to bed, I strung the tree with five strands of white lights. On Tuesday after dinner the three of us festooned the tree with garlands and ornaments. Dressing it up like this seemed to make it less ominous. We were domesticating our noble fir interloper.

Rebecca Curtis, in my favorite short story, describes Christmas as “an obnoxious holiday when millions of people decapitate pine trees and watch them slowly die in their living rooms.” Now that I have my own decapitated tree, I think I understand the holiday a little better. We bring the tree into the house in part to feel close to both death and nature. And then we dress the tree to make it feel more at home—and to make its otherness feel safer.

Late at night, after turning the mini-lights off, if you sit near the tree in deep quiet, you can almost hear the deep, thrumming vibrations of older, more pagan traditions.

However you mark the season and the solstice, I hope you’re doing well this week. Thank you as always for reading.

– Jasper

To whoever designed this institutional thermometer’s legend, I tip my cap. That butt! That snail! That crawling child!!!

To whoever designed the automated zooming in and out feature on certain Apple videoconferencing products, I do whatever the opposite of tipping one’s cap is. I thumb my nose!

Recently, several of my colleagues have been plagued by this deeply unserious feature, and so far they can’t figure out how to turn off. Now their little window on our Zoom meetings features a deranged cameraman who does things like zoom in for a tight shot right as they blow their nose, then zoom back out. The unsteady, by turns tentative and overactive camerawork has the energy of a teenager holding a camcorder, or a mockumentary (think The Office or Telemarketers). What maniac in Apple corporate thought it was a good idea to turn this feature on (with no easily found off switch!) on millions of work computers!?

PSA: Did you know that with those spam texts that end by saying “text ‘stop’ to end,” you really can just text “stop” back, and they will never text you again? I don’t know, maybe other folks aren’t as suspicious as me, but for years I resisted this because I thought, If I text back then they’ll just know that this is a real number. They’ll spam me MORE! But no, in my experience you really do just send “stop” back and it stops.

Less useful tip but more pleasureable: you can turn Apple Maps on your phone into a fidget spinner just by engaging streetview and looking straight up. (Sadly, Google Maps doesn’t let you whip around nearly as fast.)

Last week I watched the first episode of Heated Rivalry, the sex-forward show about two professional hockey stars who get physical. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for me—too much action, not enough actin’.

Last week I happened also to finish reading a different piece of art about two young men who get physical: the novel Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman. This is the one. I think it might be the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen or read. It has it all: a narrator obsessed with the semantics of small talk; longing; treatment of time in a way reminiscent of Bergson’s idea of la durée; hunger; edging; intellectuals; bodies; repression; the march of generations; Rome; the ’80s; music; swimming.

I loved the 2017 film adaptation (which launched Timothée Chalamet’s career). I suspected I would like the book. But I didn’t know it would be this good.

If you liked the movie but haven’t read the book, what are you waiting for? If you’ve seen neither the movie nor the book, correct your error swiftly! And consider starting with the original: the book!

I’ve been reading the pamphlet, Radical Witchcraft: Oppression and Resistance, which I picked up a few years ago at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall. Lots of good stuff, including this Hitler pincushion:

According to the booklet,

Somehow I had never heard about this half-silly, half-serious act of antifascist magic in the Oval Office. Tuck it away in the “Magic and Resistance” file.

More melt report, courtesy of Leo:

The kid saw this and said, “He’s wearing a dress!”

I’m so glad to have you as a reader. If you’ve enjoyed this email, have you considered forwarding it to a friend?