Excerpt from “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” by Steve Martin:

Germaine: And what do you do at night?

Einstein: Ah, at night… At night, the stars come out.

Germaine: The stars in the sky?

Einstein: The stars in my head.

Germaine: And after the stars in your head come out?

Einstein: I write it down.

Freddy: Uh-huh. You been published?

Einstein: No. No, not yet.

Freddy: Yeah. Well, we’re all writers, aren’t we? He’s a write that hasn’t been published, and I’m a writer who hasn’t written anything.

Germaine: And you’re welcome here. We get a lot of artist types: Writers, poets, painters. What do you write about?

Einstein: I… I… I can’t even begin to explain.

Germaine: Try. Simplify it. Can you say what it’s about in one sentence?

Einstein: It’s about everything.

Germaine: You mean like, relationships between men and women?

Einstein: Bigger.

Germaine: You mean, like life from birth to death?

Einstein: Uh, bigger.

Germaine: Like the warring of nations and the movements of people?

Einstein: Bigger.

Germaine: I see, sort of like the Earth and its place in the solar system?

Einstein: Keep going.

Germaine (growing exasperated): Okay. You’re dealing with the universe and everything contained in it.

Einstein: Why stop there?

Germaine (giving up): Okay. Okay. How big is this book?

Einstein: About seventy pages.

Sloth and Manatee

Space seems like a nice follow-on to last week’s note about the Sky, perhaps?

Isn’t it funny that we call everything that’s beyond our own atmosphere, like ALL of that, just, “space?”

I find that funny. “Space.” You can just gesture with your arm toward the sky and say, “Space.” Like, yes, there seems to be a lot of room up there, I guess. Although large objects crashing into each other or burning up might not feel this way. But then, maybe they think of whatever is not-them as also, “Space.”

This Space thought also reminds me of the recent Space Boat letter about “Big Things.” Like, the notion of “headspace.” Do you have the headspace right now to think about space? If so, where is that located? If not, what is there instead? If you open up some headspace does stuff just fall into it?

It’s so interesting that we can experience an actual opening up of what feels like room, inside our own minds. Some people seem to enjoy this expansive feeling. Some people don’t like it at all, they feel un-moored and lost and start ruminating and getting all weird. Some of us do well in a crisis because it makes that space go away and points everything in one direction at least for a little while.

Also, we are so into location here on our planet, like places that are haunted or stuff happened or whatever, and we commemorate and put plaques and statues, but then, the whole thing is just hurtling through Space, so where is it, really?

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Things Of The Week

As mentioned above, generally we visualize our solar system as a bunch of objects circling around the sun like they are on discs - but it is a lot groovier and more chaotic when we think of all of that flying through space, the way it actually works

This is not really space but it is really cool: The Art of K-POP Demon Hunters is online in a free PDF, it’ll be available as a book soon.

I just find this hilarious. The Star Trek TNG theme but it’s being blasted from the Enterprise.

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you have the space you need, may you only drift around when you want to, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy