February 2025

Dust Motes

Posted February 10, 2025 at 11:00pm

There's an extremely specific feeling I experience about once a month.

Sometimes, when driving around or just out in the world under the big, blue sky—I feel small. Suddenly and out of nowhere.

There’s something about seeing the endless expanse of blue of a cloudless sky, stretching out forever until it kisses the horizon that just makes me feel tiny. . It’ll hit me, and I’m suddenly aware of the scale of things. How the Earth is SO big that its curves are imperceivable to us on the ground. How we have to defy gravity to get a sense of that curve and the planet’s largeness. That there are millions of other people just beyond that imperceivable edge. How in the state I live in, it would take half a day to drive from its eastern side to the western side, and that already feels so big—and that somehow, the Earth is even bigger than that.

And beyond that blueness above us is the inky darkness of the rest of the universe, occasionally peppered by stars like our Sun and rocks like the one we’re standing on, also spinning and hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. How that space is, truly, space; so much of it doesn’t have anything in it. And it stretches on, as far as we know, for infinity. And infinity is already a hard concept to tackle. Our brains are built in a way that we struggle to visualize big numbers, like the multiple zeroes of a billionaire’s bank account. All of it, suddenly and simultaneously, makes me feel impossibly small.

I think if other folks also experienced this feeling about once a month, we’d probably be better off as a species. Astronauts probably know what I mean.

I am not a paragon of goodness. I’ve been selfish before; most people have. But that smallness makes me feel two things: the importance of kindness and empathy and thoughtfulness… as well as painfully aware about how much we do on a global scale doesn’t matter. We could be hit by a meteor, swallowed by an earthquake, flooded out, ice-aged—vaporized by aliens from outer space, I don’t know. Why would I want my ‘leaders’ to waste so much time and energy on “othering” people to hurt them, when what I really care about is my well-being, and the well-being of my neighbor? That she and her children are fed, and are free to laugh and play and grow. That he has somewhere safe and warm to sleep at night. That they (singular! and plural!) are free to be whoever they want to be. And then that their neighbors are also fed/safe/happy/free. Other critters don’t seem to struggle with altruism and get by just fine without the concept of an “economy” or whatever.

Ultimately, we’re little blips in time and on Earth’s surface. If we raze her to the ground, the dirt will still be there orbiting the sun (but, hopefully, other plants and animals will take over and take care of her better than we did). The world can be terrible, but often the worst part is how we treat the world. So that sense of smallness is always a reminder to me to just be good to people, and to fight for that goodness if need be.

Miscellaneous Stuff I Had Open While I Wrote:

✦ The Overview Effect (required reading, I think)
✦ Why big numbers break our brains
✦ Altruism (biology)
✦ Valley of the Drums

Cheers,
Chey

Cougar Huntin'

Posted February 3, 2025 at 11:00pm

I went to a curiosities expo in a city near me recently. My partner and I went for the first time several years ago (2021, I think?) and have been going every year since.

We usually wind up hauling home a ton of art and/or trinkets, but we really go hoping to find one thing…

A taxidermized mountain lion.

Discussion of taxidermy / some death below. Scroll ‘til you see the little bee+flower divider below to skip it and read about what I bought instead—nothing gruesome!

So, normally I’m a bit skeeved out by taxidermy. According to the expo, they take care to make sure their vendors are using only ethically sourced critters, which makes me feel a little better (even if I have a little smidgen of doubt that every vendor is being totally honest about their sourcing). In a way, it’s also kind of a weird, sentimental memento mori. These critters that would normally be forgotten to time, carefully preserved for someone to keep appreciating in their home, even if its in a weird way I don’t totally understand the appeal of. At the same time, I don’t know if I’d appreciate having my former body displayed after death? But then again, I’m not using it anymore, so… anyway, I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this.

On to the mountain lion.

Our first year at the expo, I hadn’t been out of college very long and was still struggling to be an adult on her own, paying taxes, making a budget, etc., etc. (read: not much money). But we turned a corner and there was the motherlode of mammalian specimens, stuffed and/or mounted. A giraffe, antelope, a skunk, lots of possums and squirrels—all of them an extravagant décor choice for a home, but somehow not as extravagant as the one on the very end.

So, we looked at this mountain lion from a distance. We chuckled to ourselves a little bit; “What kind of person would put a cougar in their house? Or an apartment even? Oh my God, imagine if guests come over and it’s just on your couch. If we bought a house, we’d keep it in the guest room… or move it into the guest room overnight to prank friends/family.” We walked up to it to get a better look… it wasn’t in perfect condition, but maybe it’s been around for a few years. We then look at the price tag. It’s $750 USD.

Obviously, $750 is a lot of money. It was definitely money we didn’t have. But, we were kind of stunned by the price. We kept saying to each other, doesn’t that sound like a reasonable price for a mountain lion? I mean, what’s the typical going price for a cougar? You’d think it’d be quite a bit more for a major North American apex predator… we left the expo, but we kept thinking about it on the way home. And a week later. And by the time the next expo rolled around.

Now, we’re relatively financial stable. We own a home, we keep a careful budget, and we can set aside a bit of funding for large, reasonable purchases like furniture. Or large, kind-of-stupid purchases like a literal mountain lion. So, with that earmarked, we keep going back to the expo on cougar patrol, in the hope we’ll find another $750 mountain lion. So far, no dice. Just a $1500 one a few years back (in better condition… but whew! double the price, absolutely not). But, it’s been a fun thing to be on the lookout for while we peruse art from the other vendors. I’m trying to convince my partner to let me make us ball caps that say Cougar Huntin’ on them for us to wear next year.

Speaking of, here’s some of the folks we bought from. I’ll try to link directly to the pieces we bought; I think they’re pretty cool!

✦ Annabelle Lewis. So many lovely pieces, but a mini print called "Stargazer" stopped me in my tracks. I'm excited to put it on my living room curio shelf!

✦ Bonespell. Etsy shop is currently on hiatus, but I bought a pretty print of moths! Home office, maybe? (Warning: Instagram link)

✦ Lauren Marx. My partner grabbed a few postcards; and I got this beautiful unicorn with strawberries print called "Sweet Abundance." Lots of places I could fit it; still undecided!

✦ Callie Barbas. I had choice paralysis at the expo, but I plan to grab something online soon! I need to limit myself, but I especially love the linocut prints; Moon Calendars, The Unicorn, Toad+Clover, and lots of the botanical prints.

✦ I also bought a small copy of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own because I want to get back into my childhood habit of absolutely voracious reading, and I’m concerned that its contents might be very pertinent in the US in the coming year.

Cheers,
Chey