The Social Life

I don't like disliking anyone. My first instinct upon meeting anyone is to find common ground. It's just an instinct. It’s not a realistic plan. Common ground is boring. So I lean in close and tell the person that they have lit a fire in my soul. This doesn’t always produce happy results. The person looks stunned and doesn’t know how to respond. But it’s a start. And neither of us have made mention of the weather. Conversation is important. It’s how the language revives itself. It’s an art requiring a minimum of two people. Conversations with myself go in circles. And I always know what I’m going to say in advance. Most people are shy and averse to conversation. Starting a conversation is like cracking a safe. Once you find the right combination the door opens. Sometimes the safe is empty. But sometimes you find rapport. Things flow. Words fly. Points are made. Ideas are floated. Delicacies disentangled. Opinions weighed. Insights expanded.

The opposite thing happens when I dislike someone. Meetings tend to be accidental. And awkward. The silence must be filled. This is what weather is for. The vagaries of weather are a convenient resource. Who thought it would rain this hard today. Isn’t the snow beautiful but treacherous. It’s cold but sunny. Isn’t the sun wonderful? You do know I hate your guts, right?

Why do I like some people and dislike others? I like warmth and spontaneity. A good sense of humor. A capacity for pessimism and wit. I like a cynical wit. People obsessed with always being positive are upsetting. They make me contract. Pull my head back into my shell. Why is this? I don’t trust positive people. It’s usually contrived. It’s not authentic. It’s a put on. It’s what society expects. The more toxic the society, the more it demands its citizens display a positive outlook. The pursuit of happiness becomes a tyranny. It’s easy to smile with a knife behind your back. Nobody has ever just been honest and said “I don’t like you.” How would I respond to that? I have no idea. It wouldn’t feel good. But there would be a funny relief. The weight of pretense removed like a cumbersome armor. I’d feel lighter. And more than a little excited. It’s exciting when someone I dislike dislikes me. I feel I’m doing a good job being myself. Representing whatever it is I’m in the business of representing. Whatever set of values. But if someone I like dislikes me, this is an unhappy situation, and one I don’t know how to negotiate. It's happened a few times. There’s really not much you can do. Extortion won’t work. Blackmail is out of the question. Sycophancy is off-putting. You just accept it. And talk about the weather.

Elevator Safari

9:14 p.m. January 1^st, 2023. Anana Kaye sings Dylan’s Señor (Tales of Yankee Power) on a YouTube video. Her voice is fresh and smooth, like an Orange Julius. Or the dawn air over Athens. The song is complex. It’s like an allegory of the old west. A man appears to be in thrall to a man – or spirit – named Señor, who is taking him somewhere. The man wonders where they’re going, dropping riddles and incongruities along the way, and does so in what seems like a drugged or hypnotic spell. That’s the song’s allure, its hypnotic power, and capture of the weirdly wild old west.

The word ‘safari’ used to ignite a lot of excitement in me as a kid. It meant cool shows on TV, Tarzan shouting, thumping his chest, swinging from vine to vine, elephants and giraffes and rhinoceros’s and big gorillas drilling holes into your soul. Those deep-set eyes made them seem so wise. The natives – the inhabitants of these fascinating regions - were treated abominably by the European colonialists, who were there to extract resources, which confused me, why were the original inhabitants being treated so shabbily? What had they done? I was intrigued with these people. As a kid, you don’t realize that what you’re seeing is most often through the lens of European and North American cultural biases. And yet, your instincts tell you something is off.

The man who inspired Edgar Rice Burroughs to write his novel about a man raised by apes in the African wilderness was William Charles Mildin, the 14^th Earl of Streatham. “I was only 11 when, in a boyish fit of anger and pique, I ran away from home and obtained a berth as cabin boy aboard the four-masted sailing vessel, Antilla, bound for African ports-of-call and the Cape of Good Hope,” writes Lord Mildin, who left behind 1,550 handwritten pages of memoirs.

Lord Mildin writes that the apes he fell in with and that accepted him into their group gave him nuts, grubs, and roots. He was starving, so he ate the castoffs, which made him sick. “I was terribly ill afterwards,” he writes, “and the apes appeared to understand this. Once ancient female hunched her way over to me and cradled me in her arms.”

He “gathered branches to make a crude treehouse.” He repaid the care and kindnesses his newfound ape family gave him (I’m guessing these apes were chimpanzees) by making fire and stealing weapons from a native settlement. “I found new and easy ways to root under logs for grubs and dig for roots with a sharp-tipped stick.” He also talks about dressing their wounds with cool moss or wet mud.

Lord Mildin eventually returned home to England where he reclaimed his fortune and title. He died in 1919.

‘Safari’ comes from the Arab word ‘safar,’ meaning journey, or migration.

A story on Le Journal de France 2 vingt heures – a French news show – runs a story on an enterprising young man who started a safari company in South Africa. He gets up early to take some tourists out in a large jeep-like vehicle. They park near a watering hole where a group of elephants are bathing and having fun. Their eyes fill with wonderment.

There are 150,000 muscles in the trunk of an elephant.

A photographer named John Lund has taken a series of photos of an elephant in an elevator, one of which was taken at the airport in Buenos Aires. Why? He doesn’t say.

You never know what to expect when you press an elevator button. You hear the whine and rumble of gears and two panels whoosh open and there you are, facing a street hoodlum from 18^th century Paris. You hesitate getting on. But there’s nothing to fear. The hoodlum is slowly spinning, as if in a trance. Not as if. He is in a trance. But it’s ok. Let it go. You don’t have to get on. Here comes another one. The panels open and there stands a hologram of The Rolling Stones as they appeared in 1965. Scruffy, insolent, and happy. This will be a fun elevator ride. But as soon as you get on and the panels close the elevator begins going down. You wanted to go up. You must not have been paying attention. The elevator arrives at its destination, July 12^th, 1962. London’s Marquee Club. This isn’t he button you pushed. Your appointment was on the 20^th floor. But what the hell. You decide to get off. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. And 61 years to find another elevator.