“There is a queftion in natural hiftory that has, in efpecial
manner, folicited from me thefe obfervations. I mean the
queftion concerning the fafcinating faculty, which has been
afcribed to different kinds of American ferpents. It is my
intention to examine this queftion, in the memoir which I now
prefent to the Philofophical Society”
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–Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, & the Arts (1804)
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People fascinate me. It seems to me that the most ordinary-seeming person, if pressed (and if they were being honest) would soon reveal themselves to be composed of thousands of odd little stories, and despite the fact the each of these stories has its own idiosyncratic shape, at once elbowy and intestinal, they are all interwoven and fitted so seemlessly as to construct the singular one we see standing before us. People are like Dr. Who’s “Tardis”: bigger on the inside than the outside.
Cats fascinate me. If a human were a very complex sort of soup, a cat would be a spoonful of that soup. Everything in that spoon contains a little bit of what’s in the pot. One generally does not drink soup straight out of the pot—one consumes it a spoonful of time (I’m not suggesting you eat your cat—this is a metaphor, okay?) Why? I guess you could say soup by the spoonful is a little less “in your face” than by the potful. So I can look at (and get to know) a cat, and feel like I’ve had a taste of the near-infinite complexity of what humanity is made of.
Since I call myself a novelist, you may find it strange that novels don’t fascinate me. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve read novels that interested me, that awed me, that inspired me, that changed my life. But I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel that fascinated me—it’s a different sort of engagement. For me, reading a great novel is like watching a trainwreck in slow motion—truly, I can’t look away—but I’m too immersed in it to engage with it intellectually in the way that defines “fascination” for me.
On the other hand, short stories (good ones) do fascinate me. A great short story (Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Feathertop” or “The Black Veil”, Guy de Maupassant’s “Butterball”, Isak Dinesen’s “Babette’s Feast” (or just about any of the stories in 7 Gothic Tales) to name just a few). To read a great short story is to see the world in a grain of sand. Yet another “Tardis” of sorts. I guess it’s the oddly pleasurable necessity of pulling so much out of myself to fill in the blanks that makes reading a great short story such a different experience than reading a great novel.
My fascination with stories isn’t limited to those that are written down. Stories people tell me fascinate me. People probably wouldn’t tell me their stories, if they had any idea how much I read into them.
Dreams fascinate me. Analyzing a dream is like planting and watering a strange, gem-like seed that inevitably blooms into an even stranger flower. I’ve had dreams I’ve thought about for nearly my whole life. When I was little (5? 6?), I dreamt I was attacked by a skeleton wearing army boots. My father saved me by tying the skeleton’s shoelaces together. That image of my father—so deft and fearless—has stayed with me my whole life. No question it is an image that is infinitely bigger on the inside than the outside.
Love fascinates me. If anything is bigger on the inside than the outside, it’s love.
Hate doesn’t fascinate me. If anything is smaller on the inside than it is on the outside it’s hate. Hate is nearly the ultimate simplifier. I say nearly, because I suppose the prize would have to go to the black hole—a thing that pulls everything in and squeezes it down to a “nothing” that, somehow, makes the black hole ever more powerful. Now that I think about it, maybe hate is even better at that.
Gosh, I feel like I’m done, but I don’t want to end on that note. What else fascinates me? There’s gotta be one more thing. I don’t know—Sumo wrestling, maybe.
Then Come, in Order of Decreasing Frequency
Then come, in order of decreasing frequency
The beating of the pulse,
The chirping of crickets or cicadas,
The rustling of leaves,
The crackling noises of the telephone,
The measured tread of a troop of soldiers, and
Various strange noises, which patients have likened to
The meeting of railway trains under a roof on which
Heavy rain was falling,
The rumbling of a receding cart,
The shuffling of a pack of cards,
And the rolling of thunder.
–Adapted from an article about tinnitus in the Scientific American magazine
Volume 104 (March 25, 1911)
The Garden of Eaton 