to be so small

Marcel the Shell, wonder, and space being really big.

hello hello, my most lovely favorite,

it feels so good to be back writing to you. I’ve been wondering, when was the last time you felt curious? what’s the most recent thing that’s left you breathless?

the moon hangs like a drooping yellow pearl. it’s close enough, I could lean against the horizon and pull it around my neck. the night we leave the campsite—when a coyote howls just beyond my thin tent in the dark—we weigh our options, then pack up the car and leave. it’s midnight. the moon is so luminous, the tires skate more over its glow than they do gravel. we are so tired and belt songs we haven’t heard since 7th grade to stay awake. I trust that there’s a road out in front of us and keep my foot on the gas pedal—the moon never blinks. when I wake on the couch the next morning, unbitten and at home, safe and still dusted with soot and pine bark, I’m happy to fold this memory into the closest pocket I can keep it in. another story I can spread across the kitchen counter, replay in my mind, and point to when the days go gray—look here, do you remember how alive that felt? to be here in the world and not holed up in my thoughts; to exist so deeply in where we stood as to not miss a moment. 

I know I talk about awe and wonder a lot, but they strike me as some of the most essential sensations we can experience, right up there with the flutter of a first kiss or the slow, indulgent sink into a hot bath. and of course, I should mention a lot of this is running off of the bewitchment of (Queen) Jenny Slate’s Marcel the Shell With Shoes On movie, where I sat in amazement of how this feeling can be illustrated using (and being) so little. a couch cover collecting dust, stirred up in clouds to rest on the coffee table. an open window smattered with afternoon light, the orange tree lazing in the yard. the slippery, squeaky edges of a bathtub that hasn’t yet dried. I laugh in its silly, plain simplicity, but know it’s an important—a needed stillness—to be moved by these small details. I don’t want to miss a thing.

how well-timed, it seems, to watch this one-inch tall wonder go about the world, and be greeted the next day with some of NASA’s most mindboggling renderings of distant space; the rust-colored star clouds and sea anemone nebulas, our ever-spanning solar neighborhood. I read that even this massive slice of space is equivalent to peering at a speck of sand held at an arm’s length. I spent the day considering a moment in the movie, when Marcel sits atop a car’s dashboard while overlooking the city’s valley of houses and shops and busy streets. in maybe his first glimpse of the sprawling outside community he shares, teeny Marcel asks, in a stupor, “is this everyone?” and receives the reply, “no, this is just a small part of one city. there’s a lot more.” 

“oh,” Marcel notes with both wonder and maybe a soft sorrow, “I had no idea.”

some days, I’m the red shimmer of sun catching in a wave. some days, I’m the entire sea. when I went out to see the Grand Canyon, I felt like a dog sat in front of a mirror, knowing there must something to be understood here, but the space, the history, even the sheer beauty of it—my thoughts couldn’t wrap their arms around it. it’s the same here, gazing at the shine of a collapsing star, unable to point to the precious blue marble I live on in this bedazzled outer space blanket, but taking in its wonder just the same. a gigantic brain-tickler. our complex, stunning Earth, just a whisper; a phenomenal cosmic secret. there is a pull to question, how can any of this matter then? what’s the purpose of this life, when faced with all we can’t even see from our night sky? 

the breeze picks up again. I feel the July sun warm my face on a bike ride. all my socks still smell like campfire. half of describing what a raspberry tastes like involves me scrunching my nose. I am more than happy to have a life of finding these moments here. I want every pocket to be so stuffed with memories. it might mean everything, it might mean nothing, but my time will be spent spreading another story out on the kitchen counter, laughing with my friends, remembering how I could have driven right into the moon. remember how alive that felt?

with love,
schuyler (sky-ler)
venmo: schuylerpeck