In the shadow-drenched darkness before dawn, every shape I see is a person. Trash cans, trees, mailboxes—all are momentarily and hauntingly human from the corner of my struggling eyes. The effect is unsettling and disconcerting: it is as though someone is always lurking and watching just beyond my range of vision.
Once dawn arrives, though, actual humans populate the world. In the illuminated, freshly glowing world capped by alluring swirls of orangish purple sky, everything I see before me ceases to be a human.
Instead I see snails.
Gluing my eyes to the ground with what lies in front of me no longer a looming menace, my weakened eyes note scattered bark, kicked up rocks, crusty leaves, and clods of dirt on the ground ahead. As I approach, though, I relearn that those inert objects are rarities at this hour. This is the time of the snail when they, like me a few hours earlier, emerge into the world.
This emergence, from the lumbering lillies and patchy, web-strewn shrubs that run alongside the asphalt, is a sight to behold. Along a two-mile stretch there are hundreds of snails, their sizes varying from the length of my index finger to barely the newly cut nail on it. Some sport a rich charcoal gray skin, others a lighter taupe tone, while still others—mostly the smallest—are nearly translucent, gray but in essence alone. Their shells are uniformly brown with a slightly deeper shade tracing their distinctive spiral, but every few flash a brittle white spot that I presume to be a marker of age. These are ever-cycling generations of snails.
And all of them bid with their lives each morning at this hour. Hidden in the generous shadows of greenery beforehand, they are collectively safe: I see nary a shell when I pass on my final walk before lunch. But beginning their perpendicular journeys in the first crisp fingers of sunlight, they hazard everything to cross ten feet of asphalt to equally green pastures.
Danger lurks all around them. The most obvious threat comes from above: the birds. A bird would need to work to reach a snail at dusk; by morning, though, the snails are easy pickings, doughnuts laid out on a table for ease of access. The trail is a brutal buffet line for the winged ones.
Evidence of a bird attack is obvious when I encounter the crime scene: an intact shell left bare. This haunting image turns my stomach even before I stumble upon one: the cruel cawing cries of the crows as I cut through my neighborhood slice through my music and announce the Reaper’s arrival. Their feather-coated menace reaps with brutal efficiency.
For all the concern about birds, though, a far greater threat to this snail community is not avian in nature but human. Although the trails are empty of actual people when I run them before 5:00am, even an hour later everything has changed. Walkers, bikers, joggers, couples, even whole families—all flood the trails simultaneously with the snails. Their large feet pose a grave threat with every shaking step; to avoid them in their multitude is to move like a clumsy tap dancer in slow motion. This is to say: many snails perish under the Reeboks of humans listening to podcasts.
I, on the other hand, ensure my green Nikes spill no snail blood. While my later walk will allow me to stare meditatively into the sky and force smiles for those who pass me, at the snail’s hour, my eyes’ devoted purpose is to ensure I do no harm. With iffy vision that has seemingly degraded over this past year, protecting these snails demands intense focus. Balancing vigilance between my current step and the ones that will follow while also maintaining a vigorous aerobic pace is a challenge but one I relish.
At times, I wonder if the snails panic at my approach. My labor in avoiding them is precise and intentional; instead of meditating on the human world, I embrace the snails’. Under cover of night, I can imagine the trails and streets and neighborhoods as mine but, when the dew glistens as the sun rejoins us, I know that I am a visitor in their community, tiptoeing through their ritual. Nothing is more important to me than being a gracious guest.
Even with a limited understanding of snail cognition, I am confident they don’t distinguish me from those whose personal health is prized above theirs. This stings a bit: that I see snails in every crumpled receipt and spiky seed now makes me feel like a member. But I am not. I am reminded in these vaguely bitter moments that I might well be a god to their tiny snail eyes, capable of smiting their entire community with ten minutes of purposeful cruelty. With such a great power differential, how could they ever truly accept me as more than a monstrous potential threat?
But such thoughts are always fleeting: I want nothing to do with hurting even one of the snails. In fact, that musing on violence is perpetually paired with its counterpoint: with twenty minutes’ effort and a pair of gloves, I could move every snail out of imminent danger. Malevolence be damned; benevolence becomes a virtue for near-equivalent effort. Especially when the shadow of flapping winds momentarily crosses my field of vision and encompasses one of the mollusks in front of me, I find myself subtly limbering up my back and feeling for paper towels in my pocket.
Actively doing no harm is different than intervening in their affairs, though, so I never reach down. I choose not to interrupt their snail lifestyle because what truly endears me the most to them is how they configure their lives. Each morning they submit their lives as collateral to undertake a twelve foot trek at their hazard-inviting crawl of a pace. When they reach that other side, they prepare to return to the other side by evening before, hours later, mounting an identical charge.
The snails, you see, live in a loop just like I do. They move back and forth, forth and back, over and over again. Their existence, their entire community’s, is crossing those ten feet of asphalt. No creature better understands that life is the journey, not the destination, better than the snail who risks everything everyday to follow the same path and leave the same shimmering trail behind to mark it every single day.
There’s a courage in that, a determination to continue a harrowing cycle of risk, survival, and rebirth even without some grand ultimate destination to compel them forward. The snails don’t—can’t—move quickly but they also don’t stop. I imagine the snails lining up along the gravel’s edge, nodding rhythmically to begin their ritual and murmuring a short prayer as they look out upon a familiar terrain but a terrain which has gruesomely stolen so many before them. Do the little snails cling to their parents’ shells, begging them not to go, crying for them to just remain for one day on the side and not leverage their very being on traveling the same route they traveled before? If they do, the parents do not listen and they do not wait, their staggered exits and zagging paths passed down from earlier generations. The parents know: this perilous journey across the blackness and alongside the evil sky birds and the apathetic giants is to be snail. There are no snail words to convey that, just firm and methodical actions. There is no better way to impart lessons on the axiomatic truth of being a snail than committing and traversing and the rinsing and repeating. The infant snails will learn not to fear: the objects of destruction looming before them are too large, too powerful to worry over, their omnipotence unfathomable to a snail moving mere feet over an hours’ time. The snails don’t tear themselves apart over those gods’ maneuverings; emotional immolation makes no difference to the giants or the birds. The snails just inch forward, incrementally and excruciatingly slow, because resolution is the one true way to snail: onward and backward, in a glorious, demented embrace of existence.
I see evidence of their successes and their failures every day. Some trails refract sunlight all the way to the other side of the path; others simply end in apparent rapture or leave behind the gore of a ruptured shell and razed body. At these moments, I used to hope that they carried no awareness of mortality, that these were thoughtless creatures incapable of feeling anything. But I prefer to imagine them doggedly pushing forward, fully awake to their corporeal limitations, but undaunted in their pursuit of a circular journey to nowhere not unlike my own. This freshly connects us again and feeds my insistence on preserving their generations’ ability to cultivate the same bravery and willingness to embrace the danger posed by my people and undertake it all the same every morning like clockwork.
I wish I could make them understand my admiration. Even if those words were a comforting lie, wouldn’t their resolve grow stronger? Or would knowing at least one of the giants was looking out for them steal away their agency, their ability to choose to journey and choose to believe, robbing them of what their community has built? To be told “Your journey is meaningful” could radically transform what it is to be a snail.
I realize my selfishness in wishing to communicate. My role in their community, announced with the thudding vibrations of imminent death, is a passive one. My respect for them is far too great to interfere. That longing desire to let them know I care about them and admire how they live is my cross to bear. All I can do is be a gracious guest in their community and carefully place my every step so as not to actively destroy in the way I am capable of. Destruction will happen, death will happen, and doubt will surely happen when it does. But they will continue along their short perpendicular path and I along mine, eager to avoid treading on them again tomorrow even if they never acknowledge me.
The birds flee as I in all my monstrosity approach. The winged ones jet off before I’m within fifteen feet of them. But the snails do not even look up, plugging forward without hesitation. I know there is no ultimate destination for them to reach and that their defining journey can end in a thousand vicious brutalities for any number of pointless, unfair reasons. And yet the snails crawl on, centimeter by courageous centimeter.
How could I not love them for that?
I tread lightly for thee. I tread lightly for thee.
Content Consumption
TELEVISION
Only Murders in the Building (2021)
Although I typically limit myself to reviewing TV shows that have entirely finished, Only Murders in the Building completes an entire arc in its first season and feels worthy of a few words. As someone raised on TV detective shows—I swear I was watching Murder She Wrote alongside Sesame Street and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood—this Hulu original felt like a plucky throwback to the genre that simultaneously embraced more modern storytelling. Light and breezy but always compelling and surprisingly touching, I found myself excited for the next episode each time. // Charles (Steve Martin) is the prickly former-lead actor from a detective show. Oliver (Martin Short) is a divorced theatre director with a resume full of misses. Mabel (Selena Gomez) is an aloof twenty-something renovating her aunt’s apartment. Brought together by a shared love of true crime podcasts during an evacuation from the apartment complex they all live in, the three end up investigating a real crime of their own when an ornery neighbor dies. But their investigation is twist-filled and treacherous—and the source material for a true crime podcast they release throughout the investigation, further complicating the mystery. // With a long history of work together, Martin and Short have a great odd couple chemistry but Gomez somehow fits in perfectly as well: she is right there with them but, as the generation divide suggests, also somewhat separate in ways that suit the story. As the cast expands—Amy Ryan, Aaron Dominguez, Nathan Lane, and Tina Fey have recurring roles, among many others—the core trio remains at the center, even as we learn more and more about each. Although the focus here is solving a murder, the sense of community generated by Martin, Short, and Gomez really offered a sweetness that elevates the program. The show never loses sight of the murders (yes plural) but it smartly leans into these characters’ friendship to bring levity to what could have been a dark story. // If I had to criticize something, I might point to uneven pacing. I was enthralled with every episode but, as the season approaches its conclusion, a few episodes follow gimmicks as they explore other characters’ points of view; these episodes work but they do pump the brakes while the story is supposed to be accelerating which leaves them feeling more like interruptions than extensions. Likewise there were subplots and mini-arcs that didn’t pay-off as richly as others but, for a ten-episode show with half-hour episodes, this was packed dense with mostly fleshed-out characters and a compelling mystery so I have trouble faulting them. // As a whole, Only Murders in the Building was a super refreshing watch. It had enough Steve Martin slapstick and Martin Short zaniness, that wonderful soul of unlikely friendship and community, a rich and well-realized world, and a mystery that unfolds and complexities beautiful across the season. This is a doggedly cheerful murder mystery that wields a wide spectrum of emotions: during a scene in the finale, I was crying but laughing so hard I had to rewind to make sure I hadn’t missed an important detail. For some viewers, maybe it gets too glib or a touch syrupy—Dan Fogelman of This Is Us is an Executive Producer here—but these were not bugs but features for me. // There will obviously be a second season and, while I might worry about the schtick here losing something by stretching things out too far, I’m mostly just excited that I will get to spend a few more hours with Charles, Oliver, and Mabel.
Under the Banner of Heaven (2022)
I should know better by now that murder miniseries are a miserable, addictive Vice for me. Craving a good and complete story, I am drawn to these like mosquitos to porch lights. I can’t resist. Mare of Easttown. True Detective. Sharp Objects. Big Little Lies. I wish I could quit em instead of greedily watching em and then feeling the gut punch of their strongest beats long after the final credits told. Under the Banner of Heaven is absolutely a member of the genre and was an utterly brutal watch at times. That it was also well-acted and offered deep meditation on faith, family, and community certainly cuts again that but there emotional punch this packs is a whopper and I would have loved to stay away across the just-ended week in which I watched all seven episodes. // Jeb (Andrew Garfield) is called to investigate the double-homicide of a young Mormon mother and her infant daughter. A devout LDS man himself, Jeb must investigate the gruesome crime with his partner Bill (Gil Birmingham), a non-believer from Nevada, even as the crimes stirs up surprising opposition from his church amid a run of strange behavior by the Lafferty brothers (Sam Worthington, Wyatt Russell, Rory Culkin, and Billy Howle among them) the victim married into. // In many ways, Under the Banner of Heaven is precisely what you’d expect: an investigation of a murder with twists and turns galore, surprising suspects, and a bigger issue at its core. All of this is standard genre fare and all of it is well-executed. But this particular iteration of that formula is elevated by the issue everything builds around: religion and the way in which bad actors leverage it for their own gains. Over and over we see religion invoked to justify immoral behavior—cover-ups, inequity, selfishness, even outright murder—and thus, as Jeb gets deeper into the case, we watch him grapple with his own faith in real time, the case becoming jumbled with his own life and stories of the founding of Utah. A lesser production delivers this message bluntly but this one weaves that crisis of faith through everything present such that Jeb’s struggle carries a menacing urgency too. Garfield certainly contributes to the execution but the script and editors deserve credit as well for layering the three stories together so artfully. // Now, with all that said, this is also just a lot to watch. The haunting scene of the crime is stomach-turning to the very last episode and, making matters worse, the victims remain front and center throughout the series via flashbacks, transforming the brutality from a gruesome image into a heartbreaking one. Likewise, there are infuriating moments across the investigation that had me growling with frustration or yelling at an obstructionist character on-screen. Kudos for evoking emotion, I guess, but I could’ve watched something lighter. Still, Under the Banner of Heaven is compulsively watchable in spite of (or perhaps because of?) all this so I wrote this so people know they are getting themselves into a good watch but a heavy and pretty damn bleak one.
This is how DALLE-mini interpreted my writing prompt of this week. I’ve signed up for access to DALLE-2—the vastly enhanced version—in hopes of adding some trippy artwork so I don’t have to beg Michelle for impossibly great on ridiculously short notice artwork. I’m including it so you can see what an upgrade her abilities brought to this.
Every week of this newsletter is not a winner, but I really liked this one. It was cool to write to a prompt I set for myself and then find myself in an unexpected place.
And why am I not drawing something myself? There’s my lack of skill, of course, but mostly because of Sweet Appeal revisions (IT’S CLOSE) and now AP grading. Oh! And making this:
My piping skills are so awful that I somehow couldn’t stick the landing and its a mess. BUT: the cake and buttercream are, respectively, the best I’ve ever tasted.