It was one of those mid-July nights that makes it seem like the whole summer is still ahead of you, even though deep down you know that summer is effectively over, since the best part of the season lies in the anticipation of it (and, also, in the abundance of stone fruits). All to say, it was a good night to eat outside.
It was while eating outside, at a long wooden picnic table in the fairy-light strewn backyard of a Brooklyn restaurant, that my friends and I saw the bug. We’d never seen anything like it before: Shaped like a triangle, its wings were stop-sign red and boasted a scattering of black spots; it was walking along the edge of the table on its hind legs.
“What is it?”
“It looks like it’s related to a ladybug.”
“I don’t like it!”
“I’m going to take a photo of it.”
That last comment was me. I thought that if I took a photo of it, then maybe I could figure out what it was. But, my phone is years and years old, and the camera doesn’t do so well in low light, so the photo I took made the bug indecipherable, a smear of sour cherry jam on the edge of the dark table. Before anyone else could take a better photo, the bug took flight, up into the trees.
“We should have killed it. It looked evil.”
“No! It was just a bug.”
Since there was no hope of determining what it was from my photo, I searched for the answer using the words “triangle red bug with black spots walks on hind legs.” As it turned out, we should have killed the bug. It was practically a moral imperative to do so.
It was not just a bug. What we’d seen was actually a spotted lanternfly, an invasive species that returned to New York City in droves this summer, but had not, on that warm July night, become ubiquitous just yet. The bug we saw was still in its nymph stage — that was the reason we hadn’t recognized it and hadn’t killed it. It’s likely, though, that the bug didn’t live too long. Within a couple weeks of our spotted lanternfly sighting, corpses of its fellow, fully grown lanternflies littered the streets of the city; it was not uncommon to see people rushing to the subway, pausing only to crush an errant lanternfly underfoot.
I have no sympathy for the lanternfly. Or not much. Not as much as the people who compare them to Pomeranians do, anyway. But what I do have sympathy for, I guess, is something that Lulu Miller explores in her profound, meditative book, Why Fish Don’t Exist, in which she acknowledges the fact that “once you name something, you tend to stop looking at it.”
Miller’s book is many things: It’s a biography of David Starr Jordan, a brilliant taxonomist whose single-minded desire to make sense of the natural world transformed science in a way that could perhaps be seen as noble if he weren’t also probably a murderer and definitely a eugenicist (the latter having, clearly, far graver and more widespread implications). Miller’s recounting of Jordan’s life — from his boyhood during the Civil War to his time in his lab at Stanford University, where he watched his life’s work shake and shudder off its shelves, as the great earthquake of 1906 scorned any attempts at order — is fascinating. It’s also a jumping off point to examine the myriad things that can go wrong when attempting to understand the mysteries of the world, and what we risk by trying to impose rules on ungovernable things — like love.
Miller first turned to Jordan after the traumatic end of a relationship. She wanted to find proof that her pain wasn’t for nothing, that things mattered, and that, through sheer determination and maybe even, like, grit, she could find a way through the fog of her hurt. And so, she found out about Kafka’s concept of the Indestructible, which is described as “the thing at the bottom of each individual that keeps going whether they feel like going or not.” (This isn’t, as you might have no problem guessing, good.) And so, she wondered if self-deception is a useful tool — if lying to ourselves is harmless and maybe even helpful. (Maybe, but probably not.) And so, she discovered that the question of whether or not fish exist isn’t really a question at all. (They don’t.)
But while this last revelation took Miller to the brink of existential despair — to the edge of Chaos — as she pondered the collapse of the hierarchy of our entire lives, she managed to find her way back, and to a place of acceptance, where she felt like she could embrace the sublime. And all she had to do to find “the other world that was within this one” was let go of fish.
I’m not saying, of course, that spotted lanternflies don’t exist. They do, and I’ll kill the next one I see. I promise. Still, some of the magic of that mid-July night was in the minutes when that little red bug was nameless, and my friends and I had nothing but our own observations of what it was to try and understand it, to really see it for what it was, not what Google told us it was. Miller ends her book with a warning to “stay wary of words,” to “mistrust measurements,” and to imagine a better way forward than via a ladder. Because, really, there are infinitely better ways.
But also…
“We see a large raft bearing a crowd of male figures at the mercy of heaving seas. Their poses suggest a classical frieze, like Elgin marbles from hell. It is a collective ash heap of individually vivisected souls stripped bare of humanity.” A provocative must-read by Jerry Saltz on contemporary political art, framed around the power of Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, a 19th century painting that was also a plot point in María Gainza’s excellent novel, Portrait of an Unknown Lady. (Vulture)
“Watch me close, watch me close now.” The opening scene of Topdog/Underdog, Suzan-Lori Parks’ brilliant play, is one of the most mesmerizing magic tricks in theatre. The current revival of this 2001 masterpiece is pure brilliance; actors Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II are unforgettable, and I was shaking at the end of it. If you’re in New York, do not miss this staging; weeks later, I still can’t stop thinking about it. (Topdog/Underdog at the Golden Theatre)
Speaking of ladders and the futility of order and progress — David Shaw’s Last Steps is on view at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT, and is an earthy, alien testament to the power that comes with deconstructing ideals and challenging our collective perception of reality. Walk around the sculpture a few times and just see if you don’t feel more than a little delirious with possibility. (The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum)
Squash! If you, like me, like squash, you will, like me, love this recipe for spicy marinated butternut squash (I’ve also made it using honeynut squash!) from Lukas Volger, whose latest cookbook, Snacks for Dinner, is full of everything that I want to make and eat all the time. (Lukas Volger)