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| They should have Feynman posters in teenagers' bedrooms. |
It seems that Finland has overtaken Denmark as the happiest country on earth. Many of you may have heard of the Danish word Hygge, which translates (approximately) to 'cozy'- it is the word one uses when describing staying in, lighting candles, and drinking wine on a snowy evening. I am not sure how happiness is measured, but Finland seems to have a lot of it. This appears to be due to their version of Hygge- or Kalsarikänni, which means "pants drunk." It is the moment when a man comes home, takes off any constricting clothing; and drinks beer in front of the television. A little less refined than the Danes perhaps; and more like the American version, "The Corona Shuffle".
Shelter at place week 4 and I have somehow gone down this rabbit hole of binge watching The Office. I won't tell you about the extent of my obsession, because you won't look at me the same way after. But let me assure anyone else out there struggling with a dirty, Covid created addiction, that she is not alone. And if that addiction should also be The Office re runs, may I share that there is also a podcast in which the person who plays Pam and the person who plays Angela (they are best friends in real life !!!) break down each and every episode. It gets so granular that they refer to things in terms of the exact time it happened: "At four minutes and two seconds we see Dwight's desk, and that photograph is of his actual niece." I am telling you, it is not at all normal what I am doing. New levels of weird, people. New levels.
In other news, we have returned the vacuum cleaner to what Thomas calls its "rightful place" in the closet. Frederick and I tried to argue that if the vacuum cleaner were in the closet or behind the couch- it didn't matter, because it was hidden. Furthermore, the expression 'out of the closet' and 'out from behind the couch' could conceivably be interchangeable. So if a person wanted to announce he was gay, he could just as easily say he was 'coming out from behind the couch'. We are trying to make it a thing.
Before I really lost my mind and started to watch The Office, I had returned to my old favorite eras of history- those that saw the Bubonic plague. Few things are more comforting during Corona than reading a little Bubonic plague trivia. Did you know the Bubonic plague also came from the East? Hard to say exactly how many people died- One third the population of Europe? half the population of earth? Entire towns died out (can you imagine being the last to go?) Did you know it also had a short flare up here in San Francisco from 1900-1904? And keep in mind in 1906 we had the earthquake and fire that burned everything down. Fun family fact: MMB's great uncle whose initial donation to the University of California Berkeley is still today churning out millions of dollars for scholarships, wrote a law relating to property rights after the fire burned down all the records. Anyway, the Bubonic plague was so much deadlier, so much more contagious and don't forget a much uglier way to go ( a girl doesn't need large black pustules) than this Corona thing. My point being of course, San Francisco has had worse times. So as that meme says- other generations were called upon to war, we are called upon to sit on our couch (watching the Office). By these standards I should get a purple heart.
Finally, we heard such a cool podcast on one of our longer strolls: one that featured a few words by none other than Richard Feynman of Caltech. Feynman was an absolute rock star even before he won the Nobel prize: good looking and very cool. The reporter who researched him said she envisions him walking around when he first arrived at Caltech, hair blowing in the wind; the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever playing in the background: John Travolta with chalk in his hand.
Caltech told him he had to revamp freshman physics 101, because so few people were choosing to study physics. They said he only had to do it for one year, but he needed to jazz it up because it was thought to be so boring. On the podcast, they played a few minutes of his very first lecture where he in essence threw out the rule book and started with a question:
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.
So to translate: from the knowledge of perpetual motion we got to steam engines, rockets, cars, tea kettles, and hot tubs; the attracting and repelling part gave us phones, radios, light bulbs etc. Basically every single thing on the planet, every single thing- is made of Jiggliing atoms, and their behavior is the key to almost every cool thing we humans ever did.
You can see why this man was married multiple times. I mean this is Mick Jagger panty throwing potential.
Speaking of Mick Jagger, the Atomic fact, as awesome as it is, doesn't explain some important things- like music or love. Yesterday I heard a talking head say he turns on the Rolling Stones now during Trumps little temper tantrums/press conferences. Why hadn't I thought of this??? The Rolling Stones, at the right decibel are the cross to Trump's vampire. If anyone can snuff out that much stupid, it is the genius and joy of the Rolling Stones. I have had some intense and lovely Corona moments lately with friends reaching out to tell me they are glad we are walking each other home in this life. And then I listened to Let it Bleed; and I started to cry. Because I love my toaster, and the beautiful atomic hypothesis behind it, but I also love the inexplicable - like the perfection of that song.
"We all need someone to lean on...and if you want it, well you can lean on me. ..."
Crank it people.
