That Ever-Growing Number

Tuesday, 12/24/24

88 million minutes.

On YouTube, just one video of The Byrd’s hit song “Turn Turn Turn” has been viewed 22 million times. At about four minutes long, that is 88 million minutes of playing. That is 61,111 days. That is over 167 years of one video on one website.

The most popular video on YouTube, Pinkfong’s “Baby Shark Dance” has been played 15 billion times. At just over two minutes long, that is about 3 billion minutes of just that video playing. That’s 5,707 years of time. About 6,000 years ago is when civilization began to develop. Horses and chickens became domesticated. Six thousand years ago, human life began to have an effect on the planet, influencing the way plants and animals interacted. This one video has used six thousand years of time in just eight years to keep little kids entertained. 

On YouTube, a little boy named Ryan Kaji became famous for his unboxing videos. Millions and millions of people, mostly children, have poised themselves in front of screens watching Ryan as he opened boxes of toys. Many of his videos have received tens of millions of views. I did notice that one had 1.1 billion views. In the video, his mother (I assume) sneaks up on him as he “sleeps” but it’s obvious that it’s all staged. He immediately notices a Lightning McQueen Egg and of course I had no idea what that was. The video not-so-elegantly transitions to the egg being opened and little Ryan pulls out a plastic racecar ramp from its depths. He tests some racecars on it and I am still unsure how this would be exciting to an audience. Throughout the rest of the video (I didn’t watch the whole thing because, well, I’m impatient) he is playing with Disney toys, dumping them here and there and being an excited little boy, which is fine. And on the screen sometimes flashes the words “Ryan’s Toy Review”. But there is no review. This video is about 7.5 minutes long. That’s 8.25 billion minutes of viewing just this video. That’s 15, 696 years of a little boy that you might not have even known existed.

As of late, my mind has become enveloped by the ever-growing number of everything. The heartbeats in my chest accumulate. There is a definite number of pepper seeds I have ingested. A definite number of hairs that have shed off my dog’s body. A definite number of steps I have taken over fallen trees. And there is the constancy of numbers continuing onward and upward, nonstop. The gallons of water flowing over a river stone day in and out. The certain amount of miles on all the certain wheels moving at this very instant. The amounts of breath, their breath, your breath.

Wednesday, 12/25/24

I didn’t stick to my watercoloring…

The podcast host goes on about how she did not stick to a goal. It is Christmas and I am starting my 35-minute commute to work in the dark. I imagine, as always, being the only person left in the world. This is especially easier to do when you’re the only one on the road at 5:10 am. I imagine that for whatever reason, this quick statement about watercoloring is the only sentence I hear for the rest of my life. A woman, old enough to maybe be my young mother, dead-set on being an upholder of promises, talking about how she did not watercolor. I imagine the watercolors dry in their cases. I imagine the brushes upright, neglected. I imagine blank whiteness upon blank whiteness, waterless and colorless. I imagine the futility of her statement as I walk in a post-apocalyptic world by myself.

I do not need to be in apocalyptic conditions to take comfort in her voice. She has a lisp and she sounds like she belongs at a dinner table or on the phone with the doctor or giving advice about heartbreak. Her sister also hosts the podcast and her voice is huskier, coming from the depths or her diaphragm. I couldn’t care less about cashmere sweaters but when she says the word cashmere sweater while doing the commercial break, I am deep inside the fabric of her voice.  Their back-and-forth, talking about happiness and how people obtain and maintain it, are a comfort to me even in this cozy life where my car’s seat warms up at the flip of a switch and dual beams of light illuminate my way to work. This morning, the stars are mine but they’re not.

I think about how minds need breaks. How last night as I scrolled on the couch, I watched a reel of a woman sharing that she just found out that her baby’s heart had stopped beating. Not ten seconds later, I was on the next reel and a young woman, her parents waiting on her before heading to church, was admiring herself in the mirror, cleavage showing, a caption saying that she hopes that Jesus doesn’t mind her not wearing a bra. At what point does the intriguing become horrible? At what point does learning turn to destroying?

Thursday, 12/26/24

I can feel the great approaching taking place. Bodies move with the earth but like the great erosions and bubblings-up, we too erode, bubble up, and surge upward, outward, inward, in spirals and waves and fractals. That brain of yours is not simply encased and gelling under its layers of meninges. Its tentacles tendril outwards, one touching your partner, another grasping at every door knob, another holding onto the past, another pushing past, another blindly feeling around the surroundings, another that just listens, tastes, and smells. Our minds are around us everywhere and the everything around us everywhere is constantly changing.

At what point are we not us with all this spiraling, eroding, and imploding? We are Ships of Theseus, plank-by-plank being replaced, slowly until eventually all parts are other. In Japan, Ise Jingu, a sacred Shinto shrine, is completely replaced every twenty years. It is built in the same exact, archaic way with the same exact, archaic materials. And equally and equally and equally it is revered in its rebirth and renewal. I look at my hands and they’d may as well be yours too. Here, take them.

Friday, 12/27/24

In most narratives about people finding happiness or finding/searching for themselves, there’s a certain amount of abandoning social constructs. The woman who leaves her husband and child to go on a work trip across the country instead camps out in a motel thirty miles away from her husband and child. There, she watches romantic comedies, spends thousands on redecorating the hotel room, and has a quasi-erotic relationship with a younger, married man. Or another narrative. Magically, a man can no longer say the word “no”, therefore he is forced to embrace every open door, given opportunity, and say yes to every request and engagement. He learns, he loves, he hurts, he rises up. Or how about the woman who walks into the ocean? Or a river because it’s better than the house, the office, or his arms? Or the narrative about the group of students who accidentally murder a man while they perform a bacchanal? Or how about the handicap woman who despite her cynicism decides to give love a chance only to be abandoned in a barn loft, the love interest having stolen the prosthetic leg he convinced her to take off during her moment of vulnerability?

I often imagine her sitting up there alone, her one leg hanging off the edge of the loft. Her mind full of philosophy. The sun setting.

Hulga.

Saturday, 12/28/24

You’re reading a book and a particular passage thrills you and you want to share it. You noticed on your daily commutes that a particularly large bird spends time in a roadside pond. Your heart is aflutter with wondering about the bird. A new restaurant or game or show or anything new exists and you want to eat there, play it, or watch it. A hat drops and you cry. The coffee shop now serves breakfast sandwiches and you want to go check it out. You just watched an art house film and absolutely need to discuss it with someone. You’re yearning for summer because you have so many ideas for your garden or flower bed. You listen to this sad song—perhaps it is a waltz—over and over and over again and you feel that you have to hide this from people because it would surely annoy them but gosh, it’s such a beautiful song. Why wouldn’t someone want to listen to it over and over for days or weeks or gosh a month?

Where are you? And why aren’t we acquainted?

Sunday, 12/29/24

My mind keeps falling into holes like it’s navigating a colander. It does its best to weave along all the surface available but like my own body, it loses balance and falls. Walks are necessary even when everything is gray. Today is particularly warm and the wind is harshly kind. I was crying anyway, but I passed a dead possum, their guts exposed to me. Something round and gray and bean-shaped inside the gore was intact and shiny like a boring stone. I told the corpse, the tail curved like a question mark, that I was sorry and I shrugged as if the sycamores and privet along the roadside were expecting something from me. I looked up at the river flowing by incessantly and imagined casually walking in it like a character in a story would. What would be the big deal, anyway? It’s a mild day. My pants and shoes would get wet.

Big deal.

Monday, 12/30/24

Today in a list:

·      Wake up before everyone, even the sun, to read

·      The main character in the novel finally got what she wanted—an open marriage—and now she is perturbed that her husband has a girlfriend.

·      How does coffee get so cold so quickly?

·      2-hour drive to Danville where I talk to Brian about social constructs, narratives, names for my new blog, and trees.

·      During said drive, I flip through tree identification flash cards. One of the cards reminds me of something I already knew but forgot that I knew: the ginko tree is a living fossil. I learn that a grove of ginko trees may be the largest living organism on the planet. Or is it that mycelial network of honey mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest?

·      Xanax at 11:07 am so I can be calm and tearless

·      Brian’s post-surgery follow-up appointment where I calmly, kindly, but no-bullshittingly point out to his doctor how incompetent Geisinger has been with Brian

·      The Xanax hangover drive home where I eat popcorn chicken and dill pickle chips

·      2-hour Xanax nap on the couch

·      Unload the dishwasher, clean out fridge

·      Put together the metal detector I got for Christmas.

·      Test it on the plates and screws in my ankles and feet

·      Take a walk in the dark, up past the cow pasture

·      Is that Mars? Yes, it’s Mars

·      Pack one small bag to head to the Poconos

·      See my face in a mirror. Wow, this lipstick lasted all day.

·      Write a bullet list—the almost final item on the list explaining that this will be the last weekly update on this blog. I will be starting a Substack in the New Year because it’s a better platform that allows for me to connect with others.

·      I want to connect with others.