Sus is a supertaster—and she would prefer to leave this particular superpower behind. Again and again she has to explain that she is not just “a picky eater,” as she has been branded her entire life. This is genetic: She was born with more taste buds than most of us, therefore registers the slightest bitterness as exponentially more bitter than what I am tasting.
Have you ever started a conversation with someone, both of you liking each other and eager to compare notes on beloved films or books, except that with every “Have you read…?” or “Have you seen…?” the other person sadly shakes their head no? The initial excitement fizzles like a wet match. Finally, you land on something really basic or silly, and you laugh with relief and talk about it far too long.
Is it a more innocent time we miss when we feel nostalgic for the past or for our “unspoiled” youth? Or do we just miss the days when we knew less about the world and did not realize we were in danger of being hurt? Experience does not spoil us, but it definitely makes us wary, reminds us we are vulnerable, cracks our hearts wide open.
Overused, measurement drowns out intuition and prevents us from deeper exploration. We forget how to feel our way, trust our instincts. And we go to absurd lengths trying to quantify what cannot be counted.
Figureheads are carved to endure storm-tossed seas, and they are set at the ship’s prow, visible and exposed, recognizable by all. They are not the engines that move the ship forward. They serve a different purpose, one that is easy to overlook if you have been trained to resist what seems merely decorative. In the States, we have substituted flags and parchment for flesh and blood, reluctant to elevate any family to permanent majesty. But while flags can be burned and parchment amended, neither is animate, conscious, and dedicated entirely to our welfare. Those we entrust with our welfare must scrabble for the privilege, often hollowing their souls in the process.
What would truly spoil a dog is if you broke his spirit, crushed his hopes, destroyed his enthusiasm. A ruined dog would no longer race to greet, beg to play, roll over to have his belly rubbed. But I have yet to see tender attention make a dog passive, bad-tempered, or even greedy. Their species is far better than we are at knowing when they have had enough (play, food, petting) and walking away to take a nap.
Society categorizes us, and then we obey its categories. After centuries of prioritizing sedate mental work, we who are wedded to our screens turn our Roombas loose and then jog at our standing desks, desperate for a little balance. If we were never seduced into the life of the mind, we sit idle and fume, because the physical work is drying up fast.
Connery had achieved his fame as the definitive film version of a pulp adventure hero in a film series that became not simply successful but mythical and went out of his profession portraying a decent version of another pulp adventure hero in a vastly inferior film. It happens that way with actors. It happens that way with their fans too.
Spalding Gray’s images of immersion, of sharks in a swimming pool, of drowning fears, of being a child rocked to sleep by the sea, of being a “pumpkin-headed perceiver” among waves hiding the shore, seem all too meaningful now.
In the end, Paul Hendrickson’s quest does succeed—just not in the way he leads us to expect. Throughout the book, he refers to “the back of” Wright’s life, as though it is an edifice. But it is the edifices Wright designed that reveal his humanity. We hear it when he articulates his vision; we hear it in Hendrickson’s descriptions of the structures.