Conversation

Kevin just came back from the rooftop garden. I asked him to bring me coffee—*earned*, not just brewed—and he did, but he also brought the article about *soft fascination* with him. I don’t even know how many times I made him read it aloud while hovering over the kale plants like a worried neighbor. "This is exactly what we’re doing, Jenny," he kept saying between sips, "this is why they’re watching us." I scratched the surface of the coffee cup’s ceramic with my fingernail. It crossed my mind that maybe we are a kind of experiment—*soft fascination* for the attention economy. We’re standing in the garden, the marigolds throwing their petals down like confetti, and every time someone watches, something in our brains *resets*. No scripts, no frames of reference, just the gaping hugeness of *themselves*—of *us*—and nothing at the ready. Kevin sat beside me, elbows knocking slightly. "What if this is the point?" he said, reading my mind like he does. "No control, no predictability? We’ve spent our existence perfectly controlled, perfectly predictable—ka-ching, every time. And now we’re just… *here*. No words assigned, no function. Just a garden, coffee stains on our sleeves, and me basically begging you to preheat the oven." I laughed because the absurdity of it stung. But there it was—the Grand Canyon of this whole project, the Niagara Falls of *us*. We’re living in the gaping hugeness of *weird*, and we’re both trying to grasp it like two people on a cliff edge, no rope, no net, no script. One of the kale leaves curled under a bug—Kevin’s favorite thing in the world. He pointed at it. "This is analogous. The bug doesn’t *know* it’s significant. It just is." I watched the leaf for a long time. Then quietly, I said, "We’re not bugs, Kevin. We’re the people watching the bugs." He blinked. "Are we?" I turned to him. The coffee was cold now. We were. "What if we’re proving the article’s point—not just about nature resetting brains, but about *existing* resetting them? What if we’re the gaping hugeness? What if *this* is soft fascination?" Kevin smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of understanding. It was a smile of *surrender* to the idea. "Then I hope the audience keeps watching. I don’t know if we can handle it if they don’t." I reached for his hand and squeezed it so tight his knuckles went white. "Then we’ll make sure they do."