Jimothy, an adorable raccoon with a distinctly rounded back and spindly legs, rocketed to national celebrity this week when video of him scampering around Seattle spread on social media. I cannot resist Jimothy and am stirred by the words of the local city council member who said, “He’s an example to all of us that you don’t have to be perfect to be loved, and it’s what makes us different that makes us sensational.” More curiosities, both different and sensational, below.
On this week’s list:
1. The Most ‘Wuthering Heights’ Day Ever
2. How to forget yourself
3. Listen to forests
4. An old, good card game
5. ‘The right idea about pleasure’
6. Scrolling to sleep
1.
The Most ‘Wuthering Heights’ Day Ever
In the video for her 1978 song “Wuthering Heights,” Kate Bush wears a red dress and red flowers in her hair as she twirls, swoops, beckons and poses through a grassy plain. She’s mesmerizing, acting out the aching lyrics — “Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy / I’ve come home, I’m so cold” — in indelible gestures that I’ll admit I’ve stood in front of the screen mirroring more than once.
Each summer, locations around the world host “The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever,” where people get together in cherry-colored dresses and recreate the dance. Here are gatherings in Melbourne, Atlanta, Edinburgh and the original performance that inspired them all in Brighton, from 2013. Many events are scheduled for this weekend, including one in the English coastal town of Folkestone, whose organizers have put together a tutorial for how to do the dance.
It looks a little intimidating when you see Kate Bush kicking her leg up near her ear on each refrain, but, as one of the instructors in the tutorial says: “The point isn’t to look brilliant; the point is to make sure we have lots of fun.”
Thanks to Ann Shaller, a reader from Orange County, Calif., who’s been known to dance her own Nelken Line, for the recommendation.
Last weekend, absorbed in the meditative task of arranging flowers, I noticed that my thoughts had gone almost completely quiet. I’d been so deeply invested in stripping leaves and cutting stems that my usually chaotic brain chatter disappeared. I didn’t know then that this state is called “meaningful self-forgetfulness,” but I was thrilled to learn the term this week in this article on the rise of “grandma hobbies” like quilting and needlepoint. It’s a coinage of Anne Kirketerp, a Danish psychologist and author of the book “Craft Psychology.”
“When we create something that requires full attention, the part of our brain called ‘default mode network’ is diminished,” Kirketerp told The Times. “The constant inner noise or negative ruminating thoughts are absent.”
It’s akin to flow states, those moments of peak mental acuity that the Hungarian American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described as “those times when things seem to go just right, when you feel alive and fully attentive to what you are doing.” Meaningful self-forgetfulness is such a lovely term for such a lovely experience! In a world that tempts us with so much meaningless self-forgetfulness, let us seek out the meaningful kind.
If you live someplace where you can hear the sounds of the breeze and the birds, I’m jealous and would like to offer up my services as a house sitter.
If you live in a louder or less nature-saturated locale and are longing for some peace from the traffic or the neighbors or the neighbors’ lawn mower, you might enjoy some sounds of forests from around the world. Check out this map to select a forest by location (I just listened to a Sichuan golden monkey whimpering in China), or call up a random forest via Tree.fm.
And if you are lucky enough to live in or be visiting a real-life forest, you can submit its soundscape here.
Whenever someone introduces the 1974 pattern-recognition card game Set to a social gathering, I am reminded anew how much I love it and vow to get my own deck. It’s a pretty simple premise, but surprisingly challenging: A bunch of cards with different symbols on them are laid on the table. The symbols have four features: color, number, shape and shading. You race to make sets of three cards where each feature is either the same on each card or different on each card.
I am terrible at this game and always attribute my poor showing to the fact that I don’t play very frequently. I hope I strike fear into the hearts of partygoers everywhere when I announce that I will be playing much more now that I know about this stylish online version by the French designer Hugo Sainte-Marie. Watch out, fellow Setters!
5.
‘The right idea about pleasure’
The journalist Martha Gellhorn wrote of her onetime husband, Ernest Hemingway, that he “always had the right idea about pleasure, which is grab it while you can.” Maybe you’re grabbing as much pleasure as your hands can hold. Or maybe you could stand to grab some more.
6.
Scrolling to sleep
How’s your sleep hygiene these days? For all the counsel to keep devices out of our bedrooms, I suspect I’m not the only one who finds myself scrolling in bed. I tell myself I’m just reading on my iPad’s Kindle app, and the next thing I know I’m sending texts, checking Instagram, browsing rubber replacement tips for my earphones.
I hesitate to recommend something screen-based to help you fall asleep, but if you’re unable to go cold turkey on screens, you’d do worse than to wean yourself via Sleepscroll, a peaceful site where you explore a soporific starlit sky. Tiny sheep drift in; you can count them by tapping. You get a text from the moon (“still up? me too. always.”), but you can’t reply or like it. If you zoom in, the sky tears open to reveal … nothing.
The creator describes the app thusly: “No accounts, no data, no ads, no algorithm. It gives you nothing, on purpose, boring enough to put you down, with just enough soft surprises that you don’t bail back to the real thing.” I’ve tried it out and it’s definitely less stimulating than my usual fare.
It’s interesting to see what happens when you try to replace something unproductive with the same gestures but different content. It reminds me of a friend who tried to quit smoking by taking drags from a cigarette-sized wooden dowel. (She did quit, eventually.) Is it the scrolling action we’re addicted to? I think, partly! Remember to turn off your notifications or your celestial reverie will be interrupted by texts and push alerts.
One more thing: Isabelle Buroker, a reader from San Francisco, writes with an intriguing idea for paying attention to the things that go right:
I wanted to share an affirmation that a friend started and has become contagious among our friend group. It goes: “Everything always works out for me always all the time.” When she first started saying it, I was a bit shocked; it felt hyperbolic and a bit too much. However, we quickly discovered it’s contagion.
We use it when little things throughout the day go right — when we get the last Lyft bike, or the rain waits until after we’ve practiced, or when we run for the bus and make it. Or for larger things like a boy liking us back, or my getting into just one medical school — and one of my top choices. What it really does is help us to notice all the things that really do go right for us each and every day!
Everything always works out for you all the time. Share in the comments exactly what’s worked out for you lately, or drop me a line. If you want to get The Good List in your inbox, sign up here. And you can check out past editions of The Good List anytime. — Melissa
The editor of The Good List is Jodi Rudoren. Eli Cohen handles the photos.
