#7 Stepping on a snail

Thoughts on finding the large in the small

Dear friends,

The people who live in the house opposite have a problem with rock pigeons nesting below their roof tiles.

To combat them, they’ve stuck spikes along the lip of the roof and strung reflective metal hawks from the eaves. On their balcony, they’ve positioned a large ceramic owl, with a blue beak and a crazed expression. Next to it, they’ve installed a speaker, which pumps out the deathly shrieks of birds of prey.

None of this seems to trouble the pigeons. They are still living in our neighbour’s roof, popping in and out of their nooks and waddling across the sun-warmed tiles with a look of satisfied ease.

There are lots of creatures in and around the Cypriot village where we live. Partridges explode from bushes as I jog past. The leathery tails of black whip snakes disappear into the undergrowth. Tiny skinks dash away from my gigantic trainers. Farm dogs chase me along the tracks.

In my office, Mediterranean jumping spiders, with speckled brown and white bodies, scuttle along the skirting boards, leaping remarkable distances to evade my attempts to trap them. And from my desk, I sometimes hear bells and then, moments later, see long-eared brown goats filing past, trailed by silver-haired shepherds in military camo.

I’ve been reading a few books recently, which have set me thinking about our relationships with other beings: The Overstory by Richard Powers, Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, and Matters of Care by María Puig de la Bellacasa. They’re all expanding my outlook and I’ll write about them properly in future letters.

Today I’d like to share something smaller.

In the second instalment of Social Imagining I wrote about an encounter with a strange gathering of snails. I’d like to return to snails today, and share a different form of encounter: the experience of stepping on them, and the feelings that arise when we feel the crunch below our heel.

It’s not unusual to step on a snail and, arguably, it’s not a big deal. Yet doing so can stir up feelings bigger than the occasion seems to justify. I’ve started to notice a lot of moments in life that have this quality and to pay more attention to them.

Three years ago, I established a new writing habit. Every night, often leaning on my pillow half asleep, I write about something that moved me that day. Flicking through my notebook a few months into this practice, I was intrigued to see how small most of the moments were: an unexpected feeling of peace on a cold morning, outsized outrage at a faulty household appliance, flashes of anxiety in an unimportant meeting, a sudden longing to be in another time or place, joy from a short interaction in a shop. Often I just described a small luminous instant: the strangeness of a street lined with dozens of discarded Christmas trees, the dead trees looking so much more alive than the bare plane trees around them; amusement at my four-year-old son announcing that ‘every toilet is different’ and describing an over-used shopping centre toilet as ‘the best toilet ever’.  Night after night, I was writing down small things that didn’t feel small.

I’ve kept a diary since I was eight so I’m used to writing life down. What intrigues me about the night notes is that they contain precisely the things it wouldn’t occur to me to write in my diaries – the moments in between more important things happening. Reading them, I’m struck by the disconnect between their scale and their emotional resonance.

As I’ve continued this habit, I’ve become increasingly interested in how much is held within these small moments, by the way larger forces play out within them, and by what they can reveal about bigger questions of care, community and ecology. I’m finding I can better grapple with big themes by zooming in on things that are small and tangible and close. I can see and feel things that might otherwise be too big to bring into focus. I can start to see how much is happening when not much seems to be happening.

The fragment below about stepping on a snail began as one of those night notes: a throwaway moment, barely worth registering, that nevertheless seems to hold more than its size might suggest.

I’d be grateful for any reactions or reflections. I’m not sure where I’m going with this process, but I feel like there’s a thread to pull here and I’m interested to see where it leads.

Warm wishes,

Matt

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Stepping on a snail

My wife stepped on a snail in our back yard.

Then ten minutes later I stepped on a snail.

The shells shattered, but the snails were still alive, squirming on the flagstones like hearts without bodies.

I opened Google and typed Can a

And the search suggestions said

Can a narcissist change

Can an emu fly   

Can an opinion be wrong

And I typed Can a snail

And the search suggestions said

Jump

Sleep

Fart

Drown

I typed Can a snail survive without its shell

There were one million one hundred and ninety thousand results.

I skipped through and the consensus seemed to be

No. The shell not only protects a snail, it stops it drying out.

I scrolled through a forum set up by other people who had stepped on snails.

Some people wet them to keep them alive, making them beds of lettuce. Other people stamp on them, to give them a quicker end.

People also ask Can snails feel pain?

I clicked on it.

The consensus seemed to be

Yes. They have a nervous system.

But not suffering. Snails cannot process emotional information.

Pain without suffering.

We weren’t sure what to do so we left the snails on the flagstones, writhing on the shards of their shells.