Prologue: Found Objects and the Stories They Tell
A preview of coming attractions
An Introductory Example: Many times, I have ducked under a bridge or overhang to escape the Florida rain, and noticed a set of mud tubes attached to the wall above my head. Maybe you’ve seen such things too, but for me this is what I call a Found Object, a small thing that is worth collecting because it has a story to tell, a story that can be small or large, simple, or complex. The story told by this particular object begins with a female mud-dauber wasp that has found a supply of mud and mortared it into an elongated mud tube divided into five or six cells, each of which she has stuffed full of paralyzed spiders and added an egg. Her goal was to produce her own offspring, but her efforts often met with failure, because a host of opportunists --- thieves, parasites, predators, scavengers, and diseases--- used her investment to fuel their own reproduction, but they in their turn were subject to still another layer of thieves, parasites, diseases and so on. Each of these players left behind physical evidence of their presence, so that with a bit of detective work, the mud nest becomes a book of stories extending back into time. What looks like a dull set of mud tubes is the center of a whirling community of opportunists upon opportunists, chance event upon chance event until nothing is left but dry debris that only specialized scavengers can use. Even then, the empty mud tubes serve as houses for other creatures that are also slaves to chance and lurking opportunists.
My Substack Plan: The world is full of similar Found Objects that have stories to tell, stories of both the living and non-living world. I have long collected such objects as long as they were not too large. It is time for me to craft the stories that I saw in them and post them on my site, where subscriptions will always be free. I will upload these stories as I write them. My best guess is that I will post a new one every couple of weeks until I have exhausted my collection of Found Objects.
The Found Objects and Their Stories: There will be stories of wind-polished stone, insect fungus farms in dead oak branches, strange stories of multiple marine creatures, special bones, insect-built items, mysteriously snipped leaves; there will be stories of paper made by wasps, tubes of leaves made by bees, sulfur-streaked coal, peat torn from a heath, rocks eroded by raindrops, cocoons wound from a 1 km-long, single thread of silk, houses of mud, bat skulls, petrified poop, clams that bore in rocks, others that destroy floating wood; there will be stories of rocks made by algae, of 450 million year old marble, of desert varnish and weaverbird nests, bird nests made solely of spiderwebs, seeds that shoot themselves into the void, and others that screw themselves into the ground; there will be stories of desert algae growing on the underside of translucent rocks, beautiful feathers and amazing porcupine quills, hair, bone and cork as you’ve never seen them. The stories of each of these objects link our consciousness to some part of the world we live in, and remind us of its complex, dazzling glory.