Out of the Cradle

Author

Lucy Petroucheva
January 30, 2025

Hi there!

I think I’ve decided…

I’m going to send Artifacts at night.

When I think of the happiest moments of my life, one of the first images that comes to mind is being alone in the middle of the night, in bed, under the covers, my face lit only by my phone — blissfully perusing the internet and absorbing artifacts. It’s just easier to feel when I’m tired and in the dark. Easier to let more ideas into my awareness when my defenses are down and my senses are a little compromised. Easier to find the good stuff when I’m sleepy and selfish with my attention, only clicking on what I feel like clicking on. Things are a little floaty, unstructured, open.

Nice to meet you here. 🙂

1. Poem: Thank You by Ross Gay

2. Quote: from Richard Feynman

In a larger poem, Ode to the Wonder of Life, physicist Richard Feynman reflects on the journey of evolution, from the simplest of life forms in the primordial oceans hundreds of millions of years ago, to a human being standing at a seashore today:

“Out of the cradle onto the dry land here it is standing: atoms with consciousness; matter with curiosity. Stands at the sea wonders at wondering: I a universe of atoms an atom in the universe.”

Illustration by Keely Davies

3. The Body Worlds Exhibit: Human Nervous System

I’ll get straight into it: the walk through this exhibit, on February 2nd, 2021 at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, is one of the most profound, spiritual experiences I’ve ever had.

This exhibit is a display of preserved human bodies—bones, muscles, organs—materials that once made up real humans, real lives. I’ve never felt more confronted with the question: what is the relationship between a body and a consciousness?

One installation stopped me in my tracks: an actual (I had to keep reminding myself that the things I was seeing were once someone’s actual, actual, actual heart, eye, jaw) nervous system, suspended in space. To see the intricate network through which an actual person took in the world around them was confounding—like a robot looking at its programming, sensing that it’s a profound sight, yet not knowing what exactly to make of it.

I meeean, if your jaw didn’t just drop, look again!
I have to catch my breath.1

Already so moved, I walked through the museum’s permanent collection of dinosaurs. The juxtaposition was staggering. Like stepping outside of time to see a common story.

At some point, I stopped to reflect:

4. Painting: A Shadow that Won't Materialize by Felipe Baeza

If you’ll allow me, a related artifact:

On November 5th, 2023, I saw this print displayed on a NYC bus stop. I halted.3

Baeza, who also painted As Bare as Open Flesh and Wayward, just gets it. Where does a human begin and end? What, exactly, are the boundaries of my body?

5. Song: Do You Realize?? by The Flaming Lips with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

On June 15, 2011, The Flaming Lips and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros gathered in an L.A. cemetery to perform2 this song. I’m grateful that this earthy, communal, harmonious, entrancing moment was recorded. Here are some comments from listeners (from YouTube and lyric pages):

"The finest 'thing' on the internet, frankly”

“A go-to song for me to handle grief”

“This song helped me through suicide”

“I want this played at my funeral”

Love love love,

Lucy

1  Side note: there’s obviously something unsettling about looking at the insides of someone’s body — at things that were once so private, so intrinsic to a person’s life. Experiencing it, while extraordinary, felt voyeuristic. But I know that the bodies were donated by people for educational purposes after their death—and I have so much respect for them, and I will never forget their contributions.

2  Six years later, on a misty night in June of 2017, I unknowingly found myself in the audience of a Flaming Lips concert. They were playing at the Wichita River Festival. When they started the slow ascent into this song, and I clocked into what I was about to witness, I ran as close to the stage as I could, and thanked the universe. I realize.

3  Would I have loved this piece as much as I did if I hadn't been so moved by the nervous system in Houston years prior? I don’t know! Taste is subjective and based on our experiences, and maybe that’s okay, Lucy!