[D66] Where the Tiny Things Are

[Jugg]

(Geen microprocessor in de TOC)

Where the Tiny Things Are: Feathered Essays

Imprint: Peanut Books

by Nicole Walker

FORTHCOMING Autumn 2017

In this collection of longer essays nested within brief, lyrical 
meditations, each piece focuses on some micro aspect of everyday life as 
a means of exploring complex macro systems—families, dinner parties, 
vineyards, deserts, nations. For example, Walker’s own experience as the 
mother of a micropreemie (a baby born weighing less than one pound, 
twelve ounces, or before twenty-six weeks gestation), “the smallest 
thing in the world,” spurs an exploration of, among other things, the 
economics of health care, the causes of premature births, and the ethics 
of extreme interventions. Where the Tiny Things Are is a book of ideas 
and an exploration of science. It is of the world and of the heart – 
both intensely personal and expansively empathetic.

TABLE OF CONTENTS // Microscopium, Micromeat, Microbarriers, 
Microsurgery, Microencephaly, Microlecithal, Micropreemies, 
Microbortions, Microkeratome, Microbladder, Microclimates Lower Sonoran, 
Micromeria, Microbursts, Micro Prairie Dogs & Micro Turkey Vultures, 
Micro Snow Leopard, Microorganisms, Micromanagement, Micronize, 
Microhabitat, Neutrinos, Microwine, Microwind, Microgalaxy, 
Microwindmills, Microhematocrit, Microsoccer, Microtrain, Microblogs, 
Microfire, Microtopography, Micromeasures, Microgas, Microisland, 
Microspikes, Distracted Parents of the Micromanagement Era, 
Microhaboobs, Microbivalves, Biofuels Will Take You Home, Microbags, 
Microbiotics, Microapocalpyse

Nicole Walker on the microessay:

I don’t sleep very well at night. I feel like I’m drowning. Thoughts 
race by and I can’t catch one of them long enough to linger, to figure 
out a solution, to find a way to resolve it so I can get some sleep. 
Oyster reefs, salmon, school budget cuts, Planned Parenthood, dying 
frogs, bats with fungus—it’s a constant stream of disaster and I can’t 
make myself turn it off. I spend too much time on the Internet reading 
status updates and news briefs. I can’t help posting to Facebook about 
the polar bear who, along with her cub, swam for nine straight days 
looking for an ice floe. She swam as far as she used to swim to get to 
some ice but found no ice there. She swam a little farther. Nothing but 
open water. Winter in the northern hemisphere isn’t supposed to be this 
blue. She couldn’t tell day from night, but she could tell when her cub 
went missing. He had been swimming alongside her. Then he was gone. She 
couldn’t see through the dark to where exactly he’d drowned, but the 
splashing ocean that he’d been flailing in was now quiet. After nine 
days, after swimming without fins or gills, after swimming against 
current and across deep trenches, she finally hit a block of ice big 
enough to rest on. Weighing nearly half as much as she had when she’d 
left land, the bear pulled her exhausted body up onto the floe.

The day after the polar bear story appeared, NPR’s Marketplace hosted a 
segment on about the way people tune out when they hear about global 
warming. There’s too much to think about there. The ear, let alone the 
mind, isn’t big enough to contain all the horror.

But people live for a tiny bit of hope. These tiny bits of good news 
accumulate. Some bits of good news even accumulate enough to make a dent 
in some of the bad news. Some small acts might even accrete to save the 
polar bear. Maybe not. I am full of want and hope. I cling to the idea 
that as the whale population recovers, whale poop can help sequester 
carbon. That tiny rhizomes sink carbon into soil. That miniature 
turbines roll back and forth in the ocean tide, making clean energy, 
enough to propel a country.

Maybe the small isn’t just a distraction from the bigger issues. Maybe 
the small is key. Maybe the small provides an answer this way: if you 
look closely enough, there are solutions in those distractions. Or, 
rather, the small is a way to make us think in new ways, to learn how to 
make small adaptations to survive big changes. If you open your mind 
wide enough, maybe you can imagine that small things can help undo some 
of the damage to the whole, big planet. If I could stop and look at that 
mouth, that lip, or maybe it’s more of a tongue, of a pinecone? What if 
that square of bark explained something about the cellular structure of 
trees? Sand is geologic. It’s the sign of what kind of minerals can be 
found underground and a sign of the way the water might flow. I’m not a 
scientist. I was trained as poet. Like the scientist, I want to look 
closely. I want to pull ideas out of a grain of sand, to learn the 
seductive charms of pinecones, to plumb the back-scratching potential of 
a square of bark. Maybe by paying attention to the small things, you can 
become more like them—adaptive, responsive, embracing.
About the Author

Nicole Walker is the author of the forthcoming book Sustainability: A 
Love Story. Her previous books include Egg, Micrograms, Quench Your 
Thirst with Salt, and This Noisy Egg. She also edited Bending Genre with 
Margot Singer. She’s nonfiction editor at Diagram and Associate 
Professor of English (Creative Writing) at Northern Arizona University 
in Flagstaff.
Genres: Fabulations, Thought Experiments
Tags: creative non-fiction, essay, microbiotics, microcosmology, 
microenchephaly, microhabitat, micromanagement, neutrinos.
Bookmark the permalink.
Of Great Importance
The Petroleum Manga
dôNrm’-lä-püsl
Centaurs, Rioting in Thessaly
An Unspecific Dog: Artifacts of This Late Stage in...