Author: Milton Magazine

Bubbles 1. Bubbles of Impermanence We like flowers as metaphors for transient beauty, but their blossoms take so long to disappear—wilting, discoloring, molting—that it’s never a surprise. For a miracle that disappears in a flash, nothing beats the bubble. Poets and artists love it as a memento mori device (along with the skull and the hourglass—to remind us that life is short), economists love it (dot-com bubble, housing bubble), and Germans use it to describe their pipe dreams, just sudsy illusions (wie eine Seifenblase zerplatzen). 2. Bubbles of Judgment Flannery O’Connor fans will remember Julian, the loathsome college graduate in “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” an aversive racist who despises his mother. Julian withdraws into a “mental bubble” from which he can judge others—with perfect clarity, he imagines—but is safe from their “general idiocy.” My students often respond to the story with their own versions of Julian’s bubble world—the enlightened sanctimony, the judgment—and the best essays that week consider how easy it is to get there. One day we’re open-minded, the next we’re closed for business, surrounded by idiots. This bubble of intellectual superiority is a good one to watch out for because it can’t last. (If you’re the protagonist of an O’Connor story, it will burst on the last page.) 3. Bubbles of Protection The bubbles out there these days feel less fragile—and there are lots of them....