At first glance, Five Guys does not make much sense as a study spot. Fast food restaurants tend to be transitory locations. When I ordered my burger, fries, and strawberry shake, the cashier didn’t ask “for here or to-go?” He simply handed me a slightly greasy paper bag a few minutes later. Fast food restaurants are also often some combination of loud and sticky, neither of which is conducive to reading and writing. Yet somehow, on this Monday afternoon, I find myself sitting at a table in the back of a Five Guys, reading about ecofascism and astrobioethics, bopping my head to an excellent playlist ranging from AC/DC to Weezer to Dua Lipa to Queen.
Today’s book of choice is Jennell Johnson’s beautiful piece of prose: Every Living Thing: The Politics of Life in Common. In this book, Johnson asks the question “what does life do?” She does not attempt to define life, but rather explores how life as a central term and concept is invoked in various environmental movements, scientific debates, and ethical considerations.
“Life—that thing you have in common with all other humans but also with owls, birch trees, and bacteria.”
In the first few minutes of reading, I discover the difficulties of eating a hamburger and reading a book at the same time. I simply don’t have enough hands to carefully turn pages and jot down important quotes while also managing the mess of ketchup, mustard, and pickles spilling out the sides of the sesame-topped bun.
As I make my way through discussions of that shared substance (substance? energy? force?) that connects humans with microbes and plants and fungi, I realize the twisted irony in the fact that today marks the first time in recent memory I’ve consumed a meat-full burger. I share (shared) life with that cow. And that lettuce. And those tomatoes.
“Life is like a verb.”
The minutes wind on. I get up to grab ketchup for my fries. Every once in a while I’ll glance at the white and red tiled walls lined with rave reviews for Five Guys that are over ten years old. Just outside, cars make seventeen-point-turns, trying to maneuver in the miniscule parking lot. “Roxanne” plays in the background and one of the cooks sings the chorus three seconds too early. Every time. A man bikes down the sidewalk, blowing bubbles at passersby. And now here I am, happily click-clack-itty-ing on my keyboard, subtly dancing along to “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk.
To constrict “life” to a noun descriptor is to bound it, limit it. But life isn’t a verb either, because a verb is also a noun. So life is like a verb. It’s like acting, like moving, like being, like wanting, like connecting, like paying attention, like loving. It’s none of these things and all of them.
This piece of prose is like a verb.
I’m tempted to end this rambly ode to a Monday evening with some neat little takeaway. I could make this story about grad students’ peculiar writing habits and mention my friends who study at bars or turn nocturnal during finals week. I could recount my ongoing journey of loosening the hold of academic perfectionism. I could tell you how much I love the random encounters of everyday life, like how I met a man in the library carrying a pink styrofoam egg carton for no apparent reason.
But to say that Monday afternoon’s experience of ecofascism and rock music and Five Guys only fits into one of those boxes ignores the fact that it’s life. It’s like a verb.
Elisabeth Stevens (‘25) graduated from Calvin with majors in Spanish and strategic communication and now is a graduate student in rhetoric at Penn State. She spends her free time running, swing dancing, baking, and finding new coffee shops at which to write.
