JR Rhine
Letter to Stephen Hillenburg
Dear Mr. Hillenburg,
I sometimes forget we were once like children. That when faced with rock bottom, where our terrors run wild, there are friends in these spaces, too. That when thinking outside of the box, we first create the world within. You showed how genius can be found in the unlikeliest of places, that at the core of our sin is genuine, heartfelt desire. You settled on a protagonist who saw these traits in loved ones and soaked up only what could be used to bring out the best in others. Instead of greed, you saw passion. Instead of narcissism, you saw spectacle. Instead of laziness, you saw individuality. I joke that I follow the characters like a story arc: once young and naïve like Spongebob, to an adolescent sleep-deprived food-munching machine like Patrick, an early twentysomething go-getter like Sandy, to an existential, comfort-craving, anti-capitalist Squidward. I’ll leave the future to decide which type of entrepreneur I’ll become, Plankton or Mr. Krabs (my money is on life with a computer wife). As a marine biologist, you spent your time looking into water beyond your reflection. For the lives that live within and beyond your own. You heard how we have explored less than 5% of the world’s oceans, and even less of the oceans that make up 60% of our own bodies. What if we are each of these characters, and Bikini Bottom is really the city of our watery, barnacle bound hearts? (I much like to think of my mind as a milieu of mini-me’s running around towers of filing cabinets caught on fire.) Maybe your vision is not so much an arc, but a panorama. That so much as celestial bodies are caught pirouetting around a larger body, so are we around the body of work we continue to write and rewrite. That it could be any one of us at the wheel. The glutton, the greedy, the narcissist—all with their own take on the day’s events. We spend so much time trying to single one out, isolate, dampen down the loudest of the bunch. And here you are, with your head in the deep, asking: What if we soak all of this up? The good, the bad, the barnacle—all with something to say about the way it is we come to love. Stephen, there is no evil in your story. Stephen, you have shown that every villain is lemons. That the sweet and the sour can do so much for each other. I make the craziest of faces when receiving both. It can always make me smile.
Yours,
JR Rhine
August 18, 2022
I sometimes forget we were once like children. That when faced with rock bottom, where our terrors run wild, there are friends in these spaces, too. That when thinking outside of the box, we first create the world within. You showed how genius can be found in the unlikeliest of places, that at the core of our sin is genuine, heartfelt desire. You settled on a protagonist who saw these traits in loved ones and soaked up only what could be used to bring out the best in others. Instead of greed, you saw passion. Instead of narcissism, you saw spectacle. Instead of laziness, you saw individuality. I joke that I follow the characters like a story arc: once young and naïve like Spongebob, to an adolescent sleep-deprived food-munching machine like Patrick, an early twentysomething go-getter like Sandy, to an existential, comfort-craving, anti-capitalist Squidward. I’ll leave the future to decide which type of entrepreneur I’ll become, Plankton or Mr. Krabs (my money is on life with a computer wife). As a marine biologist, you spent your time looking into water beyond your reflection. For the lives that live within and beyond your own. You heard how we have explored less than 5% of the world’s oceans, and even less of the oceans that make up 60% of our own bodies. What if we are each of these characters, and Bikini Bottom is really the city of our watery, barnacle bound hearts? (I much like to think of my mind as a milieu of mini-me’s running around towers of filing cabinets caught on fire.) Maybe your vision is not so much an arc, but a panorama. That so much as celestial bodies are caught pirouetting around a larger body, so are we around the body of work we continue to write and rewrite. That it could be any one of us at the wheel. The glutton, the greedy, the narcissist—all with their own take on the day’s events. We spend so much time trying to single one out, isolate, dampen down the loudest of the bunch. And here you are, with your head in the deep, asking: What if we soak all of this up? The good, the bad, the barnacle—all with something to say about the way it is we come to love. Stephen, there is no evil in your story. Stephen, you have shown that every villain is lemons. That the sweet and the sour can do so much for each other. I make the craziest of faces when receiving both. It can always make me smile.
Yours,
JR Rhine
August 18, 2022
JR Rhine is a poet, musician, and educator in Asheville, North Carolina. He is the author of several chapbooks, along with two children's books. He is on Instagram @jrrhinepoetry.