Bird Song

Birds, they're singing and it seems they are nearby. In the foyer at the base of the steps that lead away from this upper room my wife is painting with a squishy roller. My younger son taps away at his computer reading Wiki articles on God knows what. This time it is about movies. The older brother is reading some anime tale on his laptop.

Lately our home life has been kind of off the rail and so the computer usage has crept up. In talking with my children I am convinced that those studies saying the internet is killing our ability to focus are dead on. Look squirrel, what’s that, what’s that.

Watching this, my guilt grows. Have I given in to a wave, a phenomena that will pull my children away from reality and turn them into drones? Consumers not creators, is that what the end point of this technology infused time? Clearly the time to act is now, or five days ago or five years ago.

Once the creative juices spilled out of one of these lads, but now it seems his focus has shifted to simply watching. Chance the gardener, wasn’t that his line? I am thinking about requiring a journal from him over the coming summer. But again it is summer and is that fair really?

I am not a Luddite. Technology has made my life much better than it would have been had the world remained static circa the 1950s when I was born. My heart would not be working in an acceptable manner to live a day to day life. I would either be dead or an invalid. The youngest wouldn’t have survived his birth nor would his mother. My oldest would most likely be facing a dark future in menial jobs and perhaps worse. Technology avoids all of these very horrible, very undesirable states of affairs.

Something is lost however in the rise of the machines and the never ending expansion of the electronic networks. Flickering cycling dots on our screens do something to us. No one takes the time to sit down and opt out of society for a few hours to read a book. No one turns the phone off and sits on the porch to hear, really hear the birdsong, or to watch the late day’s light fade or to enjoy conversation about the day and what really happened. Is it the technology that is changing us or is it abandoning the old ways of focused communication and purpose driven behavior that is sapping our life fire?

Having spent the night on Friday wondering what was going on with my health and what my odds were for any kind of longevity I made my commitment to combat the rising lack of focus in my life. To that end, to regaining some clarity I will write a few paragraphs down each day this week. Either using my pen or my keyboard I will create at least 500 written words, strung into sentences and at least cursorily edited detailing my thoughts.

Writing is not easy, but it is not hard. Writing requires a commitment to something that lies inside of us, call it soul or ego or passion it a thing that is easy to perceive but nigh on to impossible to satisfy. Part doubt, part desire, part rational, if you look deep inside this thing challenges every action you take and judges every resulting outcome.

Seeking focus I will ask questions of the people that I meet going beyond the “Hi” and “How are you” variety. Politely I will query on things that matter but I will try hard not to make my conversations fluff. I will turn off the television for several nights and I will walk away from the online interactive heroin. No solitaire on the laptop and no verbal jousting on Facebook will be allowed to steal the hours of my life.

Yesterday I picked some of the lettuce I planted about 3 ½ weeks ago and used it on a sandwich. Green and savory it made the bread it rested on seem unworthy. Planting the lettuce was the first of a number of commitments to being here and being in the now I have tried to make of late. Working even a very small part of the earth to nurture food is an act of focus; real dirt, real plants, real rain and real growth of something meaningful.

Aldous Huxley wrote a book called Island. As I remember it the tome was an odd Utopian or Utopia gone wrong piece of literature. Sometimes it is hard to separate those genres in my mind. In the book the eponymous island was populated by parrots or other birds of mimicry that would repeat, “Be here; be now”. The birds were dispersed throughout the island and were placed there by the rulers of the atoll to keep people focused and living in the moment. We all need something that screams be alive to us on a day to day base. Today I will turn my efforts to being in the real here and the real now.

This piece started out with my noting the birds were singing. They are still singing. As I have written in the past couple of years I often mention the chirps and squawks of the avian creatures that are nearby. Being here and being now they call me to be conscious in this moment. When I think of it there must be trees nearby that are attractive to the birds or I would not hear them so regularly. When I think on it maybe it is the green suburban lawns that provide worms for their diets. A sweet birdsong, a moment of wind shear, a blunt answer each hangs real and tangible and demands recognition.