Thinking, Walking and Being Seen

A Space True and North has existed for over a decade now. Blogs were the fashion when I created it. Blogging is no longer in vogue, or so it seems. Mostly people Twitter or use Instagram or interact through other forms of quick communication. Quick is the key.  We don’t have time for much else the soft margins of our lives have disappeared.  Twitter, I am less than impressed. We are governed by a human being who believes at Twitter is the way to conduct all affairs both those personal and those of state.

 

Each time we step further away from considered reflection we lose something. With each time saving tweak, we lose a bit of our humanity. I guess I should say it’s my opinion that we lose a bit of our humanity. Twitter and Facebook encourage immediate visceral responses. Sometimes we should hold our tongue and let our brain do its work before we act or speak. Sometimes we need to reflect and play the movie to the end before we act.  Playing the tape to the end is an Alcoholics Anonymous saying meaning consider each consequence that follows your next action to an ultimate conclusion. Once you have done that then and only then make a choice.

 

The other day I decided that I needed a vacation from Facebook. There are a couple specific factors that motivated me. One was deeply personal. Some others general. All sort of coalesced into a general discomfort with the negativity in the stream of current postings. Not posting on Facebook left me feeling an internal void. I still want to create words. Trying to scratch that creative itch I turned to my blog. I was somewhat shocked to find I have not posted in exactly 1/4 year.

 

Since I have turn my back on Facebook these three days I have found plenty of time to generate posts. I have also found more time to work on my amateur photographs. It is invigorating. Time is short, and I need to keep the spark alive mentally and artistically. Yes, it feels good to be writing.

 

This is a side note one funny thing happened to me yesterday. Because I walk to work every day and wear a bright red T-shirt, and because I’m walking at prime commute time, I am seen by many people who have known me. I had three separate people at three separate times talk to me about either seeing me walk or asking about why I walk so much. Apparently, I’m quite visible out on the byways of my community. So, it goes.

Flying Again

Sunny cool morning today. The humidity is way down. The combination is a good thing. I have gotten an early start on my way into the office.

 

Yesterday after much agonizing and fighting with websites, I purchased two airfares to Portugal. It’s not the fighting with the websites which bothers me. What bothers me is the certainty I will eventually have to get on an airplane. Flying is the biggest issue. I am less afraid of flying now than I have been in the past. Still don’t like it. Valium will be needed to get me on board that long metal tube. Still, I feel I must go.

 

Every morning when I wake up I find something that troubles me immensely about what is occurring in my country, in this the land of my birth. I would never give up or disavow my American citizenship. But like someone in a long-term committed relationship hitting a really rough patch, I feel it is time we spend some time apart. No country is the shining city on the hill. But sometimes looking at a relationship from a distance gives perspective and a sense of how to move forward.

 

Several areas exist in my life where I feel it is time I gain perspective. Must be the philosophy I have been reading. The ethic of observe, consider, disassemble, re-construct and adopt has taken root in me.

 

Oh well it is back to the language podcasts again. Got to learn how to ask for more than beer in Portuguese.

Blossom *

Sometimes when you were not really looking for a bud, a leaf or a beautiful blossom catches your eye. As you gaze down upon the flower there’s a voice deep inside that whispers. Speaking softly, it says I am life, I am here, be aware, be in this moment. It could be a dandelion shouting out this message. Maybe it will come from dew on unmown moving grass with drops on each blade at several points bending the slender green shaft. Life, I am here, be aware, be in this moment.

Ghost *

One day without noticing what was happening, he became a ghost. Almost imperceptibly he left the world of substance.  His change was such that in his entire being there was not enough mass to become a vampire or some other kind of creature found living between the dark and the dawn. Gossamer and ethereal he wentunnoticed by most. Occasionally someone would catch a glimpse of him out of the side of their eye, but if they turned and looked at him head on they saw other the things of substance that lay behind him. He vanished completely when they looked directly at him.  A thoughtful person might wonder for a second, but not more, is there someone here, is there something happening.?

Forgetting the Past, Walking into Fall

Overcast morning today. The moisture contained in the air is at a high level and id growing higher by the hour.  One forecast said it would rain by 11 am. By the time I reach my office, approximately 35 minutes from now, I will be drenched in sweat. From all I read such a soaking of perspiration is a good thing. Exercise keeps the heart strong.

 

When I first began my walk this morning the song Landslide by Fleetwood Mac was playing. I felt my emotions growing warm, maybe nostalgic and I started to smile when I heard the music. My mood changed quickly. Landslide was released over 40 years ago. Its hook, its chorus saturated the FM airwaves before I had graduated university. Still all these many years later I can hear that song getting airplay at least once or twice a day on one of the various satellite radio stations.

 

Landslide while a good song is a relic of the past. The song and its gentle lyrics of love are as far removed and remote from the current world’s reality as can be.  It is a song that was born in a time when we believed and were hopeful that each generation would do something better. I decided that I had to cast off the music of the past, of my past, just as much as I must jettison the belief I held in the America. American as I knew it growing up no longer exists.

 

(Halfway into my walk and I can feel the sweat starting to form. Today I am keeping a pretty good pace. I found my knee brace this morning and that helps.)

 

Midsummer and verdant is the landscape. The foliage of plants and trees are quite beautiful to my eye. Most of the blooms, bright clothing designed for attracting pollinating bees, are faded and gone. Instead, there are a thousand hues of green. This moment is a different time. Around me are different aspect of beauty. Right now, this is the middle age of the year. It is only 59 more days until fall comes by the traditional calendar starts. For Michigan begins much earlier. Mind you, I don’t want to wish summer away. Me, I simply want to experience fall in all its glory. Winter for me will come much too soon.

Thinking in Isolation

Grey day this one.  Looking at my exercise monitor have walked about five miles already.  Not bad for my age.

Funny thing is that as a university student I would have walked probably twice this distance each day.  Back then I did not have the luxury of a cellphone to talk to someone about this and that as I trod across campus.  The Walkman and its progeny the MP3 player and then the iPod were years in the future.  What I got was my thoughts and the ambient sounds of traffic and pedestrians and clarion bells peeling the fifteen-minute quadrants of the daylight hours. 

When I walked for twenty to twenty-five minutes five or six times a day my mind stayed focused.  When is my next exam?  So was that “We’ll see” from her more of a yes than a no about the John Hartford concert at the Kiva tomorrow.  I need to pick up a pack of cigarettes. If I swing by the library will I get back to the cafeteria in time to get some of the first-choice entrée at dinner tonight.

Yes, most of my thoughts were run of the mill and mundane. Still, I thought about them each individually and in some detail.  Without the constant stream of external noise from podcasts and people needed to/wanting to talk on the phone I could unpack all the baggage around a single idea. I could weigh and balance with some time to do it with justice, the things I was facing.

But there were moments. Like the time that I got riotously involved in the classroom discussion about defining oneself to different people.  I mean one day your communication professor told me that it was okay to present different views of myself to different people and that everybody did it.  The variation in my presentation was simply a matter of degree. How liberating as I thought about the implications of that. More importantly I though about it from all sorts of angles.

Or maybe I had read an article about living in daylight rooms.  The author urging us to clear out our minds of the resentments from the day past and live each day with openness and awareness of what I would be letting into your life.  Some self-help groups have concepts like that but to hear it from someone credentialed in a magazine I trusted, well that was something else. Without the tiny little computer, we call a phone, that is in virtually everyone’s hand I had to think about it and then I had to talk about it around the dinner meal.

Now I have headphones when I walk, but half the time I leave them off.  Half the time I just focus on the things of the heart and the things of the mind.  I am worried that we now have a generation wired to the ephemeral, tethered to the right now of gossip, pun making, and punditry as opposed to the be here, be now mantra of various faiths. How will they ever learn to think critically.

Life is change.  I hope the next evolutionary cycle brings up back to giving ourselves time for reflection and thought. Life is walking in silence and thinking.

Merton and Merwin []

On a normal day when I find myself somewhat lost my inclination is to read some Thomas Merton. At this moment, currently I feel a little lost.  Meaning, the meaning of life is eluding me right now.  A dose of Merton would help.  When the late monk talked about saying mass alone in his hermitage and noticing the light playing off the spider web by a window, there was a joy in the simplest and most holy parts of existence.  The light playing off simple silk explained eternity far better than any philosopher’s musing. Merton’s writing has a way of putting human angst in its place.

But I am in a winding up mindset and I have been emptying out my office of all things personal.  About the only things left that reflect “me” are two photographs, one with my late brothers and one with the school board I once was a part of.  There is an admission certificate to the Delaware State Bar.  A set of five Buddhist prayer flags is tacked up on what used to be a bulletin board.  Finally, there is a copy of a book of poetry from a former United States Poet Laureate, W.S. Merwin.

Merwin does not address the holy and divine as Merton does.  But they have similar threads in their respective work.  Merwin focuses on the transient, the beauty of the fleeting.  Merwin is a Buddhist seeking a way forward toward enlightenment.  Merton is a mystic seeking the closest connection with an articulated nature of God.  Merton acknowledges the limitations of this life we live but has a greater hope, a higher hope. Lacking Merton, I must turn to Merwin.

Dew Light

Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age

Who needs meaning?  There is now and then there isn’t.