==
This piece will be about my experience watching a sunrise and some of the implications of such an activity, but before that I start in one of my favorite places -- a coffee house.
When my wife and I showed up, all of the tables suited for sprawling out were taken. Instead, we sat a little nook with four of the kind of chairs you could sink into, positioned in a circle gesturing at the kind of intimate conversation over coffee I think many of us long for but virtually never have [1]. Well, I didn't know it when I sat down, but two ladies were about to have one of those conversations. The first to arrive sat some items down and then asked if anyone was sitting here. As I had already given my wife my headphones in an act of kindness, the question fell upon me. I chirped some polite welcome to the seat. She sat down and pulled the other seat close to her. I'm not sure whether or not I felt trepidation about it at the time, but it sounds like something I would feel.
Her friend showed up shortly after that and they began a very bougie conversation -- career, remodeling, the personality of a boss, soccer tournaments, etc. I had been working on the second draft of a piece, but I couldn't concentrate with their conversation going on. To give some insight to my writing process, if I am writing a second draft on a yellow notepad rather than typing it out it means I have some problems with structure that I find particularly knotty. In that situation, I need to be able to clear my head. And a bougie conversation does not help me to do this.
After dealing with their bougie conversation for a while and attempting to start with the problem several times, I saw a seat had opened up by the window and I moved to it for a while. Finally free from the bougie conversation, I was able to quickly see a solution and proceeded to smoothly write the piece. Truth be told, once I had the puzzle figured out I probably could have returned to where I was and worked effectively enough, but coming back after such a short amount of time away would have seemed rather odd. As it was, when I finished the draft and was looking to return, I was nervous that the ladies would give me a perplexed look when I took my seat again. Fortunately, they did not. They continued right on, rapt in their conversation (did I mention it was in the manner of the bourgeois yet?) They spoke a short time longer and I was able to pull out a book and half-read it and half-listen to them with a spirit of slack, and thus some pleasure. They departed soon enough after that.
After they left, I wondered what it was that was so distracting about their conversation. Their volume was perfectly appropriate for the setting, so it couldn't have been that. They weren't saying anything offensive or cruel or even callous. Instead, I think the answer is that they kept hitting topics I could find interesting, then proceeded down paths I could follow and agree with, but then just . . . veered off. It's not that they were too different from me; it was that they were too similar.
I think it's great that someone is attempting to free-lance. In fact, it is one of my life's aspirations to one day be self-employed. But then if you talk about the need to re-model to make an office, I distrust your ability to stay profitable. Maybe your connections will bail you out. It must be nice to have those.. . . Oh, one your offers is something involving George W Bush. This leads to bougie agreement that while W wasn't a great President -- ha ha -- Trump shows he's not that bad, I mean W's a sweet man who does those paintings.
I want you to know that at that point, I didn't formulate a thought. But I know that listening to this at the time felt mostly right. . . then wrong. And this pattern kept happening in the conversation. The feeling is what prevented me from seeing a solution to the structural puzzle I was trying to solve in my prose. I think the subtle off-ness of the conversation took up my "feel space" so I couldn't feel what to do with the writing.
If it came up, I could tell someone the "Bush is better than Trump because he paints now" felt off to me. If the person I was talking to gave sympathetic body language, I and the person would feel closer, but then I could be done with it, having never formulated the feelings as thoughts. But if someone asked me why I felt that way (and their tone could be curious or accusatory, with different emotional implications, of course), I would provide something like "Jesus Christ! How stupid does someone have to be to get their information only from social media? I've seen that shit too, and when I did I immediately did something called thinking. What does painting or politeness have to do with policies and how they materially impact people? Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead. The banking crisis brewed under his 8-year watch. The punitive nature of No Child Left Behind. The normalization and even fetishization of torture. The rise of mass surveillance [2]. And don't forget about what Katrina showed about the levels of competence and care."
That's what I would say, if asked to elaborate on my feeling. If I were to write out a position on the matter, I would reverse the arguments about material impact and social media group-think trying to make civility the only short-cut for goodness. Also, I'd remove the the insults and curse words. However, again, I want to emphasize that I didn't think any of those thoughts at the time. This is because I'm not the habit of constantly signaling my moral intuitions. Instead, I sat there more or less placidly until I saw a way to change my micro-environment to get the task I valued done.
But before I got up one of the two ladies, the one who wasn't experimenting with free-lancing, but instead thinks the taciturn nature of her boss is interesting and has her kids in too many activities including, of course, soccer, said something that I can honestly say has changed my life. She mentioned waking up at 5:00 am in order to get her exercise in. For one thing, she said she has discovered that she won't do it in the evenings. For another, when she gets a workout done in the morning, even if she gets nothing else done in the course of the day, she can at least say she did that.
By golly, I'm glad my mind was placid [3] because I was able to hear her and weigh the merits of what she said. The women saying this wasn't particularly thin, so this wasn't a moment of pleasantville-like positivity propaganda, or a kind of managerial eugenics. Instead, she was earnestly sharing an idea that let her feel good about sacrificing a little bit to the the right thing. I thought about it for a few days, and then started setting my alarm for 5:30 am and doing exercises in the morning. I have started very small, almost laughably small to avoid injuries, but it feels like the kind of habit I want to keep. It gives me structure to my days here in a sabbatical and it is something I should be able to do even when I return to work.
Part II
===
I remember listening to a Joe Rogan podcast, something I do rarely enough, and he mentioned someone who wakes up even earlier than I am proposing, say 3:30, to work out. Rogan said with admiration "he earns his sunrise."
I had been working on my habit of rising early to work out for three days. The first two I had missed the sunrise. On day one, I fell back asleep after the exercises and breakfast only to wake up at noon (reasonably enough as I had originally gone to sleep after 2:00 am). On day two I stayed up but had missed the sunrise doing other things. But on the third day, after I dropped my wife off to her job and filled the gas tank, the sky looked beautiful with pastel pinks and blues playing on the clouds. Being the student of Life that I am, I knew the closest location to get a good view of the sunrise was the Walmart parking lot. (The perfect spot of sunsets used to be a grocery store parking lot. There was even a bench at a bus stop where I could sat and watch, but then a Chick-Fil-A was put in. Since there are not buildings behind that, I assume the Chick-Fil-A parking lot is now an optimal place to watch sunsets, but I have not explored this possibility yet).
I parked my car and soaked in the early morning. I let two songs play on the radio before I turned off the engine to just watch and Do Nothing. First: "Shallow".
Tell me somethin', girlIf I didn't like the next sound, I was going to turn the radio off, but the next song was "Fantasy" by Mariah Carey. This lead me to dance seated, thrashing my shoulders around a bit.
Are you happy in this modern world?
Or do you need more?
Is there somethin' else you're searchin' for?
. . .
After the music, I settled into silence. At that moment, for the first time, I wished I had a more sophisticated phone, so I could take a picture and send it to my best man, as I like to call Nat Wernick, who was naturally enough the best man at my wedding. Through the years I had a smartphone and data plan, I would send him photos of sunrises and sunsets. This happened infrequently and randomly enough to serve as a good ice breaker and reminder of presence. I made a mental note to text him when I got home, after the aesthetic experience was done.
. . .
A little later I heard some geese in the distance, which is always such a wonderful surprise gift to receive. I basked in the smile (is it right to call it "my" smile? The dance of the moment created it; I was just choosing to notice it). And then I saw that the geese were coming toward me. I watched them fly by in two waves. I had never seen a goose honk mid-flight from a profile directly in front of me before. It looked like the goose in question was straining forward, as if the strain in the beak and neck was pulling the rest of the bird body along.
I was overwhelmed with feelings of compassion and love. I have had so much death in my life that I have deep understandings of it (ones I wouldn't wish on anyone) and many times deep experiences will activate these understandings. So much happened nearly simultaneously and jumbled together that "think" is the wrong word, so I will use the word "perceived" instead.
I perceived that all the geese would one day grow old, and one day would die. I perceived that death is often a struggle, that I have have spent hours ruminating that there is a high likelihood I will be very scared the moment I die [4] and I will probably struggle. I was reminded of other times I have been flooded with love and compassion for animals, like one time with a mouse (something I have not yet written about).
All that happened in a second, perhaps two. But I think you'll admit it was a good moment.
. . .
It was back to Doing Nothing and watching clouds for a bit. Eventually the composition of the colors changed, regressing back to the mundane. The sun also moved up to a position that hurt my eyes. It became time to go. As I drove away, the song was "Faith" by George Michael.
Implications
===
I want to be a writer about, and defender of, perfect, unhurried moments. But more importantly, I want to experience them. With that said, it is often better to plan and monitor in larger blocks of time -- say, a week. If all I do is chase beauty and stillness, I find I get kind of habituated to that and it makes knocks down my energy levels very close to, if not in fact, depression. Also, I then have nothing to show for my time and people around me do not approve. (And "no thank you" to changing my tribes. I like the ones I have just fine).
There is a time to create, a time to maintain the body, and a time to contribute. These are all recognized within bourgeoisie habits. I merely add that there are times for beauty and transcendence.
===
[1] Especially for me, considering caffeine is too prone to make me far too manic to do my part to keep the conversation feeling like an inter-play, a dance, a true act of intimacy. I really need to experiment more with tea and mint teas.
[2] I know that Democratic politicians are complicit in nearly all of this. . . And? Do you think bad things are only bad if they score points for one political party or another?
[3] I already mentioned that I am not in the habit of public signaling as one reason why this is so. I also think my work in the discursive cluster of so-called Eastern thought helped me form the habit. (the Western tradition of Stoicism could potentially work; it's just not the one I got to first). While I haven't done all that much sitting meditation, for decades I have built up experiences noticing narratives forming and then pausing them, questioning them, or just letting them pass over "me" (the observing self). Because of this perhaps many judgmental or angry narratives don't often come up to play. Or perhaps I'm not a dick. And perhaps those are the same thing.
[4] I did not perceive in that moment my other thing I had ruminated over, such as I could one day die in my sleep or under anesthesia and not have any experience of the end. I know a lot of people have a stated love for this way to go, but I see such meaningless in it that it has caused me terror. If the last moment is meaningless, what about the second to last moment? The third to last moment . . And so on to every moment. Not the kind of thoughts happy people think, I know. I feel blessed to not be trapped in these mental grooves anymore. I don't wish it on anyone.
