Bird Wave

I had written the first draft of this months ago, before the long quarantine had begun.

==


It's a work day, by which I mean it is a job day for the majority -- whether that majority is Silent, living lives of quiet desperation, or even happy, I cannot say.  Only that they are at a job and I am not.  I am at a library, on the third floor.

My frugal phone has a radio function enabled, something nearly all phones had available for years, but only recently turned on; folly and greed can outrun technological progress.  I listen to a classical station and a piece I've never heard before uplifts me.  The outer walls of the library are just glass -- window after window, what I thought was absurd modernism now shown to be very useful.  I can see the flights of birds, most of it below my level.  I see groupings swell up in light and come back down in waves, close enough to the movements of the music to be exhilarated further.

A perfect hour, the bloom of the moment [1], but I had errands to run, and so I was to leave very soon after that, but not before the next song was over.

==
[1] My second reference to Walden in this quite short piece.

Sunrise, Earned

The first and even the second draft of this piece was written few weeks ago.  I like to let ideas incubate for a while, and I try to give some space so I can catch all the typos that I can. The events depicted were from a freer time, when there were jobs to go to.  I mean, I didn't go to one -- but they were there. 

==

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', girl
Are you happy in this modern world?
Or do you need more?
Is there somethin' else you're searchin' for?

If 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.

. . .

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.

Giving the Fruit Trees Some Love

I'm very well pleased with my decision to take a break (mostly) from vegetables this year.  It's allowed me to focus more on the needs of the fruit trees.  And while it looks like pruning should be filed under robot work in our great and glorious future, I like having an excuse to go outside.  It's a joy to see the occasional ladybug, or whatever the outside eco-system has in store for me that day (I mean, within reason).

When I was most heavily dealing with grief, I felt the need to walk and wander, and so it was good to have a place like Sutton Wilderness.  But with time, it is often enough to poke around the margins of the grounds to fill my yearning for nature and my sense of wonder.

The eye craves variety, and the hands something to do.  That and getting out on a perfect hour seems to be enough. . . most days.

On Feeling Alive

I don't think you can force yourself feel alive any more than you can force yourself to sleep.  The analogy is illuminating:  like sleep, when you want to set out to feel alive, the best you can do is work on your environment, figure out what does and doesn't work for you, and try to eliminate enough of what doesn't work to leave some parts of yourself deeper than your awareness to do their job [1].

One level of explanation is that the act of forcing floods your nervous system with the wrong kind of hormones.   In both cases, we really haven't figured out artificial ways to get where we want to go that are side-effect free or effective long-term, though there are those who will swear by each and/or every artificial means you can name.

As a strategy for feeling alive it still seems that the best practice is to free up your schedule so you are available when the different variables come together to make these moments possible.  As Thoreau says

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. 

And Taleb has something useful to add with this aphorism:

The English have random Mediterranean weather; but they go to Spain because their free hours aren't free.

Not only do you have to be physically free -- able to go outside during a perfect hour, and as Taleb shows more days have perfect hours than most people would suppose -- but you also need to be mentally free for the moment when it is presented.  Thus, it is wise to look ahead and not fill your mind with junk, particularly resentments and longings.  

I'll speak from my own case.  While filling my mind poorly doesn't feel that bad at the time-- after most  internet feeder sessions, I  might feel a bit icky, but not that icky --  the real problem is that it cedes future head-space that I could use for beauty.  And feeling alive is worth the sacrifices and the planning ahead.

===

[1] Or, I like the thought experiment of seeing those parts as above you, or pulling you up, or along . . . conceptualize it in different ways, as you wish.

Examine Other Beauties

Early on in “Romeo and Juliet” Benvolio gives Romeo the excellent advice to “examine other beauties.”  I’m of course aware that Benvolio is talking about meeting other girls as a remedy to obsessing over one rejection.  But I also think the principle can be generalized to great effect.  Rather than getting caught up in one set-back, or worse, wallowing in whatever the culture of fear has put on the menu for you today -- seek out something beautiful from some other domain. 

It also interests me that Romeo and Juliet was written during the period that Shakespeare wrote what some call his lyrical plays, which also included “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Richard II” and “Love Labour’s Lost.”

From Wikipedia:

These four plays are argued to represent a phase of Shakespeare's career when he was experimenting with rhyming iambic pentameter as an alternative form to standard blank verse; Richard II has more rhymed verse than any other history play (19.1%), Romeo and Juliet more than any other tragedy (16.6%) and Love's Labour's and Midsummer Night more than any other comedy (43.1% and 45.5% respectively).[112] All four tend to be dated to the period 1594–1595.

Having read these plays, I think Shakespeare was fascinated with how beauty could work on us, and what it’s limits were.  So I think that it’s possible, even likely that Benvolio’s advice came up because beauty was very much on Shakespeare’s mind as a philosophical concept.

So even if your mopey inner-teenager is telling you there is no way it can work, you might want to try to examine other beauties.