(dis) Tractions

     There is much in the world to distract us, from our phones, earbuds and televisions, to our families, neighbors and pets.  None of this is really viewed as a negative for most of us, depending on your perspective; admittedly the teen (or adult) who doesn't look up at you when you speak, the guest who answers the phone in the middle of your dinner, or the person nearly walking in front of your car because their  wireless ear "things" drowned out white (odd name) noise...well, those sort of things do bother me a bit. for what was once rude behavior is now well, still rude behavior; somehow displaying a lack of respect for where you are or whom you're with is somewhat acceptable in some peoples' minds.  But then we come to the subject of prayer...how distracted are we with that, in both directions?  Now wait, this isn't heading to some sort of sermon or philosophical debate, but rather is a question that popped into my head after I had read about monks and the variety of their practices (one monk had not bathed in 60 years!).  As it turns out, the distractions for monks are as great or perhaps greater than for us ordinary folk.  Trying to reach a higher being takes full concentration, something few of us seem to have time for...

     The review of the book The Wandering Mind appeared in The New Yorker and quickly pulled me away from my stereotypes of monks in general.  Certainly there were the robe-wearing mostly patriarchal set, from early Trappist to distant Tibetan; but monks that lived with families, or kept their possessions?...the variety was as unsettled as the rules being debated and decided in monasteries during the 4th-9th centuries.  As the end the review noted: Perhaps that is why so many of us have half-done tasks on our to-do lists and half-read books on our bedside tables, scroll through Instagram while simultaneously semi-watching Netflix, and swipe between apps and tabs endlessly, from when we first open our eyes until we finally fall asleep.  One uncomfortable explanation for why so many aspects of modern life corrode our attention is that they do not merit it.  The problem for those of us who don’t live in monasteries but hope to make good use of our days is figuring out what might.  That is the real contribution of “The Wandering Mind”: it moves beyond the question of why the mind wanders to the more difficult, more beautiful question of where it should rest.

     With Spring finally in the air, the leaves and flowers seemingly bursting out with speed as if determined not to miss this opportunity should the cold return, even I am out trying to dig into the soil as if happy to let those "distracting" books and magazine gather dust for a few months (which still induces a tiny bit of guilt).  But then I remember the quote by Cesar Chavez: When we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us.  So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are.  Terry Tempest Williams mentioned the quote in her book The Hour of Land, a reflection of her time in many of our national parks; in the book she peppers history, geology, peoples and yes, chemistry into what we may be forgetting by locking ourselves into an artificial world instead of wandering step by step in the soil.  Here's one brief excerpt: Lightning strikes.  Nitrogen and oxygen molecules split and separate into atoms.  Some of these recombine into nitric acid, and dance in the atmosphere, sometimes producing a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms --O3-- ozone.  I love the science of this pleasure.  The scent of ozone heralds a storm because in the frenzy of a thunderstorm, call it a downdraft, winds carry O3 from higher altitudes to nose level.  So when the desert smells like rain it is ozone.  Petrichor.  There is another level to petrichor and it has to do with oils exuded by certain plants especially, in times of drought.  When it rains, these oils that have been absorbed into the dry soil and rocks are released into the air with another compound known as geosmin...Other information supports this smell as a messenger.  Camels will follow their nose to water.  Paying attention to what appears to be peripheral...We are warned by side knowledge of what is to come and too often, we discount it...What is being asked of us?  What am I asking of myself?

     Peggy Orenstein had a different take, one made during the Covid lockdown and her deciding to learn how to shear sheep (to be fair, her book is also filled with historical and personal reflections similar to that of Terry Tempest Williams, although Orenstein does it with quite a bit more humor as if poking fun at herself): Everywhere, we step back from strangers, friends, family (why is that distance called "social"?), avoiding others airborne expulsions...I wonder if we will ever breathe freely again?  When breath is threatened, it's breath that calms.  I have begun meditating every morning, counting each inhale and exhale up to ten, then starting again.  I never had the patience to do this before and it takes all my concentration now.  My body breathes me, whether I will it to or no.  When I lose focus, which I do every few seconds, I try to label my distraction "thinking" or "feeling," but I'm not clear on the difference.  Thoughts, I'm told, give oxygen to emotions, fueling unease -- or maybe it is the reverse, I'm not sure.

     We all know the phrase "pause and take a breath."  It sounds and IS easy when things are calm and your mind is rational; but throw in that angry argument or that final bit of frustration and such advice can often only infuriate you more.  Perhaps it is summarized by that saying on a tee shirt:  Patience: What You Have When There Are Too Many Witnesses.  I've been fortunate enough to be out digging in the garden, of pulling up deep swaths of grass and moving them to other bare spots, of planting a few things, of getting dehydrated at times and finally realizing that I may have tried to tackle a bit too much, of hearing that voice in the back of my head saying "you're not as young as you used to be."  But at the end of the day, I am content, not so much at the amateurish job I've done with the yard (as compared to the landscape trucks that come in with a crew, strip a lawn, plants a few seedlings and spray some bark, all within a matter of hours) but rather that the physical labor, the planning, the mixing of the new soils with the old (a no-no when it comes to tomatoes, apparently), the new set of gloves showing a bit of wear, have all taken my mind off of what has been a smattering of thoughts floating in and out.  It was so old school this escape, this touching and interacting with the earth, a nice break from what researcher Linda Stone termed "screen apnea;"  As a piece in WIRED put it: There are many theories about why extended device use puts the body into a state of stress...the bottom line seems to be that digital technologies trigger a biological state that mirrors the fight-or-flight response...Civilization, Freud believes, was nothing more than a repetition compulsion, humanity's attempt to replicate and reinscribe its fundamental disunity with nature through the very tools that created that alienation in the first place.

     Another rather interesting piece appeared in the same magazine, an article where a philosopher offers his take on trying "mind-enhancing drugs such as psilocybin, cannabis, and muscimal.  What caught my eye wasn't so much his experiences but rather his observation on alcohol: ...one thing that struck me was just what a crummy deal we in the West had been given, whereby all mind-altering substances had been prohibited and stigmatized, except for the one that has such negative medical and social consequences in its overuse as to be described in terms of disease, and that only ever alters consciousness downward, from the more to the less vivid.  Alcohol might make us dance and chatter for a short time, but its technical classification as a "depressant" is surely the correct one.  That wine is a central sacrament of Christianity, moreover, which in its early centuries seems to have had some interest in stamping out vestiges of pagan rituals relying on other more intense varieties of mind alteration, seemed to me suddenly to be a rather serious argument against Christianity.  It turned us into drunks, I reflected, and made us forgetful of the myriad other ways to make use of the fertile bounty of nature...I do not know what the world is, nor what is "keeping the stars apart," to borrow an evocative line from E. E. Cummings.  But mind-altering substances have helped me, at a fairly desperate  point in my life, to dwell in the uncertainty with greater ease, to "own it," as they say, and no longer to feel so dreadfully apart from the stars.

     Working in the garden was a "drug" which transported me away from the heavy and long winter that was truly the polar opposite of what was happening elsewhere in the world: why the Arctic was still warming four times faster than the rest of the world, why the 1100 ski resorts in the Alps got almost zero snow, why Munich was 68 F degrees on New Year's Eve.  In my own state of Utah as well as neighboring states further west, ski resorts broke records for snowfall (the nearby Alta resort got 900+ inches this winter, while the Sierras in California had its 2nd heaviest snowfall since record-keeping began).  As a piece in the New York Review put it: ...winter insists we slow down, stay put, look around, conserve our energy, and find other forms of nourishment than summer's hectic, heedless pursuits.  Somehow this rapid and short Spring was somewhere in the middle, a medatative break before those "hectic, heedless pursuits" could begin.  And yet, limping back into the living room or waking up after a good, exhausted-laden sleep, I began peeking back over my old emails, as in those years-old emails that --like books and such-- you meant to get to but just not right that instant.  Which is when I happened across this nearly-ten-year old time-lapse of our planet at night as viewed from space.  I had completely forgotten about the video, but upon seeing it again it reminded me that we are surrounded by beauty, even as the days and seasons change, my hands now gratefully plunging into soil that was frozen just a month ago.  This was our home, our changing and evolving home, our home turf...

    The same NY Review in a piece on German artist Adam Elsheimer, wrote: Space is too large to claim as our home, and if at this juncture between world systems humans seek a divine in which to trust, it shimmers before them not in the necessary truths of mathematics but in awe-suffused perplexity.  Francis Bacon, ideologue to the emerging Scientific Revolution, urged in 1605 that our awe at God's creations should prompt us to seek reliable understandings of the world.  We should not stand stalled by mere wonder, a state of mind that is no more than "broken knowledge."  Yet that brokeness --so the artist senses-- might hold the larger truth. 

     "To think that I might have beome a poet like that if I had been allowed to settle somewhere, anywhere in the world, in one of the many shuttered up homes in the country that no one looks after anymore.  I would only have needed one room (the light room in the gable).  I would have lived insde with my things, my family portraits, my books...I would have written in it," wrote poet Rainer Maria Rilke.   Phew, heavy stuff, as if I need more thoughts to ponder.  Maybe it would be best to just forget it all and get on a flight outta here for a bit.  Who knows??  Maybe Africa?...then came the call.  My brother was in the emergency room of the hospital.

Photo credit: Visual Storyteller/ Shutterstock