I'm seriously considering a change in lifestyle -- more reading, more bike riding, less electronic media -- because I find that the more audio-visual stimulation I get, the more I want. It can become a little immoderate.
When I was a kid, my Dad watched the weather report every evening on the TV news. I know what you're thinking: he had to because he was a blimp pilot. But he wasn't a blimp pilot. And I'm the same way except instead of traffic & weather my drug of choice is political news -- and no, I'm not a Prime Minister.
On nine-eleven, when all the mayhem was unfolding, I was in our apartment in San Francisco with Jude watching news and flipping all around the web. Hour after hour after hour, watching that replay video and listening for even the slightest new piece of information. It was like drinking a lot of coffee on an empty stomach.
And I remember that evening we went out and had dinner in a restaurant. We felt a little weird about it, as if our going out for a meal was a violation of the sanctity of the day's events. But, walking around the City, we passed our local firehouse at dusk and noticed flags had been added to the trucks, and we saw candles in a lot of peoples' windows, and we found to our surprise that the restaurant was busy.
As I moved the salt and pepper shakers around, unrolled my silverware, and talked with Jude I realized that I'd spent most of the day preoccupied not with what had happened to all those people, but with what else might happen. I'd wanted an overview of the entire story arc -- how big is this thing? That's natural enough, I guess, considering that if the overall story were large enough it might actually affect my own life, or even death. But we'd actually done nothing all day and were exhausted by evening just from trying to find the beginning and the end of the story, like two ends of a huge, wet, tangled rope. Since the mission of news sites and shows is to find more news and keep you watching, you never find the end.
But walking hand-in-hand to that restaurant, looking at the candles and sitting with all those strangers, I felt for the first time that day that I didn't care at all what might be happening on CNN. I ordered the special, butternut squash ravioli with saffron, and a glass of wine. If San Francisco were to be attacked that evening and the restaurant incinerated, I'd find out soon enough.
2 comments:
I highly recommend Chicken Therapy. After work, on many days, I go outside to the coop and let Ro's seven chickens out to walk freely around the yard. They don't like to be cooped up. That's where that comes from. Since the sun is setting, they naturally stay fairly close to the coop and there's no need to wrangle them. After about ten minutes of sitting in a lawn chair with no Mac and no Palm, I ease into Chicken Time. They're scratching the ground and cocking their heads in search of crickets and moths. They occasionally peck one another. That's where "pecking order" comes from. Every so often, one of them will take off running at high speed and let out a loud squawk, but mostly they scratch and mumble. You can almost make out what they're saying under their breath. Not one of them has every asked for my email address.
Got a joke for you.
Q: Why does a chicken coop have two doors?
A: If it had four doors, it'd be a chicken sedan.
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