All the Names for Snow

"When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seeminly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form — or a species — will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap."
— Eckhart Tolle

Still January 26, 2009

Coming up the walk just a little while ago, the snow had that Very Cold Squeak. We need more words for snow, in all its permutations. Like the Inuit. “Snow” just doesn’t cut it when you’re in the dead of winter.

We need more exciting ways to describe what’s underfoot….like Really F***ing Cold Snow, Deliriously Mushy Snow, Snowman snow, snowball fight snow, Snow that Has Had Freezing Rain Fall on It and Is Now Strong Enough to Support an Eight Year Old Without Them Falling Through. But these types need poetic names! There are just way more types of snow than just “snow”.

Mia’s been writing me letters. It’s great to get cards. Tonight the novelty of writing letters feels slightly worn off, just the way I didn’t want to sit down and write this.

On Friday, another first. Sitting at home in the front room (right now, the massage room) to study instead of going down to the Old Port….staying at home is much cheaper, and I wasn’t feeling all that great…and it became evident that studying at home used to be punctuated with being on the internet.

It’s funny to think that only a month ago this was such a part of my life and that in less than a month I’ve effectively been set free from it. In any case—there would be a period of studying, after which I’d reward myself with some time on Facebook, or checking email. How much brain power and time were spent anticipating these moments or processing these moments afterwards are what scare me. Much more than the 2-3 hours I spent online, on average. Possibly more.

It's Still....Reallllly Cold Out

"Usually people are completely unaware of the roles they play. They are those roles."
— Eckhart Tolle

Still January 26, 2009

I’m getting incredibly blasé about the weather, which, considering how house-bound I’ve been feeling, is rather unbelievable.

Tonight Jeff told me over dinner that it’s supposed to be snowing Wednesday. “What? Really!?” I exclaimed. I pressed him for details but he was annoyingly vague. Still it occurred to me that I hadn’t called the weather forecast to find out when our prison sentence of excessively cold weather was coming to an end. Was I somehow enjoying the punishment too much?

I haven’t been mentioning this experiment to as many people the last week or two, but I should continue to mention it rather than not. People get inspired by it and also say some interesting things.

Cat's Turning Cartwheels Cuz It's Cold as He**

"Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought."
— Eckhart Tolle

Monday, January 26, 2009
Late evening

Just got home from the meeting. I was wanting everyone else to be the writers tonight, so here I am. I would rather be reading the NYT, or Eckhart Tolle, or just about anything or anybody else tonight than writing. So, I’m writing. That’s my call tonight. There are many other activities I would like to engage in: fiddle, guitar, singing, carding wool, knitting, starting a second (or is that third?) knitting project.

There is just such a sense of agitation from the cold weather—it’s been getting down below zero at night, and only in the oughts and teens during the day—that it’s getting hard to be inside my own head.

Fortunately, Jeff was rowdy enough on Sunday, before the temperatures plummeted, to get out with the boys and build on the snow castle that has been evolving on the north edge of the driveway. The walls are now about 4-5 feet tall when you are standing up in it—and to get up in it there are 2 stairways or a short tunnel to crawl through.

If the temp were above 20, I would simply open the windows for a half-hour, or open the big glass kitchen door to the back deck to get a few lungfuls of marvelously oxygen-rich winter air. Not today. Today is the day of the glass box. And a lovely box it is—with stove, tea kettle, woodstove, stereo, and the most beautiful children from whom I need about a two-day vacation, and they me, and probably each other as well—and so it is—a box. A nice box. But a box.

Our twelve-year-old cat has practically been turning cartwheels to unleash the pentup energy, as she has barely been making her winter run out the back door, around the house, and in the front door. Or, when the sun is out and there isn’t too much ice, out onto the back porch in the “warm” sunshine for a few minutes. These things have been off-limits.

Inauguration Day, Part II

January 20, 2009
Inauguration Day, part II

After watching and celebrating at Brenda’s, we walked back home. Charlie stayed out for a bit with me, Baxter went in. I spent about 45 minutes scraping ice off the back porch. The deep untouched snow in the backyard etched in places where footprints had cut through to the back gate.

I kind of wished I had a radio to bring out to listen to NPR while scraping ice off the deck (the thick kind that forms under the icicles). But then I thought, that’s not possible. This is what’s happening right now: the white snow, the sunshine, the icicles dripping, the ice scraping off, sometimes in sheets, mostly in scraggly bits. The vivid blue sky. A beautiful inauguration day. Here in my adopted home state of Maine. Letting the mind digest the intensity of what we’d been listening to, watching. Not overloading. Not incessantly repeating. Not communicating with people I cannot see or hear using an electronic device.
*
Today would have been a good day for wikipedia. Yesterday too. I think about investing in a real encyclopedia set even though it would need to be updated in 5 minutes. Then I remember world book on the computer. Maybe this is in our future. But I still have missed spending days with the old encyclopedias. Remember the encyclopedia salesmen? Remember enjoying a good book?
*
When the kids have questions we would have googled, I write them down to address later. There’s a mindfulness to that.
*
Today I phoned people when I thought of them instead of facebooking, texting, emailing. I called my cousin Sue when I thought how our grandmother Helena would have LOVED today, and also her mother Katherine. She was totally touched that I called. Later I realized it’s because people don’t do this so often. I phoned my aunt and uncle, and of course mrk in Seattle, who sounds like he might have a new girlfriend because he didn’t really have time to talk (!).
*
I seem to be recovering from my weather prediction addiction. Now I’m content with sun/no sun; general temperature range; precipitation or no; wind or no. I don’t need to obsessively call the weather line the way I would obsessively check the weather online.
*
A possible name for what this journal is (even though it’s on the computer): Anablog. Or the Antiblog. As in, not a Blog.
*
Walking to the Rosemont Market tonight between the piles of snow (there's so much now that it’s hard to find a place to put it). I’m becoming a more concentrated version of myself again. Walking along that evening road, amidst all that snow, not available to anyone by the digital networks except maybe Jeff.

Inauguration Day Part I

January 20, 2009
Inauguration Day Part I
My mother’s 70th birthday

Woke up, called my mother for her birthday. She sounded very well, healthy, happy. Enjoying her workouts on the treadmill and reports that she feels less creaky, has less aches and pains.

Then — getting everyone ready to go over to Brenda’s to watch the inauguration from 11:00 till 12:30. We listen to NPR prior. I love the radio. They talk, I listen while doing other things. They describe, I get the picture in my head. The voice can carry so much. The kids were very excited. We have talked much about the historical magnitude of electing this man: more amazing than putting a man on the moon. They came to the polls with both Jeff & me. They have shared in the excitement. They have felt some level of ownership in the fact this man was elected. They have both referred to him as “my president.”

Then over to Brenda’s. She ordered pizza; we festooned each other with little mementos (I had some Lisa Bess earrings; she gave the kiddos Barack Obama pencils). We watched for an hour and a half as many dignitaries, senators, judges, former presidents, new cabinet members, came through the capitol building and through the back door toward the mall (which was packed past the Washington monument) and took their seats.

Then — Obama walks out. A prince, as Garrison Keillor recently referred to him.

*
While the overwhelming feeling for me has been pride in my country, and excitement, etc., I do find that I slip into some shame when I look at the Obamas. I look at President Obama and see a man who has held fast to probably just about every good opportunity that came his way. Someone who has created opportunity for himself. I realize how it is a sign of inherited privilege to abandon opportunity — something I've been guilty of at times.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Day

"There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness."
— Rumi

January 19, 2009 · Monday
MLK Jr. Day

This day has special significance this year given what’s happening tomorrow. For the first time I get a little wistful that I’m not in Washington. Then I remember — the crowds.

Wake up somewhat grieving email. I imagine people all over Facebook plastering themselves with excitement.

I get over this quickly when our homeschool family coop happens, at our house again, with happy kiddos playing all over the piles of snow the plow left behind.

And then we get to work on the newspaper I’m helping them put together, The Blue Eagle. The kids all made badges last week out of watercolor paper and ribbon, and everyone showed up with theirs this week, and their notebooks.

Some had hand-written news stories about grackles stealing fruit or giant icicles; one had compelling photos of fishing and cub scouts on which he declined to comment. They all decorated a letter to go in the name of the paper on the first page.

Talking with Neighbors, Maine Style

[photo by Mia McCullough]

"One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim, and run a course or two before they make their port."
— Thoreau, "Visitors," Walden

January 18, 2009
Sunday

Snowstorm leaves us with about a foot of snow. Magnificent storm, falling heavily much of the time. Everyone delighted. Had about a 45-minute conversation in the middle of the street with two neighbors up the block — Mike with his homebrew and George in his hat and glasses — talking so long that we accumulated about a half inch of snow on our heads and shoulders.

It occurs to me that I’m approaching a major historical event — the inauguration of Barack Obama — without the internet. There is a feeling of missing something, until I realize that there is NPR, there is the newspaper, and that being glued to the internet for days before, during, after, would cheapen the experience for me. We’re planning to be over at Brenda’s during the inauguration; she’s got cable.

The Marvelous Inefficiency of the Human

"Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous."
— Thoreau, "Where I Lived," Walden

[photo by Mia McCullough]

Right now I'm navigating the Extra Fifteen Minutes — I was all ready to leave the office and go downstairs to meet up with my ride — got a call from Charlie saying they were just heading down here. Another hurdle!

Up till now I might have taken the opportunity to check Facebook from my phone, come up to the office and get on the internet; instead I'm down here at street level, looking out at Exchange Street, and writing!! So totally amazing!

The creation of SPACE — instead of cramming more in, just allowing the space to be there. It's like clearing the desk and not then automatically cluttering it. WOW. TIME can equal SPACE. SPACE = creativity!

The marvelous inefficiency of the human gives rise to creativity!

The Day I Became Linus Pauling

[sunset from my studio]


The cook says,
'I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time,
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices,
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher.'

— Rumi, "Chickpea to Cook," tr. Coleman Barks

January 14, 2009

Idea for story while half-asleep this morning. This is the sort of stuff that is happening more right now.

The Day I Became Linus Pauling

10 or 11 yo 5th grade girl, intimidated by science, thinks she can’t do it, with unsupportive science teacher, wakes up one morning and she is not in her own bed. She gets up, walks downstairs, and a lady about the age of her grandmother says, Good Morning, Linus, and kisses her on the cheek.

She dresses and goes outside to try and find her way to school and when she walks in the front door, it’s not school. It’s an office. And everyone says, Good morning Dr. Pauling! How are you this morning, Dr. Pauling? Are you ready for your speech tonight? Are you ready for your lecture this morning at M.I.T.?

She goes to teach at MIT and she opens her mouth to say she really isn’t supposed to be here, that she’s a 5th grader who can’t do science very well! But instead, she gives a lecture on Chemistry!

She steps to the board, terrified she will blow her cover…instead all kinds of complex equations go up in chalk on the board! She cannot believe it and receives all kinds of accolades for her teaching! Brilliant college boys come up and want her autograph! That night she gives her speech. Again, she swallows hard, and opens her mouth to say that this is is all a big mistake, but instead a lecture comes out, all about science!

She goes to bed in Dr. Pauling’s bed next to Mrs. Pauling and when she wakes up, she’s in her own room. She wonders if it was all a dream.

But at science class that day, her hand shoots up to answer questions without even trying. At first a wrong answer comes out and she thinks, Oh, No. but then her hand shoots up of its own volition at the next question, and she thinks, Oh no! She is called on. She swallows hard, and prepares to say, I don’t know the answer. Instead, the correct answer comes out of her mouth! She can’t believe it! Maybe it wasn’t a dream after all!

Ol' Lappie

[view from Kettle Cove]






A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot where it's being boiled.
'Why are you doing this to me?'
The cook knocks him down with the ladle.
'Don't you try to jump out.
You think I'm torturing you.
I'm giving you flavor
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.'

— Rumi, "Chickpea to Cook," from The Essential Rumi tr. Coleman Barks

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

OK, the compulsory 5 minutes of notes.

Nice fireside chat with Lindsey today in our living room. Talked about kids, the Obamas, racism. All very good. Nice to be with her. I don’t know when the last time we had the opportunity to sit in a room for an hour together and talk. We’re going to do it again, in theory, in a couple weeks. Not next Tuesday. Next Tuesday the plan is to be at Brenda’s to watch the inauguration.
*
It’s interesting how much I loathe this computer at times. It has done nothing to me but has unwittingly been a ball and chain at times due to the internet. Even picking up the plug to plug it into the wall (because the battery runs down quickly and I refuse to replace it right now) — the way it feels in my hand, rubbery, somewhat dirty, cumbersome with its heavy square midsection; the heat it radiates into my lap or onto whatever piece of furniture it happens to be sitting on — the fire of the sun of the dinosaurs (fossil fuel to electricity to spinning hard drive to warm computer). I’d much rather be warming in front of the fire only.

Of course…these notes would be much sparser, much less likely were it not for Ol’ Lappie.
*
Letter from Mia today—I don’t know when it came in — it was on the counter in the stack of miscellaneous items that collect there. Dated 1/6. Nice 2 page letter hand -written — fun to see her handwriting again — tucked inside a photograph card showing a frog driving a car.
*
Text message from a friend to which I returned with a phone call. Not sure I will continue to receive or respond in any way to text messages. I’m starting to punch the button on my phone again obsessively. Of course today Jeff headed to Arkansas for 3 days and he was texting me with progress updates and family business. That is different.

Glitches · digital coma

[kids' room, the "before" picture]

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." — Gandhi

Still January 12

Homeschooling coop: we are finally moving forward with an idea the kids had last year — which was to start a kids' newspaper.

Small, to start. Today we came up with a name (The Blue Eagle Newspaper), a first issue pub date (mid-February) and some general assignments / roles, and we made press badges (we had some of Jeff’s professional ones for them to look at).

Not having e-mail makes the assimilation process very interesting. We could have them e-mail stories and photos to Jeff; I could come up with the template and have kids and parents type in their own stories right onto my computer, they could bring them hard-copy and I could type them in….this is one of those tasks that would be in many ways be made easier by email. Or would it?

Sometimes I feel I’ve done a lot of turning my back on communities and people I’m leaving behind, usually by moving. Or is this non-attachment, a healthy letting go, a natural moving on? Moments in the last two weeks I’ve wondered if I’m doing it again—and if I am, why does it feel so freaking good? Like shedding 20 layers of dead skin all at once? So rejuvenating.

There is a deep desire in me at moments to hop online and find out what’s going on with the weather, with the war in Gaza. Definitely I experience and hold more anxiety than I ever realized, which was alleviated (momentarily) a lot of times by sitting down at the computer. The Dead Zone. The Digital Coma. I wonder what the effect is on my children all this time. How it has been to be partially ignored during those online spots.

It’s hard to say what the long-term ramifications of this experiment will be. In all likelihood it will mean much to me, something to those close by, and little or nothing to the world at large. But we can only change ourselves!

And in this case it is changing just about everything! I’m trying to think of what this hasn’t changed for me thus far…….

Hearing voices

[photo by Mia McCullough]

Friend, our closeness is this:
anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.
— Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks

Today Dave Cohen, Jeff's BFF who texts like an adolescent, texted and I called him. I told him he can text me but to expect a phone call in return. I knew he would give me holy hell, in a nice way, and he did.

But we had a nice conversation — and it was SO GOOD to hear the voice of my friend. So much better. Because if I can’t hear you — I may misinterpret what you are saying. Recently I heard a statistic that 40% of what is said (or was it 60?) in e-mail is not understood the way it is intended.

Yesterday Mark Canizaro texted me and I wrote him back a short one. Felt like I was taking a drink. I won’t do that again this year. Just receiving texts, which I receive very few of and only from certain people, feels a bit like cheating on this experiement, so I’m owning up. The only one I can text in and out with is Jeff — and only when necessary. Like "Where are you? We're by the T-Rex."

It feels good to take control of communications this way.

Snowflakes on the virtual Appalachian Trail

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth....
— Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks

This morning: the snow coming down very lightly, big flakes. But it was very cold. They were magnificent, tiny, hexagonal flakes.

We had Monday homeschool coop for the first time in ages. Angie pulled a piece of black velvet out of her pocket and I went into the kitchen to retrieve the two magnifying glasses. We caught some flakes and we looked. Observed. Kids huddled around. What’s falling out of the sky right now? Don’t breathe too close to them or they will melt away to droplets of water!
*
We have in so many instances traded the immediacy of opening a letter, of a poem, of this, whatever this may be, for a false immediacy. Messages are retrieved, little black words on a screen, that for the most part poorly approximate the realness of a person.

But the immediacy, when observed from the outside, is: person interacting with machine. And whatever this is can only be experienced by me, and cannot, most of the time, be a shared experience. Like me and my friends and their children observing the snowflakes this morning as they alighted on a bit of black velvet. Even that person on the other end of the text message is not sharing a real experience with me, except of messaging on our phones!

Nothing I have ever experienced socially via the internet could approximate the experience of sitting in a room full of actual people — the way they look, move, smell, sound, laugh. The way it feels to be touched by one of them. It’s a known fact that many, many of us are living in a state of touch deprivation and computers are partially, if not entirely, to blame.

Even in a platonic, casual conversation, there might be a hug exchanged, or a hand laid upon an arm. These simple gestures can draw an otherwise isolated person back into the collective experience, can provide that much-needed human contact that is lacking. Computers are not warm and loving. They are cold and toxic. People are warm and loving (and, well, I suppose some people are toxic!).

There is not enough of this in this wired world — of people sitting in a room together, enjoying the moment, not having to save it or store it (except perhaps a photograph, a memory, a poem, a journal entry) but mostly to breathe it in and breathe it out. To live it and to let it go.

As I hike away from the internet on my virtual Appalachian Trail there is so little I miss and much that leads me to feel that another year like this might be good.

I've got a crush on that idea

[photo by Mia McCullough]

Here's the abyss
waiting with its
kiss of shiver
and bliss.

— Gregory Orr, "Here"

Still January 12, 2009

There is something very empowering in limiting the ways in which someone can reach me.

Living in the city this is difficult to do without voluntarily giving up a mode of communication. I had a friend in Port Townsend, Washington, who lived without a telephone for a while and we all thought she was crazy. I imagined her living in a hovel. She couldn’t afford it, for one thing — she was trying to keep her overhead as low as possible. I equated this with being deprived of proper shelter and food and imagined she was living in, essentially, a barn. This was before the internet really caught on as an everyday household occurrence, so her contact with others was in person or by letters.

Now I have a crush on the whole idea.

But...giving up the phone, with kids at home, and with the climate such as it gets here in Maine, would be a highly unnecessary experiment.

Facebook? Run for your life!!!

[photo by Mia McCullough]

"Life is random as a rolled pair of dice. / What those thrown cubes will show no one can know, / yet everyone thinks he wants paradise." — Gregory Orr, "Paradise", from The Caged Owl

January 12, 2009 Monday

This addiction is very insidious. It’s kind of like food addiction, in that it’s something that for the un-addicted is innocuous, even necessary, but for me it can be poison.

And it’s an addiction to a truly virtual world — a world that is not really there. It’s a binary world that exists on computers. Those people on Facebook — they’re not really there in front of me. They are real people writing into the same servers I am, people I know. But they are not really there on Facebook because Facebook doesn’t really exist.

Is it just a form of collective insanity, a co-created reality, all run by very sophisticated computer programming? Like any other good media, the creativity is in the thinking up of it and the creating and maintaining and marketing of it. But the comsuming of it for purely social reasons? It is a more or less creative void, especially if people fall into the addiction. It’s like a form of sleep. Like a coma.

Saga of the fountain pen · fear of people

"I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes." — Thoreau, "Economy"

One unintended consequence of this experiment is getting driven into the local….stores, people, weather….to a degree not expected.
Have been wanting to re-fire-up my fountain pen, and have needed cartridges.

Paper patch didn’t have them, recommended last week I try another place that I ultimately couldn’t find. We’d driven all the way to staples on family errand day but all they had was black. Then this morning picked up the book I ordered at Longfellow books (_Not Buying It_) and asked the guy behind the counter where I might be able to get a cartridge for a pen.

He recommended Joe Wigon, a barely-hanging-on office supply on Free Street, just across from the side door of the book shop building. I went out that way, and just up from Wigon’s there was the other stationer the paper patch had recommended.

Going in to the stationer I explained my predicament, although she said they didn’t carry the Waterman cartridges I needed. Then the other worker came over with a #10 envelope full of Waterman cartridges that fit my pen. They’d done inventory the day before and these were some of the miscellaneous things they’d discovered. I made my purchase--$2.60 with tax for 5, which should last me more than a year—NO SHIPPING. And I met and interacted with some more people I’d never seen.
*
What’s remarkable to me is the level to which I’d become afraid of people. The post office, the bank, returning things to a store, these are all experiences I’d become somewhat fearful of, sometimes very fearful. Agoraphobia. Fear of the marketplace.

Moon · Fire · Pizza

"We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved." Sogyal Rinpoche

Still January 9, 2009

Home now.

Very cold, clear, nearly full moon, stars and planets hovering above as I walked home from the bus to a just-cleaned, empty house, with dinner waiting for me. Like a dream.

But I notice what I’ve been noticing a lot recently: here is another type of moment when I would have indulged online. Nobody home, an hour to “kill”, nobody here to tell me not to. Indulge in whatever is my internet obsession of the month…Perez Hilton, Facebook, nytimes.com.

What I do instead: begin reading Not Buying It by Judith Levine (it’s good, really good, and therefore intimidating, so professionally written). Clean up from the gorgeous dinner Jeff left behind when he took the kids to gymnastics just before I walked into a quiet house. Sit down by the fire with the cat and a few thoughts, an existence that is not then summed up in 20 words or less for the 5th Facebook status update of the day.

National Cathedral School · Mrs. Forbes · Sarah E.

“I like opening a letter and thinking myself loved.” – Virginia Woolf

Completely awesome. I just checked our p.o. box up the street here and there was an honest-to-god letter from Sarah Edmunds, a close friend from middle school. We reconnected on Facebook and she was willing to correspond off the internet.

I sent a postcard last week. She photocopied a program from a voice recital we were both part of in the eighth grade, led by Mrs. Forbes at NCS. She wrote a quick note on it; what a huge difference receiving something real and unexpected. So….I stopped by the Paper Patch again because stodgy stationary didn’t seem right to write Sarah back (I have that to write to my mother, who likes it).

So I got a box of something fun. How expressive to write a note, in blue-black ink, to my friend. So different from email. Email: I thought of you. Letter: I love you. Enough to take an hour and write you, only you, a letter.

When faxing goes bad

"I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes a-foot." — Thoreau, Walden

Trying to obtain medical records for the boys so we can get them up to date on immunizations. It’s a b**** without a fax or internet….wouldn’t the internet be so much quicker / easier right now than relying on people and the mail?? I leave a message asking the records handler apologetically if we can make this happen by mail.

Then, trying to get an update to the massage school admin in Utah. I think proudly, I’ll fax her a hand-written letter, written in fountain pen! I write the note, explaining where I am in my studies, so they won’t put me on probation again for non-activity.

I barely keep the letter to one page and realize that the fax might cut off the bottom line since it’s so close to the bottom of the page. I go to fax from our fax scanner at the office but can’t remember how to run the thing. I give up and call and leave a message.

While I’m finishing my message, another call comes through that I need to take. I end up leaving the massage school answering machine on hold, possibly using up all the space there is on their answering machine. Crap. I hope they have voice mail so it doesn’t eat up absolutely all the time on their recorder. Next time I’ll call during business hours or just send a freaking letter.

Hypochondriac central

"The voice in the head tells a story that the body believes in and reacts to." — Eckhart Tolle

Friday, January 9, 2009

At the office.

Couple days ago, convinced I might need an x-ray at the dentist to screen for bone cancer. This strange, intense soreness had returned to my left interior jawline, underneath my chin, and though I hadn’t felt it in some time it was back. I was straining my mind to assess what muscle attachments lay there, what glands or lymph nodes.

With these worries still lurking, I picked up my fiddle the next morning and put it to my chin…..with the chin rest falling right on the sore spot.

That’s why I have a sore spot.

Now I remember. It’s just been so long since I played regularly. It’s from playing my fiddle again. The fiddle had been another casualty of internet use. I’m glad it’s not bone cancer. Just a “healing crisis” from coming off internet use, that comes in the form of a sore chin caused by getting back into a favorite activity instead of lurking around online.

Option overload

[Another winter day watching home videos backwards.]

"I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust." — Thoreau, Walden

January 11, 2009

option overload:
— on the internet
— in stores

Options past a certain reasonable point are a burden on the psyche. The onus then is on us to "manually" limit our options. this is a distinct problem in overindustrialized suburbia / consumerism. What effects, long-term, does this have on the brain? Option overload is both addictive and repulsive (imagine walking into any Circuit City). Of course....it is the "dubious luxury" of wealth. I would like to discuss this with a psychologist.

Field of dandelions

"Our lives seem to live us, to possess their own bizarre momentum, to carry us away; in the end we feel we have no choice or control over them." Sogyal Rinpoche

still January 6, 2009

The last few days it’s been as though I was astrally transported back in time — to high school, particularly, right around 11th grade when I participated in another social experimemt that changed my life — The Mountain School — in 1984 when the program was brand-new. Memories and the feelings that go with them very much with me.

The realness of that experiment is something of what I've been feeling the last few days. The challenges of white-water kayaking in Northern Massachussetts the spring following, the concreteness of a newfound passion in farming, the years-long search for community without knowing exactly what I was trying to rebuild from my Mountain School experience.

The image I had a few years ago, when contemplating homeschooling: That to make that leap would be an abandonment of sorts, but not necessarily a bad one: the image of being left behind by a school bus on a sunny morning in a field of spring dandelions, and after the initial panic of being left behind, the beautiful thereness of the moment, of petals, yellow flower heads, seeds cascading on wind, the cross-disciplinary lessons of the moment that are absolutely homeschooling.

Reading Thoreau’s "Economy" again, the first time since the Mountain School, and though it’s necessary to work around some of his arrogance, there are jewels — very quotable stuff. Right now I’m on a paragraph where he’s assessing what are the basic, most very basic needs of people — and I have been thinking along these very lines for a while—wanting to shift my relationship with stuff to a more needs-based relationship (I truly need it, therefore I’ll seek and let it in) and away from decision-based material acquisition (I’m in Target, I see stuff and start to want it, I have to decide whether or not to get it, or when I’m really tempted, decide not to get it).

Taking off the internet

[photo by son, age 6]

"Attention is the ability we have to discriminate and to focus only on that which we want to perceive....By using our attention we learned a whole reality, a whole dream." — Don Miquel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

Still January 6, 2009

There has been a sense that I was in touch with the wrong people, people I should not be having contact with — not necessarily because they were unhealthy alliances, although some were perhaps at times. But because they are not the people who are right here, right now, or important enough (family, friends) to warrant the amount of time spent corresponding.
*
Realizing that as far back as my mothering.com days — and what a godsend that was when the boys were very little — that the presence of in many ways the ‘perfect’ online community had the unintended effect of making me less appreciative of the people right there. Back then life right here, right now was at times feeling unbearable.
*
Taking off the internet has been like taking off the wrong glasses. Here I am.

That's-so-cool! syndrome

"In the long run, men only hit what they aim at." — Thoreau, Walden

Still January 6, 2009

The idea of leading one-month internet retreats—a weekly discussion and people would rely on each other, and check in once a week to see what they were learning, what it was like. Cool idea, don’t think I'd want to lead it. Too much else interesting to do.
*
That’s So Cool syndrome — lots of stuff on the internet is cool — but do I need it, really?

For example:
Snow coming tomorrow. Habitually I would spend 20 minutes on the internet and computer, reading and re-reading the winter weather advisory or storm watch / warning gleaning as much excitement out of those words as possible, look at the radar a few times, look at my dashboard to see the weather widget show the snowflakes coming down (well, tomorrow anyway) that I could see perfectly well from my window. “That’s so cool!” and it is.

But…Tonight: 3 minute forecast over the phone. I actually had to stand up to go and get the phone for that, until sitting here on my butt. And instead of scrutinizing all the available data, I take 3 minutes listening the forecast. Do I personally really need more? Why was I allowing it to take so much time?

Because it’s cool! Because I feel cool looking at radar and having some clue about how to interpret it. There’s nothing wrong with that — and Jeff and I have bonded some over this — but if my time is my life, is this really how I need to spend my life? Could I limit myself someday to 5 minutes a day of obtaining the weather forecast? Just curious.
*
Another victory of the experiment: today I learned to hand-card wool. There’s a lifetime of refinement but at least I can do it and it’s getting easier. It was the first time I’d done this since second grade — Charlie’s age. And I learned because I had the time.

This is the thing: so much time was spent on the internet doing absolutely nothing real. Research, yes; networking, yes; communication, yes; but most of the rest of it, unnecessary. Titillation is the word that comes to mind, and that’s probably the more socially acceptable word for it. There is in places like Facebook the absolutely convincing idea that I was doing something real…and yes, passing notes is real. Harnessing all that power to help elect our new president or raise money for the Nature Conservancy via ad exposure is real.

But…but….but…the here and now of it is breathtakingly simple: more time in front of a computer screen, pointing and clicking, lost inside it and the mind, consciousness of the here and now utterly lost in cyberspace. Or worse, half-lost then and before and after — the anticipation, the processing post-surfing, when my precious children might be asking questions, wanting my full attention but never quite getting it, or getting it rarely. I got pretty good at pretending to be fully present, or so it seemed.

OK, off to my very real bed which already has my very real sleeping husband in it.

Getting Real

"I think I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a blood-sucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither." — H.D. Thoreau, "Visitors"

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The experiment continues. I find that I’m still wanting to over-crowd my time. The internet use was only a symptom.

Today I felt like one of Timothy Leary’s people: Drop Out, Tune In. I feel like I’ve dropped below the din and there’s a whole reality going on down here.

I feel like I’m becoming more real to myself again and haven’t felt this way in a long time. Been playing my fiddle more, talking to people more, appreciating more the people in front of me, and who are important to me: family, old friends, neighbors.
*
Today I was talking with Janey on the phone, about various things, including wool — and had to sign off to get the boys. She offered to bring her spinning wheel over when we were back.

She did, and let the boys try it, and I got the carding brushes put together, and started to learn to card. Susan, my neighbor across the street who's a fiber enthusiast / spinner / knitter, must have seen us from her upstairs window because she showed up with dishes from a meal I brought her last month when she had surgery, and a batch of delicious Mexican anise cookies. She came in and upon seeing our project asked if I had an extra set of carders. She and Janey hit it off.

I felt a bit overwhelmed, tired as I was from a long first day back taking the boys to Sierra's (their teacher 2x week), ready for some down time. But how could I say no to such needed and wonderful impromptu community. It’s only day 6 and already my dream is coming true. What will the other 359 days of this year bring?
*
Tonight met with Angie, Janet, and Mandy about the fate of our homeschool coop. We are going to do some outdoor activities and I had the kids’ newspaper idea come back up again. We are going to get an issue out with little articles, an ad or two, and lots of artwork.

The fiddle is at my beck and call all of a sudden. I’ve been playing again. Thinking again more clearly. The thought-habit of narrating my actions as if I were posting a Facebook status update has faded into the background and something else is emerging. What is that---uninterrupted, unedited thought?

Wool & fire

[a huge chunk of ice fell off a roof on Exchange Street and broke the back window of this car. His dog was inside and though traumatized was otherwise unharmed. Welcome to winter in the old port district! photo by my husband]

Monday, January 5, 2009

"No matter how we get trapped, our usual reaction is not to become curious about what's happening....Most of us just blindly reach for something familiar that we associate with relief and then wonder why we stay dissatisfied. The radical approach of bodhicitta practice is to pay attention to what we do. Without judging it we train in kindly acknowledging whatever is going on. Eventually we might decide to stop hurting ourselves in the same old ways." — Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You


Tonight, coming home from the meeting, really wanted to get on Facebook. That had become my default — go from real community to virtual community. It sullied somewhat the clarity I'd felt in the meeting and I'd sit there feeling like I really ought to get off but would be unable.

So, instead — tonight — fixed up the rest of my dinner, and am sitting by the fire., looking at the heaps of newly washed wool drying on folded-up drying racks and towels. The colors are gorgeous and very similar to the color's of Olga's fur and also my own hair: black (the only place I differ), grey (light), charcoal, dark brown, reddish brown.

"Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are." — Pema Chodron

January 4th, 2009

Needs-based buying vs. decision-based buying:
Needs-based buying — "I need this. We need this. I will go find it."
Decision-based buying — "Oooooo look at that! I think i need that. I think I'll buy it."
*
Enjoying reading Walden, a copy of which I picked up at Longfellow Books on Friday. Much of it so far resonates with my thinking on this experiment.
*
Watching the ice floes on the Stroudwater River today (while rushing down highway 295 to Staples at the mall in hopes of finding blue cartridges for my good pen...turns out they only had black....).
*
Spoke at Portland Friends Meeting today for the first time. Mentioned following through on a leading to depart from the internet for a year — some more good discussions — people quietly congratulating, or resonating, or wishing such a thing were possible for themselves — Sarah L on the internet "sabbath" she and Rob take sometimes; Beth B-N on the inability of some of her students (high school) to really ponder an idea, because they are so well-trained by their cell phones to check their messages every ten minutes—genuine deep concern on her face.
*
vis a vis starting a business — is this promotional suicide or a publicity stunt? Functioning more as latter.

Bowling Alone; Soul-Stealing

[photo by my son, age 5]

Jan 2, 2009 continued

Build a fence, meet your neighbors.

*

Immediacy is human craving and tools like Twitter, Facebook, text messaging at their best can give this. But at what cost?

*

Native American belief in the nineteenth century that photography steals the soul — what about the internet? Is that effect not magnified countless times?

*

Brenda lent me Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam, copyright 2000. Some interesting stuff re internet, though outdated given how fast and far things have come in that realm. The book is very good, though, well-written and engaging (and LONG — 500pp).

Carding Brushes vs. Mass Delusion

[photos of Newfoundland hat & mittens, showing construction; property of my mother-in-law]
Jan 2, 2009 continued

"Each night, without knowing it, you return to the unmanifested Source of all life when you enter the the stage of deep, dreamless sleep, and then reemerge again in the morning, replenished." — Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Stopped by Portland Fiber Gallery to get carding brushes (finally!) and a little roving for making Newfoundland Mittens, and got a handmade bear for Baxie's birthday. Finally connected witht his fabulously vibrant palce in Portland.

Of course, visa card transaction used the internet. do I have to give credit/debit cards this year? That might solve the problem mentioned on previous page (spending too much money).

*

Other inspirations:
— Phil Haskell who campaigned last fall for Maine House of Representatives door-to-door in person.


*

A sense of interdependence is vital to world peace. Are we achieving that through the internet? I don't know.

*

Mass delusion: that being continually hooked up digitally is vital and necessary. I'm not talking about people who depend on the internet for their livelihoods or for keeping in touch or for any number of other useful reasons. I'm talking about the way we use each other to continually reaffirm this delusion that constant contact with the internet is vital to life.

An obsessive relationship with the internet is perchance a case of mass delusion: You are constantly online sending me messages, so I must be or I might miss something. What are we really missing? Everything. Life is right now. And we are missing this.

*

I was dissatisfied with the constant communication with people who weren't really there. Jeff & I independently concluded that this was what some people used to refer to as insanity.

This adrenaline surge brought to you by Crane Stationary

still Jan 2, 2009

Stopped by Paper Patch, stationary store on Exchange Street. Struggling-along little place. Standing in front of the Crane Stationary section (small, but there) I felt a surge of energy, exhilaration almost flow through me. At the checkout I asked the shopkeeper if she had fountain pen cartridges and she referred me to another shop (which I couldn't ultimately find).

When I explained my project, her eyes lit up like someone had just given her a pony. There was hope in her face.

*

Stopped by Longfellow Books and asked after postcard books and the book Brenda mentioned yesterday about the folks who spent a year trying not to buy anything. The booksellers looked it up for me.

I explained this project and the guy who was helping me said, "My job would be impossible without the internet. I just looked this up online for you." He seemed almost insulted. I said, "yes, but I had to talk to you, and I've never talked to you before." That seemed to help. Later I wished I'd said, "Yes, but because of this, I'm buying books from YOU." Of course couldn't leave without a gorgeous library edition of Walden and a half-price copy of The Polar Express.

***Must be careful not to spend too much money while doing this project.***

Today's "internet surfing"

still Jan 2, 2009

Today's "internet surfing": Going to O'Naturals for lunch, the one in the old bank building on Exchange Street. Reading the bulletin board. Stopp[ing at the biz card and local newspaper table. Picking up whatever looked interesting. Reading that.

*

comments from Facebook, Dec. 31:
-- "Way to tailor your mental environment!"
— "You're crazy!"
— "but, what about if you need to know like the world's 10 largest deserts, or the name of that actor from 'Little House on the Prairie'??"
— "You are going to inscribe this book on clay tablets I assume?"
— "I'm hyperventilating just thinking about the prospect of no google, no street maps, no netflix, NPR podcasts, news and whatever else I dream up that I have to have..."
— "Dude, even the Amish have the Internet."

*

I'm not living 2009 without the Internet. I'm just not on it. The very fact of the internet makes it possible for my family to live in this beautiful town of Portland, Maine. Without the internet and all it's associated technologies — representing the collective creativity and ingenuity of thousands of people who helped create them — we'd be living in Sarasota, Florida. (no offense intended, Florida - I need snow!)

The power of "doing nothing"

still January 2, 2009

Yesterday — chatting with Jeff — recognizing that sitting looking at the internet was acceptable for "doing nothing" — a basic human need, perhaps. Sitting checking email is almost on the same privacy / do-not-disturb level as sitting reading on the toilet. It's OK to ignore people and chores, or to practice selective hearing.

It has to be OK now — and this must be articulated, not unspoken — to sit and "do nothing"! To sit for ten minutes and read or write, or knit. DO NOTHING. OK to suddenly meditate for ten minutes with a door closed. Play music. Sit and write. Read poetry. There is nothing wrong with these activities and there is perchance infinitely more value in these things than in "being online."

*

It was pretty much constant connection to the internet and cyberspace with no end in sight.

*

I saw no other way to create the space and time in my life that I craved. Nothing else could go.

If right now is my life,...

still Friday, January 2, 2009

"If we look into our lives, we will see clearly how many unimportant tasks, so-called 'responsibilities' accumulate to fill them up. One master compares them to 'housekeeping in a dream'. We tell ourselves we want to spend time on the important things of life, but there never is any time." Sogyal Rinpoche



It is weird to notice the number of times per day the impulse to get online comes. It is dozens. Today the panic is less. Detox! The fear that I'm committing "connection suicide" is lessening, and it's only January 2nd.

*

Today — the weather report — a paragraph at the top of the New England edition of the New York Times. Regional, not so specific. "It's winter!...blah blah blah." The phone — dialing up to the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine.

*

Today — heading up the street to get some lunch. All the old brick buildings of the old port district and shops in their post-holiday sales. Then later, massage school work — studying polarity and sending out postcards or making phone calls to get some practice sessions rolling again.

*

Being on the internet for me is, in part, an attempt to address the fear of "missing something" — an age-old human fear? — but hours a day were lost sometimes in cyberspace, and sometimes more because of being distracted thinking about what I'd read, with whom I'd chatted — and if right now is my life, how much did I miss in an attempt not to miss anything?

Reverend Billy, ice storms

January 2, 2009


It's Friday at the office--the boys are with Jeff & I'm here down in the old port studying. There's nobody here but me, and no internet. Nothing to feel for the moment but the aloneness! The hum of the computers. There's an overwhelming need to do something, connect with something, someone to feed the need for information. An agitation that is probably always there. The fear that I've torqued someone off by being offline — the fear!

Inspiration for taking on this challenge (in no particular order):

— Eckhart Tolle and reading about what takes us out of the moment; how the moment is the life.

— The ice storm last December and how it brought the neighborhood together. We have a gas stove and a woodstove for heat so were in a position to offer food and warmth to all our neighbors who were without power. People got outside and talked to each other in winter when normally we're squirreled away or the conversation gets drowned out by the snowblower.

— Reading Farmer Boy and Jeff saying how remarkably fast the world has changed since then and I said, yes but our basic human needs haven't changed — and are they still getting met? This is a complex answer because obviously many things have improved drastically. But how about the basic human needs for: connection, friendship, community, being outdoors in the fresh air, being of use?

— Film: What Would Jesus Buy? The Reverend Billy

Henry David Thoreau

January 2, 2009


"By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it."— Thoreau, "Economy"


Thinking of Thoreau this AM and how he escaped the industrial revolution to go retreat at Walden Pond. This urge of mine is hundreds, thousands of years old — OK, getting grandiose here comparing myself to him. But there are similarities.
*
Missing the immediacy of poetry readings. The immediacy of letters.
*
TMI Syndrome. Fascination overload.
*
Compare: weather from newspaper and phone vs. NEXRAD / online updates.

Detox · Utah Phillips · Fear of the Post Office

January 1, 2009


"If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength. This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave." — Eckhart Tolle


This morning upon waking, a recurring sense of anxiety, fear, in the pit of my belly — is that always there and I deal with it by getting online? There is the fear of being forgotten, of being inundated, and there is the fear of the post office.

*

Utah Phillips on the radio -- did he die? I can't get online so I can't see. Usually I look at the New York Times obit bookmark tab. But the printed NYT doesn't have the full obits. Right now I'm listening to WMPG out of the University of Southern Maine. (They later shared that Utah died in May 2008...he never got to see the coalescence of the Democratic Party that eventually got Obama elected.)

It's 4:25 p.m. and I miss my parents. It's weird.

*

This evening, a wave of fear came over me about "what if" / what could happen — war, illness, etc. — normally I would have jumped online.

"Smoker's Friendships," Cocktail Parties, Quiet Desperation

December 31, 2008

I'm losing my resolve.

Told the first internet correspondent, my cousin, my plans. She was really saddened by it — not at all what I expected. We have really reconnected via Gmail chat.
*
What to do about weather? I will really miss NEXRAD.
*
The internet is like New York — the best and worst of everything.
*
An "internet break" is like a bathroom break: no one will knock on your door for ten minutes (or a year).
*
I'm wondering if some of my friends will be like my friends when I smoked — back then we knew each other because we smoked outside together, bummed cigarettes off each other. We always knew we could find someone with matches. When the smoking went away, so did the friends. We needed each other so support our habits, and could tolerate each others' habit of smoking as long as we both maintained our own.
*
Talked to Mom; she mentioned cocktail parties, which she no longer enjoys. Great place to meet people but no longer enjoys them now that she sees the same people every time.
*
My neighbor Brenda, a writer, was very supportive today. We had a great chat. She mentioned Thoreau's quote: "Most men live lives of quiet desperation."

What's the Big Idea?

December 30, 2008

Am getting the call to be off the internet for a year. It is scaring me to death as I ask all the questions: What will Jeff say? Will this adversely affect my marriage? What about my kids? How about buying stuff? What will people say? What if I miss something important?

Also have thought about the cell phone — and getting rid of the phone service for a year — but it is a tool Jeff and I use all the time to keep in touch. So considering leaving off text messaging / cell phone usage except for family.

And all this in the middle of starting a business-- what am I, crazy? No internet, no cell phone? How on earth will I compete?

Here's what came to me: You've never been more sane. You're feeling the call of a deeper, more satisfying existence. If you heed the call, you will receive the gift. Listening and heeding the deepest calls, despite all surface messages to the contrary, will lead you to the places you want to go.

Other questions: Will I put myself in a communications blackout? What am I NOT doing by spending so much time on the internet? I'm about to find out.

Taking the Plunge

Day 0
December 31, 2008
10:21 p.m.

So I’m doing it. I put up on Facebook that I’m not going to be on the internet during 2009.

I’m scared. It doesn’t feel right, partly because my cousin in the midwest seems miffed and my mother doesn’t completely understand what I’m doing. She thought I didn’t want her to contact me at all. My cousin and I have reconnected via Gmail chat and Facebook and it’s been significant for both of us. She was not happy when I broke the news to her last night.

I’ve been working on logistics: weather for instance. I use the internet all the time to check the weather updates. Of all the things I’ll miss this year (GULP…a year?) one of the biggest is NEXRAD with storm tracks. And those winter storm updates from NWS.

Today I looked up the phone number for NWS in Gray. The phone book gave the web address. Crap! I thought. I better hurry! So I hopped online and found the phone number, called it, and got through to a real person who happily gave me the number for phone weather reports. Since, of course, we don’t have a television.

It was cool, though, to talk to a PERSON who seemed happy to help somebody.

Quite a few people have seemed inspired by this move. So may it continue in an outward ripple effect, to propel those people in the direction of something they’ve been wanting to do.

What I think I'll miss: chatting with my cousin, NEXRAD / weather updates / satellite imagery of storms; seeing photos of people’s babies and children; the little bits of news from family.

I just keep wanting more authentic experiences. Face to face, voice to voice, letter to letter. I’m thinking about getting out my fountain pen and trying to find some decent stationery…without using the Internet.

I keep feeling these waves of anxiety flow through my body. It’s completely weird. The internet is not physically wired into me but it is definitely “wired” into my mind.

Tonight Charlie was saying goodbye to 2008 while getting ready to fall asleep. I had that feeling of a year passing too quickly. A year ago I just hoped not to break any bones in 2008. I can’t believe that was an entire year ago. I thought, good, it won’t take too long to get through this. But I felt entirely called for quite a long time to do this. How often can we do something for an entire year? And if not now, when?

Back to knitting.

January 1, 2009

Ha ha ha! No one commented on my initial post. This is great. Well, I took a lot of notes over the course of the year. There is no question that the year that unfolded was almost completely different from the year that might have been. Over the next year I'll be updating with snapshots from the year offline. Not as exciting as climbing Everest with an IMAX camera, but close!