Big Snow 2009: Back in Easton

"To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 3

Late February
Easton, MD

It’s still snowing hard here, with 4-5 inches already on the ground. It’s near freezing, so the snow has clung to everything. It’s about 11:30 p.m. Tonight and tomorrow it’s supposed to blow, gusting to 35 mph. There is a strong feeling of wanting to get online, look at the radar, see the snow on the map, re-read the predictions as I used to do. Use up some of that 18 days a year tonight meshing with the weather.

There is also a feeling of wanting to share this rare experience — heavy snow on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a rare occurrence — with more people, online. But it would so definitely take away from the thisness, the moment. There is a loneliness about snow, and to over-connect would be to rob this experience of some of its authenticity.

Big Snow 2009: We Head to the Airport

"All things are vibrating energy fields in ceaseless motion."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 146



March 1, 2009. Sunday. Easton, MD. Heavy snow.

Still in Easton tonight. Waylaid due to major winter storm coming up the coast.

Spent the morning packing us up while the kids watched the History Channel—some show about loggers. About half of what they were saying was bleeped out. Every time one guy spoke you couldn’t even tell what he was saying because practically every word was censored. Nice! Welcome to Oregon!

I took apart our room meticulously — stripped all the beds, folded blankets, deflated the kids’ beds (with the six-year-old’s help — he helped open the valves on the Coleman beds and pushed and rolled the air out), sorted, organized, scoured all rooms for stragglers, packed, brought the linens downstairs and remade my bed.

Everything was in good order. Brought it all down, with mom’s help packed snacks, fed everyone lunch of leftover spaghetti, and drove to Baltimore.

My dad checked our flight on the internet before we left: on time.

It looked like our plane was going to fly north of the storm. It was coming up from the south, supposed to hit Balto around dark, and we were scheduled to leave a few minutes before 4 pm. Maine wasn’t supposed to get big snow till after midnight. At the time we left for the airport (75 miles away) 6-12" were predicted here, 10-14" in Portland during the day tomorrow.

With confidence, we headed off to the airport.

2.5 Hrs Per Day, 12 Years: Let's Do the Math

Listen to presences inside poems,
Let them take you where they will.
— Rumi, Essential Rumi,
tr. Coleman Barks, p. 99





Still January 26, 2009

Here’s what Automated Weather Man from Gray, Maine, says tonight:
-12 to -5 tonight
Tues mostly sunny high about 20
Tues night mostly clear, becoming mostly cloudy around 10
Winter storm watch for Wednesday, moderate snow accumulation
Wed night low 10-15

Yay!! Warming up! Nice stuff falling out of sky!

But this is my weather life. What had taken up so much time in detail—and it’s not a bad way to spend time, tinkering with the weather, but still—this was 25 minutes of time a day, reading and re-reading the updated forecasts, looking at radar, reading watches and warnings and advisories. Getting hopes up, getting let down, or fulfilled sometimes. 25 minutes a day, now 5.

Oops, just went to the dashboard to use the calc, and there was the weather widget, showing the current temp at the airport (1 F) and the little snow icon for wed. OOPS! I confess. I was just on the internet for a moment.

OK, found sci calc. 25x365 is over 30 hours a year. More than an entire day and night. Just reading about the weather!

OK, if we’re going to go that far….let’s say I averaged 2.5 hours a day on the internet. This is: sitting down to check email, googling, researching, IMing, checking the weather.

That comes to….whoa. 38 days a year. Roughly 5.5 weeks a year, day and night.

This is a conservative estimate. It was probably more like 3 hours a day. There have been many nights when I could not sleep and I would be on the internet for 2-3 hours researching all kinds of topics in addition to time during the day. That’s 45 ½ days a year, or six-and-a-half weeks a year, day and night.

So, I’ve been on the internet quite a bit for the last 12 years. Just for the sake of estimates, let’s say I’ve been spending 6 solid weeks a year on the internet for 12 years. Are you ready?

72 weeks. 18 months. A year and a half of checking / writing email, researching, buying, reading web sites, googling, IMing, etc.

So in the last 12 years, only 10.5 of those years have been spent in some form of awareness of where I actually was sitting, living, sleeping. And this is only screen time. This doesn’t include the stolen moments anticipating and processing (“A&P”), which I think double or triple the time. Let’s be conservative and only double that time:
Screen time + A&P time:
12 weeks a year / 3 solid months, or 25% of my life
Total over the last 12 years: 3 years, or 25% of my life.

Now, that’s 25% of my LIFE, and it was spent during my waking hours only. Waking hours are 2/3 of my day on average, so what percentage of my WAKING LIFE have I spent on the internet in the last 12 years? I don’t know if I can do math that complicated anymore!
Let’s try.

37.5% of my waking time spent in screen time & A&P time. Over a third of my waking life consumed by the internet.

This is taking into account going to camp and being offline for a week at a time, as well as working as a web professional and working wired constantly for 8-10 hours at a time.

A&P time isn’t the same, but it does represent a significant departure from really being here and now.

So, now comes the big, “So what?” That is exactly what this book is about.

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.