First Words; Altered Silence

Every morning, I walk out into my cold, dark neighborhood at 5:30 AM. I think I have found the perfect way to start my day; the perfect step -- both literally and figuratively -- into the world for someone who is an introvert but whose career relies on being around large numbers of people.

The most prominent sound is my footsteps on the wet roads. Only a few cars are awake and purring in driveways, but that sound is peaceful. The dogs (even mine) are sleeping. The usual, faint ocean-sound of distant traffic is absent. The grass frost twinkles in the available light and I avoid stepping on it for fear of the noise it will make, even though the boy in me wants to stomp right over everyone's lawns. (In today's world, though, I'd probably go out the next morning to find police patrolling for the owner of the size-twelve-shoes that defiled the sanctity of so many suburban lawns.)

I walk head-down, hood-up, hands jammed into the pockets of my heavy coat. My thoughts unwind gently, the way accordion-crunched drinking straw wrappers uncurl after a drop of water: slowly and meanderingly. I see bedroom lights wink on in the periphery, here and there. The only other signs of life within houses is the occasional blue glow of televisions and that glow makes me glad my senses haven't yet been assaulted by the electronic storm that the day will become once I step into the doors of my school.

The Key to a Longer Life

What good is a long life if it feels short.

We all operate under the assumption that good diet and exercise are going help us live a long life. This is wrong. I mean, it is right, but it is wrong.

The reason for good diet and exercise is for quality of life, primarily. The length of time doesn't matter if it feels like a blink.

And what makes life feel like a blink? Constant motion.

Kwai Chang Caine walking on rice paper. 

It is no mystery to me, anymore, as to why time seems to go faster as we get older: we don't ever sit around and do nothing, after the age of, say, fifteen. In fact, if we do, we are perceived as lazy. Kids, on the other hand, spend a lot of time just "being."

Fill up your time with action, thought and tasks, and it will "fly." Think of the slow day at work with no customers. It is truly a slow day.

Today, I had off from school. I came downstairs and it was just me and the dog. I left the TV off and I didn't put on any music. I sat and had a nice breakfast with a good cup of coffee and I listened to the October rain.

After this, I sat on the couch with the dog, by the opened window. At one point, I looked at the clock: 10:45. Quite a while later, I looked back and it was 10:48. It went slowly, but pleasantly.

If we can string days together days with just this kind of solitude and stillness in them, maybe our life will be a little longer, whether we die at 55 or 95.

Seeking solitude and silence is not new advice, but it is still necessary advice, I think.

In the Infinite Palm of God: First Encounter Beach, Cape Cod

Whenever we can squirrel away the money, pack up the family and go to Cape Cod in the summer. We're on our third trip.

We love it here. The pace is (generally) slow and there are abundant houses to rent on lakes, in which one can swim and canoe, etc. There are plenty of ice cream places and plenty of seafood restaurants (with, of course, clam chowder to die for) and with a quickish ferry ride, one can explore Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard.

Our house, this year, is on a pond called Widow Harding's Pond, which is inhabited (the pond, not the house) by a shy, but massive green fellow I like to call Moby Turtle. He generally stays away from our toes on swims, but I caught him following my canoe a few times.

Our house, from the canoe on the opposite side of the pond.

It's quiet and the wind plays like a virtuoso through the scrub pines around us. At night, the cacophony of nature, broken by the occasional maniacal debates among coyote factions, is, strangely, soothing.

Today, it is raining (my older son's prayers answered -- he loves the coziness of rain) and the lake is pin-holed glass. Down by the pond, sitting in the beached canoe:

Enough for Now

So, there it is.

Give me an unchanging arpeggio, for an hour, under my fingertips.

Give me a white snow that turns every color into one; that fattens the branches into kinder angles and softer, slower, sideways swayings in the heavy silence.

Ansel Adams

Give me days of grey and rain that turn the warm lights of home into the brightest thing in the world -- a world that usually feels like being surrounded by funhouse mirrors under fireworks.

Give me some time ankle deep in the pond after days on the rapids.

You take your hopping from car to car and meeting to meeting and virtual window to virtual window if it makes you feel "connected."

I'll loaf, invite my soul, and connect with the winded leaves.

They're enough. For now, they're always enough.

Loneliness in Numbers

Give me one mumbling, meandering, daydreaming, stick-wielding kid for ten droop-necked texters in a pack.

Give me one knee-hugging, sunset beach-sitting thinker for a hundred iPod strand-joggers.

I’ll take one game-loving loser for a thousand equipment-throwing "athletes"  --

One video-gaming, movie-quote-repeating teenaged “nerd” for a million pouting, mirror-photographed Facebook movie stars.

I’ll bask in the connection to dead people who live like waterfall mist on pages and in timeless sound and I’ll leave the tight-packed rooms full of living excitement for those who think crowds equal company.

I’ll trade the wide world for the endless expanses of my Tardis imagination.

You can have the Grammys; I’ll be jamming with my little boys.

You can have the cheering crowds; I’ll take kind words from good friends.

Let the rest lust over the chilly marble beauty sculpted by the beauty magazine engineers.

I’ll have my original perfect love with the smiling eyes.

They can have loneliness in numbers; I’ll hang with the best of humankind --

The ones from the First Explosion up to my deathbedside.

When the Crowd Closes In

I sing the praise of the long-distance runner who takes to the road in the damp morning darkness and sinks into the rhythm of her feet hitting the pavement and who floats through the wondrous maze of her thoughts in a runner's high, exploring who she is and how strong she can become. So long as she is preparing for a race she doesn't care about winning.

I sing the praise of the boy sitting in his silent room at night on a Saturday, painting tiny pewter figures and watching old Sherlock Holmes films as the fog curls around his house. So long as he is going to meet his friends for a role-playing adventure during the week and put those painted pieces to use.

I sing the praise of the teenaged girl staying home from the mall on a weekend afternoon, no make up, hair in a ponytail, pencil hissing over the pages and filling the book in her lap with sketches. So long as she will share her vision with the world on a day to come.

I sing the praise of the songwriter at the piano, surrounded by papers and working out the fine elements of a chord progression by himself, hours on end, whisper-singing, lightly playing late at night so as not to awaken his wife. So long as he has the guts to sing his songs out loud to the crowd -- when the time comes.

I sing the praise of the prayerful old woman who has been prayerful since her days of staggering beauty and robust health, praying alone in her outdated kitchen over a steaming cup of coffee. So long as she goes to worship to worship, and not to be lauded for the way she covers her face while she prays or for how loudly she sings.

I praise the thinkers, the believers and the makers and those who treasure silence and solitude and improvement. So long as they stay in the mix, on their own terms. So long as they realize that "community" can be nonsense, but doesn't have to be. So long as they think of themselves first and the world second, but with deep concern. As it must be.

I praise all of the people I hope I can be when the time comes; when the crowd closes in.