Monthly Archives: July 2010

If I had to sum up what I’m trying to do with my life in one word, simplicity would be a strong contender. I am by no means going for asceticism: on the contrary, I’m finding that paring down leads to a richer experience of what’s left. Somehow, giving up things makes me a better hedonist! Much like I was just saying about the TV, whittling away the unnecessary leaves so much room for what’s truly important to bloom.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned (okay, am still learning–but at least now I’m actually listening!) is that you can’t do it all. Letting go of aspirations and dreams and plans is still one of the hardest things I have to do, but it’s essential. You can’t swim as smoothly through life with all those never-to-be-realized plans hanging on like barnacles. They–and their attendant guilt and should-haves and oh-why-didn’t-I?–are a drag, literally. Chip ‘em off, kiss ‘em goodbye, and sail smoothly.

I’ve always loved the Shaker song “Simple Gifts”:

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight
‘Till by turning, turning we come round right.

It’s a beautiful little melody, easy to sing, and I think I’ve always resonated with its equating simplicity with freedom.

To whit: one of my ongoing household projects is the gradual elimination of my of our electronic appliances. It’s supremely silly–not to mention morally repugnant–that we blow apart entire mountains and devastate diverse ecosystems and destroy people’s lives just so we can flip a switch and let our coffee brew while we do something else. My small lifestyle changes won’t end our reliance on coal, but I can limit my participation in it.

It comes down to the question of a balanced equation: is the cost on one side supported by the gain on the other? Are dead miners and dead fish and dead forests a price I’m willing to pay for my electricity? My answer is no, and it’s why I’m replacing most of our plug-in devices with analog alternatives, and why our entire home will eventually be off-grid.

Perhaps I need to add another contender to my word list: balance. It goes hand-in-hand with simplicity, and it gets more to the heart of the matter.

Despite the engineering marvels and industrial wonders behind the processes, most of what powers our modern lives is inherently wrong-headed. We’ve designed so many systems that are unworthy of our ingenuity. Cars, in the way we use them (making 82% of trips five miles or less by automobile) are a deeply inelegant solution to our transportation question. Look at the price we have chosen to pay for a little convenience: the pollution, the spills, the sprawl, the asphalt heat sinks, 40,000 killed and 3.5 million injured every year in crashes, the drain on personal finances, the wars and political jockeying for access to oil… the list goes on.

The car is an ingenious device, and motorized transportation certainly comes in handy. My job wouldn’t exist without it. I’m about to rent a truck to move my belongings 1200 miles away. If not for the car, day hiking would be impossible, given how far away the trailheads are. Until I get a work bike, buying dogfood or going to the laundromat means using a car. But for every person over the age of 16 to have their own? To use it a dozen times every day in 15 or 20 minute increments? It just doesn’t add up. The cost far exceeds the benefit.

We are an intelligent, crafty, curious species by design. That mass of grey jello inside your cranial vault is there to be used, and yet we have complacently accepted–and indeed embraced–technology that is killing us.

So maybe there’s another word I’d put on the list: right. I’m not talking about being “good”; this isn’t about sin or religion or heaven or hell. I’m talking about choice, what actions we choose and how they affect us and everything around us. There is no punishment for wrong action, only very clear consequence. And any rational person can look at the consequence of how we modernday Westerners live our lives and see that there is something fundamentally flawed in our choices.

I’m trying to set up a difficult distinction, and I’m not entirely sure it’s a clear or even valid one. But I think it’s important to get away from notions of doing things simply to avoid getting in trouble and instead choose correct actions simply for their own sake. A code, if you will.

(At 1:33–”The code of the warrior–you think it’s noble.” “No, I think it’s correct.”)

But see how quickly this gets heavy? Unwieldy, even? Ponderous and serious and, well, a little boring? Already I’m thinking I shouldn’t click “Publish” for this post, mainly because it’s starting to make me sound like a pompous, guilt-stricken, navel-gazing wet blanket. Consider:

The problem is big, and our choices, individually, have an exceedingly small impact.

It’s easy and in vogue right now to make oneself sound important or thoughtful or deep just by talking in serious tones about all this–which makes any conversation in this vein sound automatically just a little bit hollow.

Sincerity is always dicey. Though universally revered, no one actually wants to be Mother Theresa, and Pollyanna isn’t generally used as a flattering label. I suppose it’s easier to ridicule good behavior–then we can all feel a little better about not doing it.

But you know what? Today my coffeemaker is going to Goodwill, and the tea kettle and the Chemex will take its place. It wasn’t an environmental choice, though it touches on environmental considerations, and thus can be the entree into a much larger discussion. All in all, though, the net benefit of the change is negligible (after all, I’m still using it to brew beans from thousands of miles away). Mostly, it’s one small step to a less cluttered existence.

Call me crazy, but I think that sort of simplicity can save us. The simpler things get, the quieter they get. The quieter things get, the more space we have to be thoughtful, to be mindful. And mindful people, I believe, make better–more correct–choices. Comes with the territory.

So riding a bike or using a non-electric appliance won’t save the world. What they will do is give you a little shift in perspective–and from that new vantage point, you just might see a better way.

Not too long ago, I invited a friend to a show. “What kind of music is it?” he asked. I didn’t have a great answer, but fumbled my way through an explanation as best I could: “They’re kind of goth-Americana, like alt.county-pop on a bad day. You know, with guitars and a hint of banjo, all layer-caked over intelligent lyrics. The kind of music that might compel one to drink whiskey and be torn as to whether she wanted to dance or cry. Or both.”

I don’t know if this description was helpful.

The friend declined my invite.

But it opens a larger question, about genres and types and labels. How often are you asked–usually by someone you’re getting to know, but there are other circumstances under which this comes up–what sort of music you like? Or maybe the question is more movies or people or books or paint colors, but the query at the heart of them all is the same: what sort of person are you?

I’ve never had an easy time answering these kinds of questions. “It depends…” is where I usually start, with an answer that strings together so many adjectives and caveats as to be near-meaningless.

The real truth of it is that I can fall in love with damn near anything or anyone if it/they are written well or sound right or feel in sync with me. It’s nebulous and variable and nonetheless important for its hard-to-pin-down-ness. You know what I’m talking about.

Which brings us to the slice-of-life genre. It’s broad and vague, and long co-opted by the saccharine Norman Rockwell wannabe types, but its allure holds, for several reasons: one, real and honest are virtues, however badly they’ve been used and abused by hack writers, and nothing else can so quickly get to the heart of a situation as a crystal-clear look at the right moment of it. It’s like life distillation. Two, the longer I live, the more I’m convinced that this is what we are here for–not grand gestures or monumental accomplishments, but rather a life lived well in its particulars, no matter how trivial they may seem to others.

And so it is that I can describe one perfect happiness, even in the face of plans unfinished and dreams unrealized (for there are many ways to happy, just as there are ways to be miserable, and the fact that neither looked like what you thought they would doesn’t make them any less true). Today, that is this:

The sky today is a floor pounded by the feet of a thousand dancers. It is churned, rhythmic, rolling…even though it doesn’t move. It threatens rain, but doesn’t deliver. It is that girlfriend you never quite understood, but couldn’t bring yourself to leave. This sky will hover, dragging its belly over the too-dry land, and it will let fall a few drops of rain, or it won’t. I’ve tempted it by pedaling away from the house without rain gear, by hanging clothes out to dry, and now by settling on the patio with laptop and afternoon coffee, but it will not be provoked. Such are skies, sometimes.

Today, friends I will miss dearly and viscerally gathered around a coffee table laden with candy and pizza and beer for the World Cup final. Vuvuzelas make me hum in spite of myself, and I yell even though I don’t particularly care who wins this game.

A pork shoulder has been cooking since this morning, and the smell is too big for my house to hold. It wafts out the french doors and lingers on the patio, making sure I’ve noticed its richness.

Now the wind picks up, egging the sky on to drop its load of rain and be done with it. Dust and the last few wisps from the cottonwood trees are drawn to the mouth of my coffee mug. They make wee dimples on the liquid’s oily surface while I consider the peach tree, bent horizontal with its bounty. In days, I’ll have more peaches than I know what to do with; today I think about how they will taste and wait.

Today I’ve put away laundry, sold another piece of furniture, finished a sewing project. I haven’t read any more of the book I started, written much besides this bit, or spent more time in the kitchen than it took to put that pig into the crock pot. This is a perfect state of affairs. Because, regardless of how productive I have or have not been, right now I’m in a yard, in the wind, under an almost-rainy sky, and I’m smiling.

I know this much to be true: at the end of it all, maybe all that matters is how often you were able to smile, and make more smiles around you. What sort of person you are matters little; a label isn’t what will make me decide to invite you in for tea.

What kind of life do you like? What kind of life do you live?