As a would-be chronicles (or at least considerer) of the everyday, today’s essay spoke to me. You see as well as being poetic, brilliantly written and genuinely insightful
‘s latest contribution for us also touches upon the need to connect with real life, to ‘remove the earbud yoke’ and to truly engage.This is a message that bears repeating, again and again and again. I personally am an evangelist for it, if an imperfect practitioner. And so I am thrilled to present this piece from a fellow writer who gets it.
I hope you’ll get it too.
Enjoy.
TJB.
Lately, a mess of friends and acquaintances have been strategizing ways to spend less time online, on their phones, or on social media. From month-long hiatuses to several-week diets, they’re staying away and staying empirically present. While I respect the hell out of their actions, I likely won’t be following suit anytime soon. However, I do occasionally log out of Instagram for a few days because I had a bit of a bad relationship with Twitter 13 years ago, so I know how easily connecting across worlds through word and image can become compulsive. I wasn’t on the toxic Twitter of politics but the poesy, sexy, imaginative Weird Twitter – a world whose whimsy was diminished once we were told our world had a moniker. Name it, and it withers. This may not be the case with babies, but it could be the case with everything else. Would a cottonwood tree still sound like a river even if I didn’t know its name? I made more friends than followers on ol’ weird Twitter, but I recall my first tweet that gained any sort of retweet action:
“i’ve never done a formal Sext, but i thought about the feeling of riding a fat pigeon into a rainbow as I masturbated the other day.”
Anyway, I don’t need a break from the internet, but I do need a break from the guidance and advice-driven podcasts, newsletters, and articles that crowd the finite expanse of my inbox and phone. From Zoe Health & Nutrition’s evidence-based ways to reduce your cholesterol and Martha Beck’s direction on integrity on The Weekend University, to Jonathan Haidt’s social-media -free instruction on The Psychology Podcast and any episode about the benefits of nonduality on the Rupert Spira Podcast, I’m inundated with content that is categorized – accurately - under “education,” “culture,” “society,” “science,” and “philosophy” – but could just as easily be categorized under “self-help.” As enlightening or informative as the shows are, they all leave my body in a tense. Each episode ends with what are akin to action items. And why would I need to take action if my life and mind were already in the state of “just as they should be?”
If my life is Alright.
If my mind is just Okay.
If my mentality is Healthy.
If my thinking is Messy.
Either way.
If if if . . .
Then then then. . .
Do I even need any of these lessons? And if my life and mind were not so great, would these podcasts help anyway?
Years ago, I heard someone say,
“I can tell my mental health is failing when I look at my listening and realize it’s cluttered with podcasts, not music. So I immediately start listening to music again, and find my mind bettered.”
That’s not a direct quote, as you can tell it’s totally in my voice, but it’s the way my mind remembers it. The point is, this guy had a simple metric for diagnosing his own mental health;
Podcasts = Illness
Music = Wellness
And of course, I heard this all on. . . a podcast.
Earlier today, with one earbud snug and the other dangling at my sternum, I took a break from writing to weed the patio garden while Jim painted his wheels. Half my head was filled with the counsel of yet another stranger who knows better. The other half of my head heard the coalescence of cicadas, breeze, bees, and Jim’s music. I debudded myself just as the Althea bush dropped a wilted bloom with a thud, and in my memory, I could hear Nat King Cole’s silkworm throat sing “A Blossom Fell.” Without any effort from my end or advice from a podcast, my muscles relaxed into limpness, until my body was a blend of spent flower and sleepy penis.
I pulled weeds from the sandy crevices between pavers.
I removed the overgrowth of four-o-clocks from the perimeter of peppers to allow for more sun on our future pico.
I was soothed by the iconic sound of a spray paint can being shaken, then sprayed, then shaken again. The invisible ball that mixes the pigment. The hissy exhale of propellant.
I filled the watering can from the rain barrel and was left there to ponder nothing or everything as I patiently watched the water level rise.
Filling a can from a rain barrel takes longer than filling from the hose, and I was convinced I was getting time back rather than wasting what was given to me. The kettle wasn’t even half-full, so I looked down at our patio and appreciated the raised letters on the Purington Pavers. Each one the same, yet slightly different. And then I looked again. . . the two pavers at my feet weren’t Purington at all. The pressed letters spelled out:
BUFFALO
BUFFALO, KAS
BLOCK
and the other
MISSOURI
MOBERLY, MO
BLOCK
I could say seeing these for the first time hit me like a ton of bricks, but it didn’t. It was the languid but stunning realization that viewing is not observing because this could not have been the first time I’d laid eyes on these rogue blocks. This patio and its pavers have been with me for 22 years. Yet if you’d asked me, I would have said you were crazy, and sworn that the only pavers on our patio were that of the cat’s vibratory breath. . . the Purrrrrrrington pavers.
But here was Kansas, nuzzled on top of Missouri, unlike the way they lay on a map where Missouri takes the doggy-style lead behind Kansas’ flat ass. A romance of States of Union and States of Being, Stages of Mud and Stages of Clay.
During the early 1900s, the Buffalo Brick Plant in Buffalo, Kansas, was the largest brick plant West of the Mississippi. Ceasing production in 1966 and later demolished in 1972 means this little brick beneath my feet is much older than me. Is it an early specimen of the prohibition days or an older specimen of post-war growth? Who knows. But I finally noticed it.
In 1879, James Sandison arrived in Moberly, Missouri, and “promoted and directed” a brick plant, which would later become the Moberly Paving Brick Company. Sandison built the first sewer in Moberly and provided all the brick for the town’s seven miles of paved streets in 1888. During most of its operation, the plant operated a “dummy” railroad with an engine and miniature cars that ran from quarry to kiln. Because of a growth boom due to railroad expansion, Moberly gained the nickname “The Magic City.” Maybe the brick in our patio has a sprinkle of miracle in it.
After I tended to our garden, which is a bee and hummingbird feast, I photographed the cozy goings-on of our patio. . fruit and flowers, bricks and wheels, reflections and realities.
So while others are curtailing their time on social platforms, I may cull my podcast library and inbox subscriptions. Because just the presence of another new episode, promising to enlighten me or unburden me, is its own brand of anxious weight. I will remove the earbud yoke and just think about bricks.
Ah thank you for your words, Tom!
As one searches for self help and improvement, it's a tacit acknowledgment that some part of you needs helping or improving, or isn't where it "should" be. Which is far from the truth. Better not to dwell on it with podcasts and what not. Live, see the bricks and the clouds and anything else that happens by. The rest takes care of itself. Thanks Trilety.