Distractions

When I was in high school, I was profoundly affected by an essay (perhaps written by Walker Percy) that explores people going to the Grand Canyon so that they can take pictures of it. Its gist is that people get so caught up in preserving a record of things they’ve done while simultaneously fitting them into their preconceived notions that they’re distracted from appreciating the moment they’re in, completely missing it in any unadulterated state. The author elucidates the ludicrousness of filtering such a vast landscape through a camera lens, especially when you’re trying to frame it to resemble the professionally photographed postcard of the same location that you can buy across the street at the gift shop for 5 cents.

Is it The Matrix where one of the characters bemoans the “tourists” who wander around their entire lives never perceiving anything as it is? I haven’t seen that movie since those insipid sequels came out and really need to re-watch it….

To me, everything about photography cameras are a frustrating distraction- from trying to figure out how to get them to work to trying to figure out how to pose to sorting through the results. A few years ago, in Portland, OR, where the citizens are mostly pathetic, attention-seeking idealists, I was watching a soapbox derby on Mt. Tabor when I was interrupted by a group asking me to take their picture. I strongly responded, “No,” and they shriveled in horror at such audacity. What’s insulting to me is they think they can just impose their inane activities on me by expecting me to remove myself from my existence to indulge theirs. If you want your picture taken, hire a bloody photographer.

Technology seems to thrive when it’s effective at enabling us to avoid interactions. Instead of cooking, we can watch cooking shows on television. Instead of having conversations, we can make pithy remarks on Facebook that are almost instantly buried under a pile of other pithy remarks. Instead of listening to the birds and rustling leaves in the park, we can listen to digitally compressed music through earbuds on our iPods. Don’t even get me started on fucking smart phones, which are turning us into a bunch of zombies, wandering around with our faces immersed in 3 inch rectangles…. To quote Yoda, “Never your mind on where you are, what you are doing.”

But the issue goes beyond technology. I used to live in Oakland, CA- working hard 40 hours a week at a print shop and playing drumming gigs on the side- where I struggled to afford basic necessities. I rented a room in a small apartment shared with a couple and their four cats (not including mine). I shopped at the discount grocery store that sold the surplus from other grocery stores, and my roommates would tease me about how many days in a row I could eat burritos, which I often made with only tortillas, refried beans and chopped habaneros because I couldn’t afford cheese. My other meals tended to be cold cereal with milk and a bagel with schmear for lunch. My weekly food budget cap was $40 but I tried to keep it at $30. Obviously, I didn’t drink at all. Alcohol is expensive.

My favorite dish is Thai curry, which I now know how to make, but didn’t back then. Just down the street from where I lived was an excellent Thai place, or so I had been told, as I’d never actually been there. For weeks, I longed to try that restaurant, and little by little I managed to save up enough money to be able to treat myself. Finally, on a weekend afternoon, with a hard-earned $20 bill in my pocket, I walked down to the Thai place, sat outside in the courtyard and ordered Thai green curry with tofu, as spicy as they could make it, and a Thai iced tea. As I awaited my food, I watched the only other person at the restaurant, also sitting alone. He was reading one of the Lord of the Rings books.

I’ve actually read the first book of that trilogy twice… and found it tedious enough both times that I never picked up the others. Basically it’s about a midget who wanders around with a powerful ring and shenanigans ensue. What I don’t like about it, besides the unrealistically patent distinctions made between good and evil, is that any competent bad guy would’ve gotten the ring from that stupid hobbit in about five minutes. I mean, about the first thing he does (in the book, it isn’t in the movie- yeah, I saw all three of those in the theater…) is hand it over to some raving lunatic!

The food arrived for the kid reading the book before mine. I watched in horror as, instead of putting the book down to enjoy his food, he continued to read as he mindlessly shoveled the food into his mouth. Perhaps because I was so looking forward to my meal, this upset me to the point of tears, and when my food arrived, I had to make a deliberate effort to forget about this distraction I had now created for myself.

I’m certainly not exempt from being distracted. But what I love most are things that demand riveted focus on the present as it continuously unfolds into the future while revealing its dependence upon past knowledge and training. This is what I loved about playing improvisational music, what I love about so many Japanese films, what I love about watching every baseball pitch and every pass of a soccer ball for 45 minutes straight as incredibly fit players reach the brink of exhaustion…, what I love about playing disc golf, where the design of the course and the discs and the choices and execution of each throw set up the next shot. There’s an Anne Lamott book called Bird by Bird in which the author describes her method for writing, which consists of allowing it to evolve word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter, book by book. This, for me, is the essence of what it means to live life to its fullest.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” -Henry David Thoreau