waking thoughts

Last night as dusk came over the neighbourhood I took a mug of coffee and my notebook, then went out to the back yard and climbed up to the little roofless deck on the swing set, intending to write. However, weariness overcame me, and I dozed off while lying face-up on the wooden planks. When I awoke (approximately three quarters of an hour later) the sunlight had entirely gone, and above me in the sky the partial moon glowed with strength enough to cast yard and house and surrounding trees in a pale dream-like light; a breeze, laced with the intoxicating flavour of wilder places, gusted sporadically around me. Somewhere between the moon and I there passed a helicopter, all alight. Slowly, as I became aware of the mosquitoes buzzing subtly around me, I gathered cooled coffee, pen, and untouched notebook, and returned with half-dazed steps to the house—a world bathed in the relentless hum of technology and electric brilliance, a world so different than the darkened one in which I had for a few moments been immersed.

I've been listening to Tori Amos through these past few days, and drinking less coffee. I'm trying to un-tether myself from my laptop and spend more time listening, more time breathing, more time reading. When online, I make a point of focusing on one task at a time instead of flitting between two or seven, writing an email or a forum post in one sitting, staying on the page of an article or blog essay until I have thoughtfully read to the end. There is a kind of life I want to live, a sort of person I want to become, and these are the ways to get there, starting on the cellular level of every day.

Through the medium of the internet, through the fusion of the digital world with every moment of my waking (and sometimes sleeping) existence, some of the best events of my life have occurred. My life is inevitably a meshing of fibres from both tangible physical and abstract digital elements, and I would not have it any other way, but if part of growing up is learning how to pick and choose between good and better, this is me growing up, ever so slightly. This is me recognising that the most important parts of my day no longer need to be passed in front of a screen, that constant digital input was a valuable part of my life for some time but that I now need to consciously let that go because it is no longer needed.

This is me saying that I refuse to spend whole afternoons aimlessly scrolling through image feeds long run into a blur of colour and flipping through sluggish social media pages merely to distract my brain from the fact that I don't really want to be living. I have an idea, even if vague, of what I want out of life, and it is not a self-imposed bubble of electronic isolation: it is laughing over ridiculous jokes with people I love, it is preparing tasty meals that will be savoured by those who sit down to eat, it is spending time outdoors—both accompanied and unaccompanied—even when the weather is not comfortable, it is noting the light mottled on the trees, it is spending hours immersed in the pages of books overflowing with literary and philosophical riches. It is eating well instead of clogging my body with edible garbage, it is drinking more tea and less coffee, it is writing and sending more letters more often to more people. It is writing, period, and copiously. It is remembering birthdays. It is giving hugs and learning to make use of telephones and Skype and in general focusing on forging relationships in many different directions. It is refusing to allow insecurity and obsession with personal inadequacy (which, for the record, is in all its legitimacy, self-centered) to paralyse my ability to connect with other people for their benefit and my own. This is me choosing life.

My cousins and aunt and uncle are presently travelling through various points on the west coast, and seeing snapshots of their adventures, whether it be cobbler-making in the cramped interior of the communal camper or my cousins in their Bermudas silhouetted against a broad blue sky and the Pacific Ocean beyond them, is stirring in my a deep longing to revisit Oregon and Washington, as well as a lingering sadness that while I was there I did not see the sea. Finances (ever the curse of civilised man) render a trip impossible now, but some day I shall pack a bag—just one, with a camera and a few articles of clothing and a notebook and pens—and I will leave my laptop behind and set out again to visit that breathtaking wild place on the opposite side of the country, and I will roam rocky beaches and hike through forests of sky-reaching trees in order to sit on lofty mountain shelves and I will haunt small-town coffee shops and walk penniless through street fairs and look up old acquaintances.

And maybe, if I happen to inquire among the right people at the right time, someone will go with me, and together we can be immersed in the splendour of the world exposed to the sky.