Less Internet, More Books

I had big plans to spend my residency writing and reading books, but I wrote so much of my own work and sororitized so much with other writers (for they were mostly women), coloring in the lines of time so completely that I didn’t even finish one damn book. NOT ONE.

I did, however, pick up my first set of hitchhikers, I was stung by a wrathful bee, and I watched the solar eclipse with two treasured, joyful, kooky souls. I watched a bold fox trot across the length of grass in front of me–and you know, a fox really does trot, with its fine, black, sexy boots stealing up toward its knees.

I stumbled upon a roadkill bonanza when I swerved out of the road for a live crow, eating a dead opossum, which had been struck while eating a dead armadillo, which had been flattened, perhaps, by a truck the night before.

During all of this, I felt like I was hallowed into the earth. It was, without question, a mind-in-action retreat.

Still, I have learned to pause, take a step back, listen, and restart. There was an element of closure, of grounding and forgiveness to this time for me, in addition to a wealth of surrendering and opening. There was so much joy.

I had the space to express creative energy that had been held back like a log jam above some great, rushing, western chute.

I know there’s time ahead for all the reading I’d like to do, which is more passive than what I’ve been up to these past two weeks; it’s easy to read and discover something you don’t already know when plotting through the tides of everyday life.

My fellow writers and I engaged in so much silent collaboration that I marveled at the end of each day how well we coexisted, supporting each other by holding a safe space for a similar purpose, while achieving so much individually. At the end of each day, we reconvened to laugh, share important perspectives, and sometimes read our work out loud.

I was struck, mostly, by how significant all of this has been to the world beyond our haven.

Each of us ought to separate from ourselves long enough to pluck the thread of our own ignorance from our center, dangle it in front of our face, study it, and use it to mend something.

Here’s just a little glory I’ve tried to internalize from late-night conversations with people, avid thinkers no doubt, who identify with a generation wiser than mine:

Half a century ago, we were still naive enough to think that we were making pure progress in terms of civil rights. The assumption that things would only get better, and continue on that simple trajectory for generations, contributed to the kind of shock that many have felt in recent months.

What is happening now has been here, brewing, for ages, and it won’t go away if all we do is hack and rage at it with a billhook saw from the garden shed.

There is always a group of people, much larger than you believe, that does not experience the world the way you do. Categorical rejection without understanding leads to the kind of divisiveness we now see everywhere. Hate cannot be condoned, of course, but the fact that it still exists, and strongly so, points to woes that are more systemic than we realize. We can’t find solutions unless we understand all the reasons for why and how things are still broken.

Overall, it is our job to siphon off our own intellectual weaknesses–we all have them. We absorb so much information so quickly, but we don’t always take the time to translate that information into knowledge. The art of truly knowing comes more slowly, organically, with time. More than anything else, that’s what I’ve learned this week.

If you still want to internalize this concept quickly, then stick this in your pocket:

Less Internet, More Books

It’s a simple mantra for complex times, but within it rests a lot of truth. Dedicate time, whenever you can, to think and understand everything you can. Slowly, carefully, with thought.

We all have work to do.