A Welcome Respite

Atlanta, GA

November 1, 2020

Today, on the Solemnity of All Saints, we honor those holy men and women who earned the highest celestial reward. Tomorrow, on All Souls’ Day, we commemorate the dead, and pray they reach those heavenly heights now that they are released from their earthly chains.

Those of us still shackled to this mortal coil move forward, press ahead, and carry on. But late this week, we were forced to pull back, and slow down.

October in Atlanta was, as usual, beautiful. Sweaters in the morning, shirtsleeves by day, blankets in the evening. And, after high winds a few days ago, candles by night.

Spring is usually the perennial season of hope and optimism. But in this convoluted year, the vernal equinox brought only dearth and despair. Gatherings were prohibited, events cancelled, and a pall draped over normal life. By imperial decree, even Easter was given up for Lent.

From then to now, people have routinely been denied things that provide them pleasure, supply them sustenance, and make life worth living. They have been confined, masked, and deprived of consoling contact, enervating adventure, or comforting companionship. 

In their isolation, many have latched more firmly to the addictive adrenaline of electronic drugs. As if that weren’t a big enough problem already, it’s an epidemic now.

These digital narcotics have infested society, and are taking over our lives. Zoom, texts, tweets, posts, streams, Teams, memes, movies, and gifs consume most minutes of the average person’s day. Time we once spent reading, conversing, strolling, or thinking is now devoted to scrolls, likes, clicks, and posts. 

We stare incessantly at our screens. They often shed the first light upon waking eyes, and emit the final glow as the lids come down. We follow “friends”, post pictures, watch the weather, check stocks, scan scores, heed headlines, and draft dopey disjointed diaries.

As a rule, we’d have done better to walk our dog, write a letter, read a book, or talk to our family. Had we done so, we’d have been less likely to get worked up over nothing, concern ourselves with things we can’t control, or make impetuous decisions based on phony facts and rapid, random, un-contextualized “news”. 

We wouldn’t have become emotionally invested in or disgusted by people we’ve never met, places we’ll never go, and problems we’ll never solve. And these fleeting trivialities wouldn’t have become urgent distractions to which we instinctively sacrifice important occasions.

Rare is the text, tweet, or email that couldn’t wait. Abundant are the special moments that do, yet sometimes not long enough for us to meet them, before they are gone forever. We may not even know what they are. Diverted by daily noise, we never allowed them to happen.

Our labor-saving devices often leave us little time for leisure. But while we are frequently busy, we are only periodically productive. Like bees in a molasses barrel, we are ever in motion, ingest all we can, and come away distressed or disoriented in our haze of empty mental calories.

This electronic eye candy consumes brain cells. Or, at the least, it displaces them. Our minds can only imbibe so many things. Like an overbooked flight, they can’t accommodate every notion vying for limited space. Some must be bumped, to keep from overburdening the fuselage.

But how do we know which thoughts should be entertained, and which dispatched? We can only know by sifting thru them. Yet even this exhausting effort subliminally engraves the gratuitous graffiti, and amplifies the superfluous noise. Each impression, however fleeting, makes its mark, or embeds its stain. Many will never come out. The clutter builds, crowding, clouding, and confusing our minds.

The information with which we are incessantly inundated is, as Lucretius described life, no more than particles in random collision. Some are true. Most are false. And much of what isn’t may be factual, but not truthful. It doesn’t just promote a lack of knowledge, it provides negative knowledge. After receiving it, we end up knowing less than we did before.

The mind, as Albert J Nock said, is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests. If you try to feed it with a shovel, you get bad results. Few spades are more efficient than social media and mobile phones.

But how to stop digging?

Like Sirens on the sea, our little devices don’t like being ignored, and stalk or seduce us if we try. They are constantly beeping, buzzing, ringing, and alerting…ensuring our attention never wanders too far or long from their enchanting diversions. And we seem incapable of lashing ourselves to the mast. An App informs how much time we spend peering into our screen, ostensibly to reduce it, but more likely as subterfuge to pull us back in.

Much of this feels unnatural. So, a couple days ago, nature struck back. 

In the small hours Thursday morning, the remnants of Hurricane Zeta rolled thru. Before the sun rose, the rain fell, and the wind howled. Trees were uprooted, and power was cut. As dawn lit the lawn, we saw it covered with trees, branches, and leaves.

Inside, there was an eerie, yet soothing, calm. We had no power. Even cell service was disrupted. We could neither send nor receive email, and texts were spotty. David’s school was cancelled. Rita and I could hardly work. We were without Internet, and phones were good only for what phones were originally good for: talking.

When I awoke, I futilely flipped light switches, and reflexively sought my accustomed connection to the wider world. I soon realized I couldn’t have it, and didn’t miss it. I was also reminded, upon hopping into what became a very quick shower, that our new water heater is electric. 

But all of that was tolerable. After I walked the dog, fed the cats, and started a fire, a more consequential concern arose. 

Coffee.

To be content, I don’t need much. A bed, a book, a candle…and I’m fine. But I do need a cup of coffee in the morning, and appreciate a glass of wine at night. Wine we had. Electricity we didn’t. Without it, our coffee maker was as useless as a priest in Mecca. 

An emergency impended. Such crises portend trouble, but crystallize thought. Within minutes, one came.

We had propane, so I fired up the grill. On it we boiled water, which filled a French press, and made our coffee. Yesterday, the grill was again called to service, and for the first time was used to make pizza. As we moved thru our second day without electricity, eggs, bacon, and beef would doubtless make their way onto our versatile cooking contraption.

But we needed to act fast. As the inside of our refrigerator eased inevitably toward room temperature, we had to become more resourceful to preserve what we could. 

As they did with toilet paper in the spring, our proactive neighbors had already cleared ice bags from nearby stores. But in our small spare fridge, a growing ice block had begun to form and, now, to melt. Before it could, Rita scraped it off, and dumped it into a little, well-insulated cooler. 

With it went meat, dairy, and other perishables that seemed destined to spoil in our lukewarm refrigerator. Yet packed and chilled in their makeshift ice box, they lasted easily into the next day. Unfortunately, whatever didn’t fit into the tiny lifeboat remained in the large vessel, and most of it went down with the ship.

But it was our dark evenings that were most enlightening. It was as if they were of another age. Quiet and relaxing…empty of electronics, lit by candles, and warmed by fire. In the cool air and flickering light, we conversed, connected, and relaxed. Our pace and pulse slowed. It was refreshing, and welcome.

With the solar cycle providing our primary light, the Circadian rhythm reasserted itself. Without television or technology to keep us awake, nature choreographed our sleep. 

Yesterday morning, after two-and-a-half days, the electricity returned. As phones were immediately re-attached to their electric umbilical cords, I took a moment to appreciate our brief respite. It’s as if we had taken a little trip back to the 19th century. 

Having endured the first score of the twenty-first, and taken a good gander at its most recent year, that wasn’t a bad place to be. 

JD