I noticed my feet this morning….

One of the things I’m most grateful for this year is the opening of an independent bookstore nearby. Actually it is a re-opening: the owner was originally put out of business (as I recall) when Borders and Barnes and Noble came to town in the 90s. The Borders closed several years ago and the Barnes and Noble closed during the big wave of closing in the last couple of years. Now Morgenstern’s is back, complete with a cafe, lots of seating, and a clear investment in promoting the local community.

My family and I have had a lot of fun hanging out there weekly since it opened. I have discovered so many books that I never would have come across through my usual ways - and I’m a person who actively seeks out books! I’ve had to start a whole new book list to keep track of them. The joy of bookstore serendipity! 📚

I was reminded this week of Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley’s bonkers Evelyn Evelyn project. Webley described it as “like something the Andrews Sisters might have recorded if they had grown up in the circus listening to new wave music.”

I’ve been reading a bit about surveillance capitalism (Privacy is Power and a couple hundred pages thus far of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism) so I’ve been trying to disentangle myself from some of the worst offenders. My Facebook account was permanently deleted a few days ago. I’ve switched email from Gmail to ProtonMail. I’ve moved all my files from Google drive to Dropbox. Here’s where my question comes in: Dropbox is fine but I would like something privacy-focused with the ability to edit documents on my iPhone (as with the Google apps). Is anyone aware of something like that?

Several days ago I watched Bright Star, Jane Campion’s film about the final period of John Keats' life. While I enjoyed it, I didn’t expect it to hang around in my mind for very long. But it did. I even bought a copy of the complete Keats in order to get more familiar with his work. I also found a list of the best biopics about poets, none of which I’ve seen (apart from Bright Star). I’m most interested in the film about Oscar Wilde, since I like both Wilde and Stephen Fry. Anyone want to recommend a biopic about a poet, whether on this list or not? 📚

Look into the trees, gentle
your eyes, engage your ancient talent
for spotting movement.
Listen for the breeze to pick up.

You will see dozens descending,
an alien visitation, sinuous,
silent, sliding to earth
from hawk height.

They come to rest in dry creek beds,
amassing on mossened rocks.
The forest floor - always
covered in them - thickens.

They arrive dead
in certain obvious ways.
But to those who look along time:
Panspermia.

I’ve had my eye on this series at my local bookstore. They’re great books, obviously, but they also look good. I’ve read a few pages here and there when I’m at the bookstore and Fromm’s is particularly compelling. 📚

Went to see Over the Rhine - the best band in the world - at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater last night.

For the last several months in response to all this, I’ve been reading about solitude and silence - and making some attempts at practice. No one needs me to tell them that the world is in trouble. What I’m looking for is a way to live with the trouble, without falling into the destructive patterns of behavior we see around us. It seems that more silence is either a way to that way, or the way itself.

Obviously, when I talk about the value of silence, I’m not talking about absolute, unending silence; otherwise I’d be quite a hypocrite for writing this. My interest is in silence as a space to inhabit, however temporarily, and from which to act.

The non-action of the wise man is not simply inaction.
It is not a studied thing and thus cannot be upset by anything.
The sage is quiet, not because he wills to be quiet
but because he is not unsettled.
(Zuangzhi, as found in Beaulac, Sitting with Lao-Tzu)

Silence separates you from the multitude of voices that would control you. It is a way to understand yourself as yourself and clarify your mind. Acting out of that place, rather than in reaction to the multitude of voices, is far better. Thomas Merton:

He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world, without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. (Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action)

All of this, by the way, I write aspirationally - because I know how noisy my own head is and how tempted I am to stop resisting the ever-present distractions. It is a real struggle to separate yourself from the insanity of social media and cable news and scrolling scrolling scrolling. Listen, life is hard and you’re an adult, so you’re free to do with your life what you want. Just make sure it is what you want in your deepest self.

Some good writing on this subject:

• Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits by Bill Porter
• Hermits by Peter France
• Solitude by Anthony Storr
• “Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude” by Thomas Merton, published in Disputed Questions

Merton’s essay is particularly rich - and his struggle with his monastic superiors to get the solitude he wanted is also instructive. (I can’t find where I read about that but I’ll link it here if I can find it.) One of the lines that spoke most deeply to me is the following. My reasons for withdrawal weren’t nearly so grand - I just wanted some peace! - but I love the idea of healing in yourself the wounds you see in the world.

Such men, out of pity for the universe, out of loyalty to mankind, and without a spirit of bitterness or of resentment, withdraw into the healing silence of the wilderness, or of poverty, or of obscurity, not in order to preach to others but to heal in themselves the wounds of the entire world. (Thomas Merton, “Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude”)

I love documentaries about extreme sports - probably because I am so unlike the people who do such things! This one, though, was extraordinary, my favorite of its kind. Streaming on Netflix.