80 Summers: Why Time Passes Differently Without Screens
In trying to calculate dog years, I get a little wiser about human years. We're at the beach for a week in New Smyrna, and we left our dog, Copper, with a dog sitter. So it is a week for him. But if a dog year is 7 years, then a dog week is 7 weeks. I know it is a fairly oversimplified generalization. Still, pondering time through any framework puts things in perspective.
For instance, if we live to be 80, we have 80 summers to live. That's not that many. Or 80 Christmases, or 80 Thanksgivings, birthdays, etc.
Alan Watts was said to have said:
"Measure your days not by degrees of productivity but by degrees of presence."
Many summers I've wasted. Some I've lived. Some I've frittered away on a computer. Some cast away presence into future-paced fictions, branded 'dreams.'
No more.
The longest 10 days of my life, a meditation retreat, was also the shortest. It was an objective representation of 10 days. Just sitting there, present with thoughts, in silence.
This Summer I've been Screenless Writing. It's close to an objective experience of the passing days; a blend of present-moment awareness and past reflection.
I'm finalizing the drafts, seeing how close I can get The Screenless Writer book to actually being Screenless in execution.
Rude awakening.
Some people are engaged with the world in a negative way. It is a learned response to the world. It can be adjusted, tweaked, re-trained. Some people die from it, because endless worry, anger, or bitterness manifests as a host of diseases. This is the flaw of the more materialistic medical model. Meaning that it misses the actual origin of a disease and invents one based on symptoms.
Anyway, I'm cleansing on this beach week as well, compelled by an illness I got before I left, where I didn't eat for some days. It totally reset my relationship to diet for the moment. Coupled with some herbal teas and a diet of mostly fruit. Which I'm familiar with, after experimenting for years and writing Edenbound.
So this purge is a necessity of life, and the clearer we can remain, internally, the more positive the outlook. When I eat chicken, for instance, for 24 hours I'm in a negative state. I only know this because I've spent time not eating chicken.
It makes some sense that causing suffering creates suffering, but that is a thought experiment. It holds up to closer scrutiny under testing in this case.
Anyway, how to remain oneself, and create from there? That's the question. Or maybe, how to create from one's 'highest' self, when the gravity is to create apocalyptic visions and sordid memoirs.
The news programs us to be negative, fearful, dependent upon external circumstances. The Screenless Writer is free, at least temporarily, of this influence. So the Screenless Writer can write fearlessly.
Death and Taxes.
There's no way to live without thought of death. People push it off, by pretending they're going to live to 200 or whatever. Or by numbing the senses until pain erupts and the senses can no longer be numbed.
Either way. Full life sensation can either be embraced or pushed off to be felt later.
80 Summers.
I've always rebelled against this 'the only certainty is Death and Taxes' mantra, because I suppose I don't like to revolve my whole conception of mortality around a governmental function. That being said, people go to great lengths to avoid both.
The third 'promise' of The Screenless Writer is the prospect of 'Live Forever'. Doing something, anything, that transcends time and leaves a trace.
Write on,
Steven Budden Jr.