Be Here Now

If the reader will indulge me, a short rant and vent before moving on to the praise of this wild and precious life. 

 

As noted in the last post, I miraculously cleared the deck before leaving on my trip so I can be more wholly present and embrace the notion of “vacation.” But we (certainly I) have organized my life around being perpetually “in touch” and “available” through the ever-expanding possibilities of e-mail, text message, WhatsApp, Facebook, Facebook-messenger and having done so, feel obliged to check in in case I miss anything “important.” So the first e-mails I saw were two people signed up for the Jazz Course saying they’ve dropped, having heard of one more the day before I left and two more the week before that. That’s 5 out of 20 people casually letting me know, “Oh, by the way, I’m not going to make it.” More and more, I’m seeing people treat commitment as a casual “maybe I will, maybe I won’t” and that not only disturbs me culturally, but makes it almost unworkable to run courses like I do and depend upon them meaning it when they sign up. Of course, accidents and family crisis and health crisis are real and understandable, but in the past, that accounts for maybe two or three people out of 100 sign-ups. This is now 5 out of 20! 25%!

 

I need all 20 and then 5 more to make our budget and needless, to say, this was NOT what I wanted to hear and it really threw me to the floor. On top of the fact that in order to check messages in those multiple mediums, I have to scroll through the junk mail of the next bad news in my home country of not-Canada. Of course, I don’t read them, but hard not to notice the headings and do I have to stay connected with this shit when I’m just trying to re-learn how to be more fully present in the here and now? It’s really bumming me out. 

 

But having released my complaint in language, I’m working on letting it go and turning my attention to Ram Dass’s timeless advice: “Be here now.” What does that actually mean and how might I pay attention to it more fully? A few thoughts: 

 

BE— Be wholly present in the fullness of your being. 

HERE—Locate yourself in space.

NOW—Locate yourself in time. 

 

In reality, we are constantly criss-crossing between past, present and future. We are here at the same time we are there. We are present in our own being at the same time being inhabited by others speaking through us or at us or colonizing our thoughts with their thoughts or (the best of choices), enlarging our thoughts with their provocative thoughts.

 

All of this has always been possible in a mind made boundless by imagination, jump-started by stories around the dinner table or campfire, then given more energy by literacy—books that can instantly transport you to other lands and inhabit you with other thoughts and carry you to other times. Books that you can choose. Books that are your ticket to distant places and times. Books that are wholly your choice as to when and if and why to buy one and how much you’re willing to spend. (Not the price of the book, but the time invested.)

 

Now the choices have amplified exponentially. You’re in one restaurant with one friend at the same time you’re FOMO’ing yourself to the other restaurant with other friends. Your connection to place is broken by heads-down looking at the tiny screen, your possibility of savoring the moment stolen by the endless distraction of games, videos, social media posts singing you to your be-here-now-doom and no one is tying you to the mast or plugging your ears. 

 

Rapid transportation is another way to catapult you out of the here of the body’s slow movement through place and in the body's time— planes, trains and automobiles that offer little by way of savoring the journey, just getting through the miles between here and there to begin your “real” life or vacation in the new places. The faster it moves, the less you are “here.” 

 

Yet trains that are not “faster than a speeding bullet” can have their own romance (as the old Hitchcock films, the Before Sunrise film, and my own train travel in Europe capture). Boats that likewise glide more leisurely through water (Now Voyager film and my boat ride to Formentera) and cars that sing out “Road trip!” (On the Road, my first trip to California, my pandemic RV trip to Michigan with the kids and grandkids), autos that meander the back roads and bypass the super-highways, have their own sense of hereness and nowness. 

 

Keep slowing down and the pleasures increase— the bike ride, the canoe or kayak trip, and best of all, walking— not destination fast-paced hiking or head-down rushing to the next subway stop, but true meandering and wandering . 

 

And so on the verge of a 5-day semi-organized walking trip in the Yorkshire Dales and the good sense to bring Rebecca Solnit’s book Wanderlust, I’m ready to renew my love of walking. Stay tuned for my Walking Autobiography, my musings after each day’s walk and my sense that the best resistance to the world demanding my attention with its distractions is to refuse it—or at least limit it to one short e-mail check a day and that’s it. Wish me luck!

 

(And please sign up for the Jazz Course!)