Category: Life

The Daisy

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I have a little yellow Daisy on my front porch that I’ve been trying to keep alive for a few weeks. I’m not doing a very good job of it. The flower lives life on a strange carnival ride of forgetfulness, swinging wildly from healthy, golden vitality to a state of near-death droopiness over the course of each week, and I feel bad for it. I feel guilty just long enough to give it another starvation ration of water from a measuring cup out of the kitchen, that is, and then forget about it for another few days. I really have no idea what I’m doing.

I feel the same way about Twitter. Like the flower on my porch, I abandon it to time and entropy six days out of the week and overwater it on the seventh. It also gives me anxiety. I think, “I need to be better at Twitter.” I wonder, like most everyone with a high opinion of their own voice, “how can I get more engagement?” Just last night, I fell asleep thinking about how social media is a tool that I haven’t learned to properly use. Like an awl, maybe, which I also don’t know how to use. 

Unlike the flower, which needs me to live, there’s no reason for me to feel that way about Twitter. Twitter is probably demonstrably better without me on it. But I can’t help it. I fret over it, like the Tamagotchi I got in a kid’s meal from KFC in 1996 that quietly beeped its way into my psyche until I pulled the battery with a pang of guilt and a whoosh of relief two weeks later. It’s the same mechanic: press one button to clear a need, another to build a relationship.

I need to figure out why the internet makes me feel this way.   

Make it Yourself: Starting My Home Cooking Journey

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This week I’ve been spending a lot of time in the kitchen. Like many Americans, I’ve spent my entire life on a weight loss “journey,” but the only times I’ve ever had any success have been those times when I truly take ownership of everything I eat and drink. This means planning meals and cooking for myself.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time thinking about what it means to live in a world being “eaten by software”—a world in which computer technology replaces our other technologies one by one, changing our lives forever in ways that we are only just beginning to understand. As food delivery and, soon, on-demand food “printing” and manufacturing powered by the web begin to take the place of home cookery, what are we losing?

With those things in mind, I decided this week to try something new: I don’t want to eat or drink anything that I haven’t made myself. No ordering out, no vending machines, no packaged “convenience” food. Just fresh, simple ingredients and food that I can feel good about.

Here’s my example from last night: Teriyaki Grilled Salmon with sautéed Asparagus and Roasted Sweet Potatoes. It’s not fancy, but it was healthy and delicious. Just as importantly, it allowed me to step away from the keyboard for awhile.

It’s more important than ever to make things by hand. We may not be able to go back to the analog world, but the planning, focus, and skill needed to make things for ourselves offer a powerful antidote to the digital doldrums. More to come.

Field Notes: Spanish Needles in the Mohawk Patch

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There is an overgrown patch in the middle of my backyard that sprung up last month when winter began to gasp away. I remember it happened all of a sudden. The grass was not short—it rarely is in my yard, sadly—but subdued. More bohemian gardeners might have almost called it respectable. But then it rained one Thursday night, one of those surprisingly thunderous late winter gullywashers that sends the cats scurrying beneath the bed, and the grass woke up next to the fire pit on Friday morning with a wild mohawk and a raging sneer. Since then I’ve been ignoring the boisterous patch of turf like a shamefaced Baptist hiding in the back of the church. It feels too early still to tune up the lawnmower, a cantankerous old Snapper tractor that is probably busy popping its own front tires as you read this, and get down to work; but I know it’s going to have to happen if I want to stay on speaking terms with the neighbors and my dog, so I’m locked in a debate now between the slothful devil Chris on one shoulder and the industrious angel Chris on the other.

When I went home at lunch today I took the dog outside and saw that the patch had broken into an enthusiastic bloom of Spanish Needles. Most anyone you ask would call these weeds, and, well, they’re not wrong. But I’ve been reading gloomy articles about the insect apocalypse all winter, so I was a little happier than I should have been when I noticed that this patch in the yard was practically swarming with honeybees. My shame over avoiding the yardwork was transformed into respect and wonder for these little plants and the insects they attracted. Where would these bees be right now if I had cut the grass last weekend?

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I’ve read that the best thing we can do to save the bugs, aside from advocating for the more thoughtful regulation and use of pesticides, is to promote an insect-friendly environment in our own backyard. These little Spanish Needles on the rebellious mohawk patch taught me a lesson today: sometimes that means letting go, just a little, and letting nature work. As insects, water, and other precious things dwindle, it’s more important than ever before to balance management needs against the needs of nature. Next year I intend to promote this little weed, to make it an intentional part of the yard, along with other insect-friendly plants.

Until then, I probably need to cut the grass.

Pushing Through It

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I really wanted to stay home and be lazy tonight. It was a long day. Traffic was terrible, and I don’t sleep enough to feel great at the end of every week. But then I saw myself in the mirror and thought there might be a little bit of a positive change happening, so I just went and did some weights and 20 minutes on the elliptical. This is my fifth straight night working out.

St. Johns Meditation

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Source: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._Johns_River_in_Downtown_Jacksonville_with_John_T._Alsop_Jr._Bridge_-_panoramio.jpg

This is not my photo. Sometimes, at the end of a long day, my mind turns homeward, back to Jacksonville, and I find myself looking at pictures of the river I love. I look out over this river and I see my own history running through the current.

Sometimes memories of my dad’s fishing buddies flow in ripples and eddies on the far shore. One of the waves washes a brief but rich memory over me of riding in the back of a pickup truck, one interminable summer Saturday afternoon, beer cans rolling around the bed, hair tousled and burnt by wind and sun. Over and through countless bridges and marshes we rode to the mouth of the river, where I rolled with languid Atlantic waves on the ocean side of the jetty listening to them talk about work.

Dad’s friend asks me to manage the fishing pole while he walks down the beach for awhile, and I take the rod from him with gravity, eager to stand in the surf with purpose. I feel a tug on the line. A joyous weight pulls against the end of the line and I know the fish is hooked. I let out a little yelp as I reel the fish in from the surf, turn by turn, until I see a silver flash just beneath the roiling surface a few feet away. I did not know then that I would remember that little Whiting 25 years later, so I simply took the fish off of the hook and put her back in the water as I had been taught. Some people say it’s not right to catch a fish and throw it back. I don’t have an answer for them all these years later. This is how I was taught, over and over again, right here on this river.

Later that night I felt the waves in my body as I fell asleep on the couch, the warm tones of a PBS documentary and the struggling air conditioner laying down a pattern of white noise that was suitably oceanic in its own way—a way that continues to whisper home in my ear whenever I stop to listen.