Life-altering Moments

Many of the most life-altering decisions I've made have occurred during mundane circumstances. I decided to quit college in 1985 while talking on the phone with a friend one day. I decided to move one time while I was at a church picnic. I came up with a new book idea in the shower a couple of mornings ago. I've even made decisions in mid-sentence while talking to somebody.

Of course, decisions or realizations rarely happen quickly. They are the culmination of a bunch of little facts and observations that all snowball toward that one minute when the last piece of information locks itself into your mind, and then you just know.

Yesterday, I read a scene from a novel called A Window Across the River by Brian Morton that captured this process beautifully. The novel is about a photographer named Isaac who feels that life and the photography industry is passing him by and there's not much he can do to stop either one. In this particular scene, Isaac is talking to one of his former photography students named Renee. She's just landed a deal with The New Yorker to publish three of her photos—the same magazine that Isaac has wanted to be published in for a long time. Listen to his thought process:

"When he was in his late twenties, two of his photographs were acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and when he told one of his former teachers the good news, the old man had said, 'Yes, they've been after me to send them some things, but I've been too busy.' At the time Isaac hadn't understood that the old man had no class, that his response had emerged from a stew of peevish envy. He understood it now. And he understood that if he gave Renee anything less than a generous response, it would condemn him, condemn him as a small-souled man, and that a generous response, even if it wasn't sincere, would be enough."

A couple of lines later, right in the middle of their conversation, Isaac came to this realization: "The next generation was making its claim, and he hadn't tried to obstruct it. He felt obscurely that this was one of the defining moments of his life."

And he was right.

Squirrel Watching

I love how some of the smallest things in life can evoke great memories. I was working in my home office a couple of days ago, which sits near the front of my house, and I heard all sorts of racket outside my window. I looked out and saw a squirrel latched onto the rod iron of my porch. He was looking straight in at me. I tried to get a picture of him, but he was already running away by the time I snapped this photo through my living room window.



This incident reminded me of days long since past. When I was a little boy, my grandparents lived on a big acreage that had a wooded area with a creek that ran through it, so it was always a magnet for deer, squirrels, and a few animals that I still have no idea what they were called. My grandpa used to sit at a picnic table in the backyard and read the newspaper while watching wild life. He spent many evenings back there while he was still in good health.

When he got sick toward the end of his life, he often sat on the front porch instead. He still got to see squirrels chasing each other around the yard and up one of the five trees in the front yard. He'd laugh and point and tell his grandchildren to watch certain squirrels because of their unique characteristics. Some might have a funny looking tail, some were different colors, some were skinny, and some were fat, but all of them were playful. I can't help but wonder if their friskiness didn't remind my grandpa of the days when he used to putter around in his workshop without any physical ailments.

The older I get, the more I understand what it feels like to desire the exuberance of youth while at the same time knowing my body doesn't care about what my heart desires. And the older I get, the more I hope that I'll become like my grandpa—someone who finds joy in the small things of life even when I can no longer physically chase after them myself.

Midweek Quotes

"It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit." –Antoine Rivarol

"Mystery is a resource, like coal or gold, and its preservation is a fine thing." –Tim Cahill

"She sometimes thought that even if what she wrote every day was doomed to disappear during the night, she would keep writing stories, just to make a daily pilgrimage to the realm of mystery and reverence and play." –Brian Morton, from the point of view of a character named Nora, from his novel A Window Across the River

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand. –Neil Armstrong

"A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." –G. K. Chesterton, from the book Orthodoxy

"The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." –Eden Phillpotts

Mystery

I picked up a couple of CDs out of the bargain bin a couple of weeks ago—one of which is called Thinkin' About You by Trisha Yearwood, originally released in 1994. I popped it into my CD player on my way to a social event last night and I heard a beautiful ballad called On a Bus to St. Cloud. The song is a about thinking that you've seen somebody you used to be in a relationship with. But that's not what intrigued me.

Here are a couple of ambiguous lines that made me think: In a church in downtown New Orleans / I got down on my knees and prayed / And I wept in the arms of Jesus / For the choice you made / We were just gettin' to the good part / Just gettin' past the mystery…

The lyrics don't provide any more insight into the choice the man made, although I'm guessing it was to leave her. But the saddest part of the song to me is where the lyricist (not Tricia Yearwood) believed that getting past the mystery was the good part of the relationship. I don't think that's ever a good place to be in—no matter whether we are talking about relationships, writing, reading, or anything else. Mystery is the great muse, and very necessary.

I had a conversation with a friend a couple of weeks ago about the marvelous mysteries of Christianity. The Trinity is a mystery. So is the virgin birth of the Messiah. And his deep love for people—even to the point of being willing to die for sins he didn't commit. The Apostle Paul refers to the gospel as being a mystery on more than one occasion. But in that mystery we find wonder and we are awed by it. Or at least we should be.

Romance, by its very nature, is mysterious. It takes our breath away. It pulls us, invites us, intoxicates us, but in the end, nobody can really define it. We just know it when we see it, or better yet, when we experience it. The last thing we want to do is to get past the mystery. At the same time, I don't think that we are to seek mystery as a means to an end, but rather to just draw inspiration from it and to appreciate the power it contains.

Cat Calls 911

My cat, Midnight, can do a lot of things. She lets me know when she's hungry, when she wants ruvin' (loving), when it's time to quit working each day, and a bunch of other things. But I guess I should be teaching her even more—like how to dial 911.

Check out this unbelievable AP story: Cat Calls 911 to Help Owner, Police Say.  

Simplicity

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." –Hans Hofmann

I've been trying to get a grasp on the simple life for a long time. It sounds appealing, and it sounds right, doesn't it? But simplicity is hard. It means saying no more often—even to "good" projects. And then it means not frittering away newfound time after saying no. As Hofmann said above, simplicity is paring down in order to have more time in which to appreciate that which remains.

I don't know if it's harder now than ever to embrace a more simple life, but I suspect it is. Any topic we're interested in has more than enough coverage. Even if a cable channel isn't already dedicated to it, then dozens of websites, magazines, newspapers, e-newsletters, blogs, and internet communities are.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) didn't have nearly as much noise to contend with in his day, but he still took two years out of his life to build a cabin on Walden Pond outside of Concord, Massachusetts to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and…learn what it had to teach." He wrote a book about his experience that was published in 1854 called Walden; Or, Life in the Woods.

I don't think pulling away from real life for two years should be the norm, but I can certainly understand why Thoreau did it. People and things beg for our attention and it's quite easy to oblige. So easy in fact, that sometimes it's hard to know when we're indulging and when we're not. We just participate. I sure do.

So, every year about this time, I start unsubscribing to many of the e-newsletters that I signed up for throughout the previous year. I let subscriptions to magazines and newspapers lapse if I don't read them. And I pull out of projects, classes, groups, or studies that are taking up time that might be better spent elsewhere.

I don't think I'll ever really find the ideal simple life, but I'd be thrilled to find a simpler life.