The thing about writing, for me, is that it isn’t consistent. Sometimes I am overflowing, and others I am dry. “They” say you need to write every day and I have intended to do that, but other things happen. The horse gets a tendon injury that I must ice for two weeks, and then she is stall-bound so I drive out every day to give her a chance to get air. There is life to sort. There are cabinets to set up. There is TV to watch. Nothing stirs my writing brain. Then it does.
Why is that after one year, four months of retirement, on a day when I am enjoying a good book, I think to myself that I should be doing something? Why isn’t reading a book “doing something?” And if I can enjoy a good book, why isn’t watching a story on TV also “doing something?” Yes, I get it. It’s nice outside and I had projects put off by smoke, rain, and general misery. I could be spraying weeds and I could be using my nifty weed trimming machine. And I may still.
Until then, I read a book, gave my old cat a lap, and now I felt like writing. But the day is nice, and I “should” be spraying buttercup, nightshade, blackberries, and morning glory. Argh! Why is my mind fighting with itself like this?
The reason it is a wonder that these things make me think the way I do is that I’ve been reading, and watching TV programs, about brain things. Mostly horse brains. I’ve had some direct interaction with that bit of science through Maddy Butcher at Best Horse Practices and Dr. Steve Peters. But all animal brains and bird brains and, lately, even dinosaur brains (well, that’s mostly conjecture). Then I watched Hacking Your Mind on PBS and got a kick out of the fact that, in some things, animals make better decisions than we do. I sort of knew that already. Horses run first, ask questions later. Better to look silly for running than to be eaten for not running. Humans dither or make decisions based on false evidence.
But all of that still doesn’t explain why I can’t get out of “work” mode and into thinking that reading a book is very much a something that I can and should be doing. And it’s all about setting expectations of yourself, I guess. I’ve been reading a book about every day and a half this last month. If, in addition to weed control and life sorting, I had set a goal to read 20 books in September, then I’d be on the gold medal trail! Isn’t it odd how we lead our lives thinking we know what is real when it really may be that nothing we perceive is as we perceive it?
I had a visceral example of this nearly 30 years ago. I love color and my clothes often reflect that being made of bright colored fabric. My father-in-law, Doug, always acted as if my colors were a painful intrusion and that they actually hurt his eyes. White, tan, and brown were his colors. I watch HGTV and the predominant colors these days are white, gray, black, and shades of off-white or blue gray. To me, that’s not even color, but for some it represents bright and calm. Our perceptions, Doug’s, and mine, were so different that I started to realize that we aren’t seeing the same thing. We may all have rods and cones, but how each of our own receptors perceives color and then, how our brain processes those, is controlled by our history, our knowledge, our chemistry, and our emotions. Then, don’t even get started on the fact that animals see “our” colors completely differently. So there really is no such thing as Red. There is Cathi’s red, and Doug’s red, and Velvet’s red which is yellow-blue, and Magilla’s red (cat) that is more yellow or maybe white, and your red which is yours alone.
Now I am learning that we hear, see, and understand everything in a similarly disconnected manner. Who was it that said, “no man is an island?” Internet tells me John Donne and he lived in 1572-1631 which adds a whole other layer to the thinking process. He actually wrote, “No man is an Island, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” It is beginning to seem as if the idea of capital M Mankind and the community of people being connected is more of a utopian dream than a reality. It feels very much as if we are billions of islands who bump and stick or push away depending on the circumstances. And inside our minds, within the confines of our own lives, we establish our view of the world.
John Donne is hailed as a pre-eminent metaphysical poet. First, let me just say, poetry? Again? Sheesh. And then, metaphysics? Is that even a thing in the 21st century? Merriam-Webster says that metaphysics is “a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology.” (I don’t know, they get deep, so look them up.) Second meaning includes, “a study of what is outside objective experience.” Ah, I get it. Metaphysics is secular religion and its science, and it’s complex. There’s the rub. In the 21st century, we think we have it all figured out and under our control. There isn’t anything outside objective experience. Either science has figured it out, or the whackos on social media have figured it out, but everyone has figured it out, or the religious folk haven’t figured it out but have faith that those before them do/did. Nothing to wax metaphysical about anymore.
Well, you know what? Everything is metaphysical. I learned THAT when my husband died. One minute he was there and then he wasn’t. I could not control any aspect of that. I started saying that I was going to buy patches for my clothing that said, “We don’t control s#!t!” Because we really don’t. We think we do because we can look back at any amount of time and, through our own lens, explain it. But the explaining changes either based on who witnessed, has a thought about it, or recapped it (T-Rex was fierce, but had feathers, did you know?). We do not control the moment we are in because it is happening. And we can’t know the future, not even a little bit since things can change instantly.
Oh gawd. I guess this means now I’ll have to go read Plato, Aristotle, and all those other philosophizing types of historic figures/writers that I have avoided to date. Or maybe just metaphysicsforlife.com (yes, a real URL). That’s how I started on this path. Reading. No, I wasn’t reading anything quite so grand. Recently, I ripped through the latest Louise Penny in a day, and then I read something called Evvie Drake Starts Over that I don’t remember what urged me to get it, and now I’m reading Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. I started down that path because I was researching what stories connect to trade beads in Spokane for a project and it all ties in with the fur trade but is connected to the world. From a small glass bead to world economies, currency, policies, travel, human interactions (good and bad), and settlement/development.
Then how can deciding to read a book not be “doing something?” Seems I can get all philosophical about that, metaphysically or not, but the nature of this one island, this human being, still feels as if that is not active enough.
I’ll let you in on a secret. I have one boot on, and one foot has just a sock on it. I was headed out the door to do that something, weed control, when all of this wanted to flood out of my brain and through my fingers to the keyboard. So, now, I’m going to put that other boot on, go load a spray with brush killer, fill the weed trimmer with no-ethanol gas, and get physical on nature. After which, it will be time to interact with a horse who, after three months, is exhibiting signs of cabin fever and then take a short walk to reflect on the somethings of my life. I’ll have to leave the metaphysical aspects of nature wait for a rainy day.
What colors do you see and do they elicit these emotions?
