Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise

Psychological investigators asked individuals in a test group to make a choice: would they rather spend twenty minutes in an isolation room using no electronic devices, or would they opt to break the tedium by giving themselves short but painful electrical shocks. Many chose to press the shock button. The thought of being quietly alone with their thoughts terrified them.

Addiction to media stimulation isn’t new. When I was a kid, my mother turned the television or radio on shortly after breakfast. They remained on for the rest of the day and into the night. (We listened to Walter Cronkite reporting Vietnam War body counts during supper.) She fell asleep many nights on the living room sofa accompanied by late night talk show hosts. At the height of her enthrallment, she would simultaneously watch a baseball game on TV, listen to the same game on a transistor radio, and would also have another radio playing an AM station. If you rotated focus from one to the other, you could hear TV commentators murmuring, the radio sportscasters making similar remarks about a play at second base, and the AM radio crooning its slogan (“It’s Beeeyoootiful in Dayton.”) And if the game lacked drama, Mom would engage in a conversation over the top of the noise.

I don’t remember many moments of calm and silence inside the house. I sometimes took refuge by climbing an apple tree in the back yard. I’d watch birds flying by as the sun set behind a stand of trees.

When I first started meditating, stillness troubled me. My mind churned out random thoughts, and a headache would pop up behind my forehead. I gradually grew accustomed to silence by meditating with my wife. Her steadying presence drew me deeper.

We joined the Quakers shortly after our wedding. Quakers practice a form of silent worship in which a group “centers on the Inner Light” and waits for guidance. Speakers deliver short messages when inspiration strikes. But in a “gathered meeting”, a whole hour passes by undisturbed. A feeling of kinship arises amongst the congregants, and sometimes a loving presence descends upon them.

Buddhists teach that a deeper sense of reality awaits anyone who loses their identification with mental noise. We delude ourselves when we become attached to the voices in our heads, and when we base our self-images on the ruckus. We mistakenly believe that surface waves are the whole ocean.

When I am stressed, I want noise and distraction to shield me from my situation. I escape mental pain by watching a bad movie or a long succession of YouTube videos. I can feel an addiction to noise gaining strength.

I’m slowly learning to turn toward the pain and anxiety, to meet them. I don’t want to end up wandering in an echo chamber of pointless noise.

Beginnings

Isaiah 43:18-19

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

The coming of a new year stirs up thoughts of fresh starts, beginnings.  Although the turn of a calendar year is an arbitrary marking of time, it doesn’t hurt to take stock once every 365 days, to consider what I wish to leave behind and what I wish to nurture for the future.

Dwelling on regrets too long, however, discourages me from looking forward.  Mistakes need to be acknowledged and reparations made, but new reforms can’t wait.  The start of a new year urges me to move forward.

But move forward in which direction?  What route suits my unique set of weaknesses and strengths?  If I’m overly ambitious at the outset when choosing goals, I find myself trying to climb a steep slope like a four-cylinder car crawling up a mountain side.  My gears start to slip, and I soon face the danger of rolling backward.  And experience has repeatedly taught me that unexpected circumstances may challenge and outmatch my abilities.  When under duress, I set aside preestablished plans.  Doing a few useful things in response to an overwhelming situation is all that I can manage. 

Perhaps the key to negotiating both the promises and difficulties of the coming year is coupling self-acceptance with faith in God. Beyond this world of doubts and confusion lies a realm established in peace. Glimpses of a better future sometimes come to me when a sudden quiet contentment blooms inside. These moments of reassurance arrive when prayer and meditation quiet my mind. Sustaining nourishment remains available whenever I’m not too caught up in the distractions and dramas of every day life.

If the past is any predictor for the future, the coming year will present multiple challenges and quandaries.  I will lose my way at times and falter.  Good intentions will sometimes fade as I slump back into old habits.  But if I turn to God during good times and bad, I’ll continue to find refreshment and guidance on my way forward.

A Good Book Passes the Time

Judy and I are sheltering in place except for trips to the grocery store. Our toilet paper issue hasn’t become acute yet. Eggs, flour, butter and yeast are missing in action at our local Publix. Packs of chicken are rationed two to a customer. We’ll probably run through this week’s food before we use the last sheet of toilet paper, but it’s going to be close.

We spend part of our time reading. Judy has dry eye and can’t read printed text for long periods of time. She listens to Audible instead. I sometimes read her chapters from Richard Russo’s “Everybody’s Fool”, the sequel to “Nobody’s Fool”. The plot, when it moves forward, holds interest. The characters pull you in. But we’ve noticed that Russo needed an editor to trim the early chapters. He frequently lapses into expository passages of internal dialogue that drag on while nothing important happens.

I stopped caring about the protagonist’s inner anguish after the author spent two thirds of a chapter describing the man’s hesitancy to open a sock drawer. The character suspected, against his own common sense, that a venomous snake had hid amongst his socks and underpants. Raymer knew that it couldn’t have. But having already had a hideous day, he thought that the laws of cause and effect had been suspended when it came to him. He suspected, in torturous detail while a young lady waited outside for him, that the universe willfully planned to continue punishing him. It took the author five pages to fully explore Raymer’s feelings of self doubt and loathing. Russo probably wanted to emphasize Raymer’s self-destructive tendencies (why waste time hating yourself and your past when someone attractive wants to spend time with you?) and pounded that point deep into the ground.

Other characters actively self-sabotage. No one, as of the middle of the book, has a chance for happiness. Carl Roebuck worries more about the after effects of prostate surgery than the prospect of going bankrupt. Sully refuses to get a pacemaker and stumbles around gasping for breath. Janey allows her abusive ex-husband to violate a restraining order by sleeping with him. She explains her mistake the next morning by telling her mother that she had felt horny. Ex-husband devotes more energy on violent acts of revenge than to staying out of jail. Jerome suffers panic attacks partially brought on by the guilt he feels over an affair with a married woman. Gus realizes that a core belief is a delusion: his love will never fix his wife’s mental illness.

One hopes that someone will pull their head out of their ass by the last chapter. Authors have to beat up their characters to move a plot from points A to B, but Russo needs to give them (and the reader) a break before the tale ends.

On the other hand, I’ve started “Commonwealth” by Ann Patchett. Her writing flows smoothly from character to character, plot development to plot development over a long stretch in a family’s history. Her characters also manage to mess up their lives by making decisions that wound each other, but they don’t endlessly ruminate about their troubles. Consequences follow actions. Folks think and emote and reconsider. But the graceful writing wraps everything into a neatly-wrapped package. Thank you kindly, Ann. Your work is a godsend during troubled times.

I have been trying to avoid watching or reading too much news. Dread builds into low-level panic if I do. A good book, or even a flawed book, helps to pass the time.

A Narrow Slice of Time

    Cover image for “A Narrow Slice of Time”                      

“A Narrow Slice of Time” by Dennis and Judy Schmalstig is available on Amazon.com.  The following is the link for the print version (also available in Kindle):  https://www.amazon.com/Narrow-Slice-Time-Traveller/dp/1533577420/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1466860827&sr=8-2&keywords=a+narrow+slice+of+time+schmalstig

The summer of 2013 sucked.  Actually the whole year turned out to be a torture fest of illness, hospital visits, departures, wrangles with an Insurance Company Who Will Not Be Named, and a death in the family.  My wife Judy and I hit bottom sometime in August.  There was nothing wrong with our relationship, but the circumstances of our lives had become harsh. I cast about for something to distract us from continuously brooding over our situation.  I remembered that Judy had mentioned that she was interested in writing a time travel book with me.

Her eyes didn’t exactly light up when I mentioned my willingness to try a writing project with her, but we began to brainstorm a plot.  Judy was set on trapping someone in the past, and I had ideas about a time travel device and an organization that made changes in the past for the supposed benefit of the future.

I began to write chapters late at night after Judy had gone to bed.  I would print them out and show them to her, and she would get back to me in a couple days with editing suggestions and positive criticism about my dialogue, plot twists and character development.  As the story progressed and various characters went about their business on different time lines, Judy provided the vital function of keeping things straight.  She has a clear, logical mind well developed from years spent doing research as a plant physiologist, and she was able to keep the book on track.

We still faced a good deal of miseries during the time we spent working on the book, but every time we sat together and discussed it we forgot about our troubles for a while.  We got excited about exploring new avenues and about planning the end of the book.  We even got way ahead of ourselves by playing around with ideas for successive volumes in a time traveler series.

It’s been nearly three years since we began “A Narrow Slice of Time”, and our circumstances are better.  We no longer need a distraction to help us get through our days, but have decided to continue working together.  We found out that we deeply enjoyed sharing the creative process of writing a book.  Of course we don’t always agree on all issues, and I’ve dug in my heels on a few occasions.  I’ve discovered, however, that Judy has a very good sense of plot and doesn’t care for a lot of fancy frippery in the telling of a story.  She wants me to move things along and to get to the point.  She has good taste when it comes to character development wanting fully fleshed out villains and protagonists with believable motives.  I’ve learned to take her advice on most occasions.

The best thing about this whole experience has been finding something new to share as a couple.  It’s an unexpected journey, an adventure that has shown us that our horizons are still open and that there is still more to see and do.