here is where it comes together
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I had brief moments of mindfulness today, in between my errands and chores.
Breakfast & finishing Watchmen
Yoga
Waiting for the bus
Riding the bus
Overdue laundry.
How was your day?
I listened to the end of this week’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me on my iPod and watched the world drift past my bus window. I sat in the front, near the driver. I took pictures. I tried to capture the small bits of the blue cloudy sky caught in the windows around me: the crack in half-open the “Emergency Exit” in the roof, the circle in the driver’s side window, the park just beyond the far window. None of the pictures turned out.
Instead, I got a quick picture of the downtown skyline at the base of 94 eastbound and I liked the way the buildings bent.
And then I stepped outside of the bus and started to walk toward my home. But I was stopped at the corner by the clouds drifting across the sky and the sunset peeking through the leaves of a still green tree. I waited until I got the right picture.
I had already been awake for an hour, against my choice. Thanks to the sunlight in the early morning, my body told me (too early) that it was time to wake up. Knowing that I can never win an argument with my body, I woke up, put on my clothes, and took a walk in my neighborhood. I was lucky.
Even as I sidestepped puddles of vomit, greeted still-drunk neighbors, and smelled the sour grease of the barbeque joint on the corner, I knew I was lucky. I was lucky, because I got to see the sun rise against the buildings. I saw the shadows that the skyline cast on the sidewalk and stop signs. I got to watch day lilies open their blooms to the morning light.
I was lucky because I found this book on an apartment building stoop, balanced precariously on the edge. And I got to wonder who might have left it there.
This morning, I spent a half an hour walking in my neighborhood with my camera. Here is some of what I noticed:
The veins in this plant & the light in the distance
The vibrant, almost liquid purple of this flower
The words imprinted on this tire & the spokes on the hub cap
The texture of the weathering on this signpost
I have learned that when I have my camera in hand, I notice more details. It feels like I have an antenna up, tuned to the little things: the cracks in the sidewalk, the color of a neighbor’s flowers, the shape of a particular alleyway. It is for this reason that if I feel like creating, but don’t have a specific idea in mind, I will grab my camera and walk. I become mindful and I focus on the specific images in the world.
I feel like I spend a lot of my time desensitizing myself to noticing. I have time to notice now, because I’ve just started vacation. But during the work week, during my normal life, I rush-rush-rush, without noticing. I want to become more mindful in my daily life, but I’m not quite sure how. I know that my writing practice and my artistic practice help me to keep my antenna up, so to speak. Yet, I seem to be neglecting that practice lately.
I hope that during this vacation, I can recenter my thinking on mindfulness and cultivate some good habits to carry with me through what looks to be a busy summer. On Tuesday, I hope to pick up The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh at the library on Tuesday, so that I can learn more about intentional mindfulness before I have to plunge back into work. I read a little snippet in a colleague’s office, while waiting for him to arrive to a meeting. This was on my last work day before vacation and I felt almost immediately that I needed to spend time with this book during my time off. I think it will help.
Back when I was in high school, circa the early nineties, I liked to visit the airport just for fun. This was before the days of heightened security, so any person could choose to pass through the metal detectors and hang out. At the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, there were multiple opportunities for food and window shopping, but that wasn’t my main focus. I just liked to watch the people who were there to travel. They didn’t know that I was watching them and I liked peeking into their private lives.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in a few airports. On Thursday, I traveled to Charlotte, NC for a conference, passing through Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP) and O’Hare (ORD), before arriving at Charlotte-Douglas (CTL). I spent about an hour and a half at MSP, another two hours at ORD, and an hour at CTL, waiting for a colleague to arrive. After yesterday, that seemed like nothing.
Yesterday, my colleague and I arrived at CTL in the late afternoon, about two hours prior to our flight so that we could eat dinner before our flight. We knew that we had a very tight layover n ORD, so we came prepared. However, at the ticket counter we discovered that our flight to ORD would be delayed by three hours, due to rain. Our potential connection to MSP from ORD was ruined and all subsequent flights out of ORD were full. Our choice was to either try to remain on our delayed flight, with the hope that we could fly standby on a full flight to MSP or to take the 10:10 PM flight from CTL to MSP. We chose the 6 hour wait at CTL.
At first, I was disappointed. I couldn’t fathom how to spend 6 hours at a relatively small airport. I decided to tweet my experience (as a means to keep my sanity and my spirits in check) and buy a couple new books.
So how did we spend six hours? We had a three course meal, at three different restaurants. We ate a “cheese” plate with Laughing Cow cheeses at one store, tacos at a Mexican restaurant, and ridiculously good gelato for dessert. We visited almost every shop on the concourse, from a creepy toy store to the two different cap stores. (We wondered why a small airport needs two separate ball cap stores, as well as two Cinnabons.) We read and walked.
We also people watched and made up stories about the people we saw. We tried to see if we could identify the other Minnesotans from the crowd. We watched the bathroom attendant sing on her break. We watched people run from one side of the concourse to the other, either to catch a connection or to just waste time.
I also took pictures, of all the weird things that you can find in the Charlotte Douglas airport. I snapped pictures of snow globes, gelato and waffle cones, a Captain Morgan statue, a miniature astronaut suit for children, and the white rocking chairs that were available in the main atrium of the airport.
I learned last night that I was lucky to be stranded in Charlotte. I’m lucky because my colleague is a good traveler, a fellow writer and reader, and a generally even-keeled person. She was happy to let me snap pictures of everything I saw and she was also happy to read and write for part of our time. I’m also lucky that I had this time to people watch, take pictures, and generally blow time.
Suffice to say, I had a great time, savoring food, reading a new book, and taking pictures. I was happy to get home, at 1 AM no less, but I think I made the most of a strange, long day.
*****
Three months ago this week, I started a week of taking photos. I got this idea from Ali Edwards’ site, from a prompt she called “A Week in the Life.” Even though I found it challenging, I also thought it was a really good practice. In the back of my head, I always thought I’d do this seasonally. As I was browsing my archives, I realized that if I wanted to do this photo project seasonally, I’d have to start now.
Today was my final day off after two weeks of vacation. It involved (among other things) checking my email at the coffee table, reading my homework (a chapter on Happiness) on the couch, listening to music while my cat Said (pronounced Sigh-EED) hid behind my computer, and cooking a batch of harira for my lunches for the week.
I can’t promise that my upcoming week will be quite so visual, since I plan on a few long days at the office, but I do promise to document it here.
Jessica
