Realities

I wander daily through a maze of realities, and the photo above shows one of them. But as magnificent as that one is, it’s all too easy to dismiss its power and significance, for we are bombarded daily with an onslaught of disturbing information that tends to overshadow everything else. I certainly don’t advocate ignorance and denial, but we must learn to live in the layers, as the poet Stanley Kunitz put it, not on the litter. There’s an element of choice and discernment involved.

Case in point. This morning I went to my Twitter feed and realized something that I should have perceived long ago. My feelings of outrage and foreboding were in direct proportion to the time I spent scrolling through and reading Tweets. Did I feel better informed after this exercise? Not really. Did I possess any new insights or ideas to help me navigate? Definitely not. Clearly, I need to better “curate” my feed, as Monte would advise. Perhaps then it would be a more useful source of information. But right now, it is mostly voices screaming at me. “Tweeting” is too mild a word–it just sounds silly and innocuous.

In fact, if you will indulge me in a small digression, I suddenly remembered when I first signed on to Twitter, in 2009. I had no idea what it was, but as usual, people more hip and tech-y than me introduced me to the concept and oversaw my joining. One of them was an Oxford musician named Ben, a friend of my daughter and son-in-law. I asked Ben why I would want to be on Twitter. He said, “So you can join the conversation.”

“What conversation?” I asked.

“THE conversation,” he replied.

Ben was way ahead of me. In 2008, he had written the Twitter Song, which still seems incredibly clever and prescient. (Go ahead and click on that You-Tube link; it’s worth a listen.)

Anyway, who could have ever perceived that Twitter would become a primary platform for politicians, celebrities, and ordinary folks to spew their bilge and bile in a never-ending barrage of characters, hashtags, and threads? But who could have predicted so many things about social media, how it would mirror the very best and the very worst of us, without distinction? How it would alter our brains, luring us irredeemably into lazy short-cut thinking, offering a convenient place for venting instead of acting, an easy sense of validation, a way of diving into a stream without getting wet. But it too is reality. I’m not saying it’s not.

I’m not sure how I am doing in this morass of realities. I only know that I am, and I’m grateful to be present. I am fortunate to be able to explore the reality of hills and sky, and I find they do not disappoint, but there’s a constant undercurrent of…what is it? Grief? Worry? Sadness? Fear? The “political” outrages accumulate and exacerbate the frightening reality of the pandemic–unforgivable transgressions–but to dwell on those without ever looking up depletes us. We need breaks for sighing, refueling, thinking strategically, shedding tears, laughing a bit, shutting up and standing still. Perhaps there will be time, for time extends and deepens. Meanwhile, friends have quickly discovered new ways of connecting through social media, that chameleon-like phenomenon, and I know I am not the only one having zoom visits and Friday night gatherings online. And beyond the noise, something familiar waits, something dear and very real that never went away.

On that emerald ridge beneath the clouds, I used my device to listen to a playlist of John Prine songs and Bach’s cello suites, and those were lovely to hear. Then, I turned it off and put it in my pocket and listened to the wind, and I heard a wren singing, and that was lovelier still.