Thoughts from the Shed
An excerpt from a long essay reflecting on time spent in the 10x10 outbuilding I use as my writing and fly tying sanctuary.
I love looking out these windows and into the woods in the summer, the way the sun hits the leaves, how I feel ensconced amongst the trees, nestled in their shadowy coolness. I look out through the smaller window toward the road, follow the line of the leaning power pole, its sagging, thick cord bringing electricity to my house, this building, as I work on my mechanical typewriter on the first draft of this essay, not needing any of those electrons to help me at this stage of the game. But even when using a computer to work, writing takes you to a place beyond/before technology. The simplicity of this 10x10 building speaks to that as well, the nail heads I can see pounded into the pine planks, the places where extra nails were needed to straighten a stubborn board, the lack of finish, the fresh-hewn feel of it. Fishing, especially fly fishing with flies you have made yourself, does this as well, takes you closer to the center of being human, a center more and more people are losing touch with, staring down at their glowing rectangles of light, at meaningless information (and misinformation), snapping selfies, “liking” bad photos of mediocre food, scrolling through endless (and endlessly stupid) feeds, comments, memes, hacks, videos…. all things to help them pass the time, for what else is there to do, too many of us think, assuming every second of time that unspools magically before us should be “filled” with something that reaches out to our eyes from those tiny screens?
When I was teaching, I would often require my students to put their phones in a shoe case on the inside of a closet door in my classroom. I could see the fear in their eyes, and their first instinct was to turn toward and seek some glowing solace in their computer screens. When I told them to close those as well, they grew more concerned still. So many of them have reached a sad point of utter dependency on the supposed “connection” their phones give them to what they conceive of as “the world.” And their reliance on meaningless streams of data, images, videos, “information,” do nothing at all in terms of making them smarter, happier, more fulfilled...better people. The books I required them to read were all too often seen merely as interfering with their Snapchat streaks and Instagram posts. Thumbing through and incessantly tapping away at every random photo is for too many of us somehow perceived as more “valuable” than working to decipher the wisdom and beauty of, say, an Emily Dickinson poem, an utterly mysterious line like “I felt a funeral in my brain,” or even to just look up at the sky, a tree, stop and listen to the sound of the wind.
Not long ago, on a camping trip with students to Mount Monadnock, a student refused to relinquish her phone as we collected them before setting up the evening campfire. We wanted kids to focus on completing simple, necessary tasks, to work together to create—warmth, food, human connection…. She told me she had to call her mom, and I allowed it, then she wandered away out of the campsite, and some 20 minutes later, several other faculty had to track her down. She kept walking away from them, holding up her finger for them to wait as she spoke, demanded another few minutes and ultimately ended up furious that we had taken her “private property” but more upset, it turned out, that we had “broken her Snap-streaks.” I could go on and on with examples here, and perhaps more disturbing for me are examples of my own children—or myself even—who have been sucked into this vortex, mindlessly tapping our little rectangles of glowing glass in terrifying trances.
When I come out here, I try to leave my phone off, or in my pocket on buzz mode, or best of all, back in the house. When I fish, I keep my phone as inaccessible as possible and hate more than anything its intrusive buzz as I glide in my canoe through some lily pads on a remote lake, stalk a trout who has finally become more interested in my offering, paddle hard toward a blitz of blues or stripers. I genuinely worry that for so many the simple, profound joy of doing things that require you to interact more directly with the world (or even just to do nothing at all) has been lost.
Einstein worked as a night watchmen, and in his many hours of “doing nothing,” he suddenly became deeply astounded by the radical nature of light. Ironically, from this, from his theories, all cell phones and GPS units are now possible.... The great writers and artists of the past created remarkable works of beauty and complexity using the simplest of tools—quill pens, canvasses, brushes, easels, or even just the mechanical machine I’m using to write the first draft of this that requires the force of my fingers and a swipe of my hand when I reach the end of a line—and it makes its lovely, satisfying “ding.” The great painters mixed their own paints from secret recipes passed down to them from generations of masters, apprentices. When they removed Michelangelo’s David from the small square in Florence where it stood for centuries and stripped off the varnish he had applied in an effort to “restore it,” it began to disintegrate. We will never know what secret formula he employed to create a sealant for his marble sculptures that allowed them to survive for so long utterly unattended and exposed to the elements. Now it is under constant monitoring with high-tech devices, laser beams, computers and is regularly repaired to keep it from collapsing. Ancient South Americans found ways to enrich soil with biochar (charcoal) that made growing enough food for their vast cities possible. For many years, anthropologists and scientists doubted such cities were possible given the infertile, jungle soils and assumed early Spanish explorers had lied about them to impress the queen and to justify the cost of their expeditions (conquests)…until their ruins were recently discovered. The rich soil they created is now known as “terra preta.” It mysteriously continues to deepen and expand some 8-10 feet a year and is harvested and used to grow crops to this day….
Which is all to say that coming out here, like stepping into a stream, a lake, the ocean requires something more essential of me. Writing about it takes me in deeper still. The human mind, like the rivers that are the veins of this world, is unfathomably complex, with its own turns and twists and currents and eddies and remarkable forces. Our devices keep us from meandering into ourselves, from wading the depths, the mysteries that inhabit us. Our technologies all too often turn us into devices ourselves, not the complex beings we truly are at the very pinnacle of evolution. That they are so compact is fitting, since they surely reduce us.
I look back out my window toward the road, and a lovely, yellow butterfly is coasting in and out of the dappled light of midday. It seems to be mirroring the undulations of the now-broad, mid-summer leaves, buoyed by the breezes. When I fish, when I write, I move like that, too, letting something in both me and in the world all around me urge me along.
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More peak, less pique.
"That they are so compact is fitting, since they surely reduce us."
Chills.