Last week I went for my midday walk first thing in the
morning, because by noon it was supposed to be hot and muggy.
The feel of that particular morning was so sublime and
strange I have nothing but clichés to describe it with. It was the day before
school started, and the neighborhood was both supernaturally quiet and uncannily
beautiful. The sky was orange and still, and the air was so thick it seemed to filter
out traffic noise, leaving a soundtrack of only birds. September-stage trees
and gardens glistened in July-like morning heat. Boulevard flowerbeds billowed
over the sidewalks.
Aside from the apocalyptic implications of such warmth coming
so late in the year, the walk was a unique and remarkable experience, and I
know I have absolutely no way of conveying that specialness to you or anyone
else.
I did try though. I took a half dozen photos, and a few videos
panning over the trees and gardens, hoping to somehow capture I’m not sure
what—the sweetness of the air, the alien combination of summer humidity and dry
leaves, or whatever unique quality made me want to document it.
Of course, I ended up with nothing but flat photos and videos
of trees and sidewalks and flowerbeds that will excite nobody, and which
contain not even a speck of the experience I was trying to capture.
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The Shingon monks of Japan have a very pragmatic way of
encouraging the development of inner calm. They expose themselves to extreme
cold, such as by squatting under an icy waterfall, while attempting to remain as
present and composed as they might be in a warm, dry meditation hall.
Shinzen Young, my favorite Western meditation teacher, endured a version of this when he trained with the Shingon in the 1970s. Starting on the winter solstice, he spent 100 days in isolation, emerging three times daily to break the ice on a frozen-over cistern and dump several bucketfuls of its water over his head.
Being a California native, he found this task excruciating, but quickly learned the secret to getting through it without abject suffering. Before going to the cistern, he would meditate intently enough that he could be completely present for the experience. If any part of him was unwilling to embrace the full extent of the cold, it went from unpleasant to horrific.
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Sometime around my grade four year—1990 or so—it suddenly became very popular to talk about saving the planet.
I remember an explosion of environment-focused messaging, especially about whales, recycling, and ozone holes. It was on our classroom posters, TV shows, t-shirts, even school supplies.
But it was the tropical rainforest, at least to us
fourth-graders, that became the central icon of this abstract thing adults called
“the environment.” Saving the world meant saving the rainforest. We drew posters
of endangered monkeys and tree frogs, with rhyming slogans at the top.
The energy felt really positive. Even things like shampoo
bottles started having rainforest imagery on them, which seemed to be a good
thing. Everyone was joining the fight!
What I don’t remember is when that energy went away. I didn’t decide to stop caring, but I guess I did. I don’t think it occurred to me until I saw a gag on the Simpsons, five years later, when Homer referred to “that rainforest scare a few years back.”
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The culture war stuff certainly ramped up. Certainly we've become more polarized, and I'm sure a large part of that is a result of more content consumption that was inevitable over the course of the pandemic. One upside of observing all of the partisan suspicion and arguing is that I've...