full fathom five

Blogs vs books

I'm noticing that blogs are not held to the same standards of logic and coherence that books and other printed matter - articles, essays, columns, etc. - are.  Commenters on blogs don't complain about inconsistencies in writers' arguments or attitudes, the way letters to the editor do in newspapers and magazines, or the way reviewers do for books.  In wondering why, the only thing I could come up with is the difference in organizing principles.  Blogs are chronological; they are divided up by days or - in the case of this blog -weeks.  Print material, on the other hand, is more often divided up by ideas, values, attitudes, events, etc.  Even a biography, or fiction that's a chronological life, has a coherence given by the author arranging the material into some kind of meaningful or consistent whole.  Even a diary is edited to achieve shape, meaning, and a sense of progression before going into print.   

    But blogs can be unedited, unshaped, and as rife with inconsistencies and contradictions as human life is. We live it and then move on.  Bloggers post, and then move on to new things, seemingly beyond the pull or influence or weight of former ideas.  I know that this is part of the appeal of blogs, that they are informal and raw, like life.  But I think the intangibility or virtual nature of the medium encourages this as well.  Blog posts seem to be gone after we click them off, simply because they're out of sight.  Whereas with books or other print forms that we can hold in our hands, there's more of a sense of wholeness.  Everything is there.  If we come upon a contradiction or something that doesn't correspond to what we read earlier, we can flip back to previous pages and check.   

    It's harder to do this with blogs.  We have to go back a few posts or into archives and hunt through entire posts to find whatever idea or attitude doesn't sit right with today's post.   

    What does this add up to?  I'm thinking that perhaps blogging is more given to the pure recording of daily events, like what I've heard of Reagan's diary: what I had for breakfast, who came to see me, etc. Just the straight facts.  Or, perhaps anecdotes: what I did today, what happened to so-and-so, as opposed to stories, which require shape and consistency.   

    Or if describing how to do something, like how to plant seedlings or make fudge, or if they are musings, such as this post - that they have to stand on their own, be wholes, so that readers don't have to wonder about loose threads, or go searching through archives to tie them up.   

     I don't read many blogs, so I don't have experience with those, for instance political commentary, that perhaps have the same expectations of consistency by readers that print forms do.  So these are just my observations from a limited sampling of the medium.  What's your reaction?  Do you think being able to hold a whole work - like a book or article - in our hands so that we can easily flip back and check something that doesn't add up, makes a difference in our standards of consistency, what we expect from a piece of writing?   

            

   

   

Walking Meditation II

The comments on the first post have been helpful and have lead me to a modus operandi for my morning walks, if not an answer.  Today's ice, atop the crusted snow after yesterday's rain, made it even more dangerous to stray off the snowmobile tracks.  I had to concentrate on each step in front of me as I felt my way across the field.  At one point, skirting a stream, I broke through snow up to my knee.

    But it all served to keep me in the present.  That's good, and the essence of the kind of Buddhist meditation I've been taught.  I used to meditate sitting crosslegged in a "zendo" or meditation-room, at the home of a Buddhist monk who led group meditations three mornings a week.  We're lucky in where we live, because this guy is right down the road from us.  The group of us would simply sit and listen to our breaths, focusing on them to quiet the mind and keep it from roaming to endless reruns of the past or plans for the future that seem to dominate my mind, at least.  There was no conflict with visual imagination then, when images would float into my mind.  As long as I zeroed in on them, they would take the place of my breath, forming a new present that changed color and shape behind my eyelids as I watched.  It seemed that I was sustaining the meditative focus, keeping my mind free of the coming day's to-do list or yesterday's regrets.

    When we got our new dog, though, about a year and a half ago, I had to stop going to the group meditation, to help my husband train our dog on early morning walks.  Now Cody's trained well enough for us to simply walk as "a pack," but I'm too attached to our walks to go back to the zendo for meditation.  So I'm trying to make the walks serve as my meditation time.  I pick out a tree or telephone pole about a hundred yards up the road, and try to focus on the rise and fall of my breath, or the sound or feel of my steps, until I reach the marker.  Then I pick out a new one, and do the same thing.  The ideal, of course, is to extend the focus on the breath or other sensations to cover the whole course of the hour's walk. 

    Needless to say, I can't sustain my focus that long.  Too often, the marker up ahead snaps me out of some reverie, which usually involves the immediate future: what I need to xerox for class, what I need to buy for dinner, etc.  If it involved more imaginative flights, such as Terri describes, above, or Notdotdot's "useful ideas" that I could use in some creative way - say in a scene in my writing - it would be wonderful.  But mostly I'm lost in the mundane worries about what I have to do, what I didn't get done yesterday, and looking forward to the weekend.

     However, the rare moments I can stay in the present are worth the long waits.  Feeling one's attention rise and fall on the breath causes a vacuum in the mind that sucks in whatever is there: wind, the smell of snow or rain in the air, crunch of ice under your feet, muscles contracting in your lower back as you walk, or white flag of tail sashaying back and forth over Cody's hindquarters as he trots ahead. This awareness often triggers a slight feeling of alarm over the loss of the familiar: those old tapes anchoring me to the past and a sense of who I am over a continuum. When the here and now comes rushing in, I could be anyone or thing: a hot-air balloon loosed from its ropes and sandbags, rising into thinning air.

   So what I've learned from this walking meditation is that it seems to work when you concentrate on your breath, the sound of your footsteps, the marker you've picked out down the road - the here and now of your surroundings.  When you stray from the concrete sense impressions of the present, and start seeing yourself in the grocery aisle as you pick up tonight's dinner, nothing happens.  You might as well be doing errands.  So being taken from the present surroundings by flights of fancy, imagination, doesn't work in walking meditation (unlike sitting meditation).

    However, since looking over the comments above, it seems like imagination and meditation might be more compatible than they first seem.  Done intentionally at different times, one might help the other.  Focusing on the breath on the morning walk can quiet the mind if it's sustained over a hundred yards or so (to the next marker); this slowing of the mind can extend into one's day, and might make room for visions of how to do things better.  I've often noticed that the hours after the morning walk feel better, run more smoothly, and that one's body feels lighter, more buoyant, as it moves through the day.  I feel simultaneously relaxed and energized as I teach or write.  And so I'm going to choose to believe, over the next year, that walking meditation nurtures imagination.

    Yesterday, my husband and I went to our favorite beach to run our daughter's and our dogs.  It happened to be low tide, uncovering a sandbar out to a distant island of long, low black rocks.  As we started out towards the island, the sand's hard ridged strands sided by low, waterlogged soft spots, exacted close attention to our footing.  My mind had the wonderful emptiness that sucked in the play of a crisp breeze in my hair, the crash of waves in my ears.

     And then I heard my husband's call over the waves.  He was up ahead, turned toward me and pointing to the island.  There, cantering against the black rocks, was a white horse, with a black-clothed rider.  The horse's neck was arched, streaming white feathers of mane and tail back in the wind.

     It was like the reward of a vision for my effort of concentration on the sand moments before.  But it wasn't my imagination; it was real.             

Walking Meditation

On today's walk, it wasn't hard to be "there," in the present moment, because I kept breaking through the hard crust of snow, jarring me out of the old tapes of past or future that run through my head most of the time.  I didn't even have to try to keep my mind on my breath or the sound of my steps; the uneven surface made me have to focus on the ground in front of me to make sure I stayed on the more hardened snowmobile tracks.  It reminded me of what I'd heard about various Buddhist monasteries over the years, that the monks love to do physical tasks like sweeping the floor or doing the dishes, because the physical cues keep them in the present.   

    Which brings me to a question to readers: if the physical world - where we are at any given time - determines what is meant by "the present" or "be here now" of meditation, what is the place of imagination?  Imagination, which often takes us away from the here and now, has never been addressed in any of the readings or teachings on meditation that I've been exposed to.  I've always wondered about it.  Any ideas?   

Dogtown

There's a new show tonight on National Geographic channel at 9pm Eastern time that sounds promising.  It's about an animal rescue society in Southern Utah that's set up a sort of dog-heaven for stray and unwanted dogs.  "Dogtown" is built for hundreds of dogs to live in small packs, where they get to play together, eat well, and get lots of patting, vet-care, and training by animal lovers.  Started in 1987, Dogtown takes on hard-to-place dogs and rehabilitates them, eventually placing them in adoptive homes.  Here's the link to find out more.  http://www.bestfriends.org/Dogtown/

But meanwhile, I'm going to try it out, tonight, which is really amazing, since my husband and I are rarely pulled off our reading except for occasional news, weather, and sports.  We watch some HBO series on Netflicks, but that's much different than getting interrupted by ads all the time.  But this show may be worth it, with it's compelling storyline of abused and homeless dogs finding heaven.  Hope you'll give it a try too.