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Last night Corrinne asked me why we didn't take more advantage of where we live. Why don't we do more extraordinary things here? Why always run off to elsewhere. It's a good question. I don't know.
I think maybe it has to do with patterns. Humans are pattern recognizers, it's big part of our evolutionary success. You see the pattern you survive the environment better because you can see what doesn't fit the pattern -- you see the lion in the grass because it disrupted the pattern of the grass. At least that's what I read.
That ability though sometimes means we're adverse to things that don't fit the pattern, we still perceive danger in deviations from the pattern even when there isn't danger. It scares us to do things differently.
This gets infinitely more complicated today. Not only are we good as seeing patterns, we've become pattern makers as well. We find a thing we like, we want it again and again until it becomes familiar to us, a comfort in a world of other things unrecognized. People too. The woman behind the counter, the man at the desk as you walk by, always the same. I walk the same streets, order the same coffee, sit in the same quiet library alcove.
It's reminds me of my time in Bangkok Thailand, where I discovered that even in the midst of the foreign, patterns quickly emerged. How quickly I fell into routines, how fast I carved (mostly unconsciously) some familiar patterns out of the chaos of Bangkok. The same fried bananas for breakfast, the same river boat journey, the same skytram to the same coffee shop where the same espresso was ordered. I worked in Bangkok for only four weeks and yet that pattern was so old by the time I left it felt as if it had always been there. The extraordinary became the ordinary in a matter of days.
Once you have kids you start to worry about your patterns more. Are my patterns being unfairly imposed on them? At what point do you let them establish there own patterns? At what point do you start interrupting their patterns? Finding a balance in patterns, the places where all these patterns overlap is hard. It's why people argue. It's where a lot of the everyday violence within us comes from, patterns conflicting. Our expectations arise out of our patterns. We expect them to be there and when there are not we get flustered and often angry.
At the same time we know our patterns blind us to other possibilities. Knowing it doesn't help though.
I strive to break my patterns, but it is mostly in petty ways. I take a slightly different set of streets on my walk to work or back home. I change the direction I floss my teeth in. I stay up late. I go to bed early. I drink more or less caffeine, alcohol. All petty disruptions that serve only to remind me that there are big patterns and those I am not disrupting.
Why don't I take the day off and go the lake? Why do I keep going to the same restaurants when new ones have opened in the mean time? I could say I need to get work done, I have deadlines. But the truth is I'm lucky to be self employed, it isn't even a choice -- I could do both. The only thing that makes me feel like I need to work today the same way I worked yesterday is the expectation, the need to fulfill the pattern.
These are small things that don't really address the question, why don't I live extraordinarily here? Why do you have to hit the road to get that feeling you get when you hit the road, that expansive openness, that endlessness of life that seems to transcend mortality? Why don't you feel like that when you go to the grocery store?
I think part of it is probably related to that notion of extraordinary -- what does that mean in the context of Athens GA?
Extraordinary is an interesting word too because it only exists in opposition to ordinary. If you haven't defined ordinary, you can't define extraordinary. And ordinary is necessarily vague and individual. But again relates to patterns I think.
For me having another child is like a roller coaster ride. Right now there is not a lot I can do, the cars are on the chain and I'm being dragged up to the top. I am pretty much just sitting there waiting for the fun stuff. In a couple months the last car will detach from the chain and the he'll be here and the train will zoom down the hill and start going though all the fun things, up and down and over and around and through loops and corkscrews and backward and forwards. I love that stuff. I love going on the ride. I also recognize that you're on a different ride right now and I guess if it seems like I'm not very connected to your right now its because I don't feel very connected to you right now. I feel like we're on different rides until he comes and when he gets here our rides join up a little more. And then every day after hes here our ride's join a little more. Or at least I hope they do.
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