CRYSTAL HUMDRUM

I've had my fill of current events lately. I wasted my last couple columns meandering through that meaninglessness, so this month I promise to break from that and get back to what this column is supposed to be all about--philosophy. Just to make sure, I've wired up my keyboard to a car battery that'll give me an electric shock if I stray off subject. With that in mind, let me tell you how I experienced a moment of beauty in extreme closeup the other day.

Saturday afternoon I took the kids to the YMCA for a swim, even though I wasn't really up for it at all. I was coming off a week of work with plenty of overtime, and even though it was the weekend I'd also done some work with classmates on a night school project earlier that day. I was dog-tired and it seemed like such a chore to spend a little quality time with the kids. Driving over I was thinking I could really use some shut-eye instead.

When we got to the pool it was already 4PM and the sun was angling in like spotlights through the windows. I got in the water with the kids, splashed around with them and started to feel better. After a bit I parked myself near a sunny spot and hung my arms on the edge of the pool but kept my face close to the water. I blew out a heavy sigh. My breath caught the water's surface, creating a spray of sparkles in the shaft of light a few inches in front of me. It struck me like an acid flashback. I was one tired and beaten puppy a moment before and suddenly I was completely caught up in the moment, just grooving with the simple beauty of some liquid glitter. I blew out several times, enthralled with the water's bright arcing traces against the relative shade of the pool room.

After a few moments with the light show I turned around and was presented with a marvelous still life. A blue and white pool rope was sitting there in the sunlight on the deck, carelessly coiled with a couple of football-shaped floats in it. I didn't have my glasses on, but I was only a couple inches away and could see every tiny detail in the equipment, clean from its immersion in water, its mundane textures practically glowing in the light.

Having dabbled a bit in macro photography I briefly wished for a camera, but then realized that a photograph would never capture this properly. Instead I contented myself to let my eyes wander, tracing over the weave of the bright blue and stark white nylon braid, noting all the syncopated kinky tendrils in the frayed spots, examining patinas of rust on the chromed hooks, reading history in every scrape and gouge on the floats. Time froze and time moved on. In two minutes the bar of light was gone.

My poor words don't do the image any justice. I seem to be the only one who appreciated it anyway; the kids certainly didn't see anything special. Maybe that's the problem. We think everything's got to be "special" before we value it.

Sometimes I think all our brains are set wrong because we get bored way too easily. It's because human consciousness is set to only notice things that stand out, and as a result the background fades from our mind as if it's not important. Ages ago that was a defense mechanism, looking out for dangerous animals and such. Now that background-ignoring, focus-on-the-exception quality of our minds just causes angst because everyday life isn't very threatening. We never stop to smell the roses and instead concentrate on useless pseudo-controversies like the Congressional Investigation about taking Eli#$^&^&* YEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOW!!!

Damn, that car battery's got to be more than twelve volts! Talk about "current" events, my fingertips are smoking! I guess that'll teach me to back up promises with automatic punishment systems. Now where the hell was I? Oh yeah, boredom. I trust nobody's bored now and hell, let's just continue as if I'd never mentioned E--eeer, let's just continue.

The material culture we live in doesn't help of course, trying to satisfy our stimulation-hungry consciousness with knick knacks that inevitably succumb to boredom in a few minutes. Worse, after a life of constant TV watching, lots of people seem to think their life should be at a playoff-game level of excitement every waking moment and they're usually in a foul mood because it's not. That's a terrible shame because in truth EVERY MOMENT OF LIFE IS COMPLETELY UNIQUE AND PRECIOUS. It's a fact that is so much a part of the background bedrock of reality that most everyone has trouble seeing it. But that's the way it really is and we could be a lot happier appreciating the moments instead of writing them off as "boring."

All you have to do is open up to it. One of the ways to do that is by examining everyday items like the things I found by the pool really closely. It's a simple trick. Ever examine the surface of an orange, peruse patterns in wood grain or check out the tiny shells in a handful of beach sand? Go ahead, lie down on a patch of dirt or grass in the backyard, bring your face down to it and just look at what's there. See? Those white clover flowers actually have a lot of pink color in them, there's glinty black grains in the sandy soil and a thousand tiny multi-legged things moving! And smelling! And making their own little noises that you'll never hear standing up. It's a whole marvelous world of its own. Two feet away there's yet another world.

Crystal humdrum. The Godhead has never spoken to me in words but I feel He/She/It moving in these things.

Maybe I'm just beginning to appreciate small things in a way I was unable to when I was younger. In any case, that bored feeling doesn't happen very often anymore. I'm often tired like last Saturday, yes, but at the same time I'm feeling alive. Like most people I just need reminding once in awhile that there's a lot more to life than things like crashing stock mark...

Umm, that car battery is off now isn't it? I think it's time to go back in the Closet and make sure. And maybe locate the burn ointment too. Thanks for reading and until the next month the Closet is closed.


© 2000 Rusty Pipes

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DISCLAIMER: The editors and publisher of Cosmik Debris have never used electric shock to achieve desired behavior in any of our writers. After seeing how effective it is, however, new company policies are in the works.