I walk outside. The cold wraps around my legs. It’s thorns stick in my skin like brambles I must walk through. Handwarmers in my gloves comfort my palms, but my fingers sting. The dogs need to do their business, so I cross to the other side of the road, so I don’t have to pull my gloves off, stick my hand in a bag and pick it out of our yard. Neither Bruce nor I care to step in dog poop while walking.
The road sparkles and glints with salt that has been ground into the pavement. My face burns. The dogs take good healthy dumps. Proud of herself, Omalola grabs the leash and jumps. She runs up to Dolly to play. Dolly’s eyes are bright to the challenge. But she is old, a little frail. I yell, “Stop!” Omalola barks in protest. She grabs the leash again. “Stopppp.” Louder. She barks more. “Stoppppppp.”
Finally she takes my tone seriously. She wants my attention, all of it. The best thing I can do is cross my arm across my belly and ask her to heel like in dog class. She will look up at me and walk along. Since I have included Dolly, I have missed my companionable walks with just Omalola. Sometimes she will look at me and soften on the leash. But in this weather, it’s too painful to pull off my glove, pull out a treat and reinforce her kind walk. She settles down and we walk a little farther. On long walks, Dolly can be a pain, circling around in front. She’s clear. She wants to head home now. Except this walk where I turn toward home early.
My thoughts are not full of “thank you” or whatever I read in the daily office. (The daily office is a group of scriptures that include Psalms, an Old Testament reading, a New Testament reading and the gospel. People around the world read or hear these scriptures as part of the Divine Hours, short prayer services that follow the time of day.) I have an app on my phone so it would be easy to open and read just those passages. But no. I don’t look at that first thing. Because I am as hungry for words as I am for food and my Diet Coke, I open Facebook, get hooked. I sit down and read whatever controversy shows up first because I know the post won’t be there if I close the app and open it later. The thread is stronger than my dogs’ desire to get outside. Rarely there is a poem. I am addicted.
I step down the bank to walk behind the clump of woods that Bruce has brush hogged to open paths through it. We pass a dead pine tree. Bruce hopes to cut it down sometime this winter, but the weather has not lent itself to this project. I could worry but he has done this before with pines in our front yard.
My gosh it’s cold. The dogs pull like sled dogs. Still prayer is not happening today. It’s all I can do to focus on following the dogs’ lead. I stop when the dogs want to sniff and walk when they walk.
Cal Newport in Digital Minimalism makes the point that we’re losing solitude because of the noise coming from our phones. He calls Solitude Deprivation, “A state in which you spend close to zero time with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds” (103). A little bell went off in my thoughts, or maybe it was a Canadian National train honking at the rail crossing. Instead of walking out thinking my own thoughts, I’m thinking about what so-and-so said about the culture or politics or their lost dog. These walks are not the time or place for some stranger taking up residence in my head. What about the dream I had last night, that might be an important signpost, that fades too quickly. What about the morning Psalm? Or simply, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit?” or “God make speed to save me, Lord make haste to help me.”
The more I scroll through Facebook, the less I’m able to think. I am exhausted by the end of the day from the ripsaw of emotions responding to people’s losses, people’s joys, people’s outrage, people’s opinions. I harden my heart to stay sane.
Newport also praises the idea of walking to get away from the noise. He suggests a person leave their phone at home, though I use it to catch light that won’t be there again if I walk back out. But these morning walks have improved my health and how clearly I think. I was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment because my ability to think was fizzling. But after walking regularly, patiently, and yes these walks are boring, the test showed I’ve improved and my IQ gained twenty points.
Writing itself can be a form of solitude, an idea I’d never thought of until Newport noted that, “This behavior necessarily shifts you to a form of productive solitude—wrenching you away from the appealing digital baubles and addictive content waiting to distract you, and providing you with a structured way to make sense of whatever important things are happening in your life at the moment” (126). I have been an advocate for journaling but never thought of it this way. I never thought that solitude was about being able to think my own thoughts.
I walk past a little cedar tree. Omalola alerts. I see a bird fly between the branches. We walk across the field and past pine logs that Bruce laid down, rotting. My legs have stiffened. My toes are beginning to sting in my rubber boots. We walk past our manure pile, which stretches some length because it hasn’t been spread for three years, a chore we leave to our hay guy, who has a thriving business that leaves him little extra time. We step across the uneven ground where we buried our geothermal pipes, which help heat our house and turn past Morgen’s paddock back to the dogs’ breakfast. Morgen looks up from the hay Bruce has tossed. She nearly says, “What about me? When are you going to play with me?”
Martin Shaw in The Smoke Hole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spy Glass says, “Now a good metaphor is something you can hang your heart on” (10). The internet is as magical as the spy glass in the old stories because it can show us the whole world. And it can rob us of our souls. Shaw talks about how the prayer mat, the thing under our feet can save us. “When you forget what you kneel upon, you are far more easily influenced by energies that may not wish you well.
Well enough of that.
It’s time to kick the robbers out of the house.
I want my imagination back.
And now we’re kneeling, I ask you to do something else.
Look up
Towards the smoke hole.
The smoke hole reveals to us the timeless, the prayer mat the time bound” (6), he says. The smoke hole is the vent in the top of the tent letting the smoke out and the divine energies in.
Well I’ll be. Shaw’s prayer mat and smoke hole might just free me from that spyglass I tap whenever I have an empty moment. That spyglass wipes my thoughts clean. I want them back. For years I’ve been nudged to put the phone down, and to stop watching Hollywood’s version of story on TV but have felt glued to both. These screens have drained my brain. By the time I’m done looking at Facebook, I literally can’t think anymore.
I’ve also stopped listening to my favorite podcasts except when I’m cleaning house. No longer do I listen in the barn, except for Martin Shaw’s Sunday recording from The House Of Beasts and Vines, because I want silence and the wind and sparrows and cat’s voices, not intelligence piped into my ears.
Once inside, I unhook the dogs and begin preparing their meals. Dolly is particular and Omalola counter surfs while I spoon out the canned dog food topped with a bit of cat food and kibble for Dolly on a plate. It has to be warmed in the microwave. I put chopped green beans from the garden, Fiber for Dogs and salmon oil in Oma’s dish. The cats each get a little dab of cat food. I push Oma off the counter while I work. Then Oma runs to her crate her eyes glittering. Dolly walks to her food, sniffs it and waits for me to sit down and eat. The cats run to their places for theirs. I sit down to eat because Dolly won’t eat unless I do.
I set my phone on the table. I pick it up, put my plate down. I press down on the Facebook app. It wiggles and shows a minus sign. I click through to the choice, “Delete the app” or “Remove it from my home screen.” I removed it from my home screen.
Newport talks about how social media expert Jennifer Grygiel uses social media. They keep Facebook for close friends and relatives and no longer accepts friend requests from anyone. “Jennifer logs onto Facebook maybe once every four days or so to see what’s going on with their close friends and that’s it” (233). I can check Facebook on the computer, so I can stay in touch, but it’s no longer next to me to open when I have a few minutes to fill. Bottom line is I want my imagination back.
So now, my thoughts walk up to me like Mrs Horse when she walks in her stall, to stay for the night. Something about that big horse with the apple rump walking to my bidding. I don’t have to compulsively check my phone. This week I worked on two manuscripts for St Basils, a year long writers workshop that has slowly helped me wake up as a writer.
Even my sense of smell greets me. I step behind Mrs. Horse and smell the sweet fragrance of her farts. Back inside I smell Bruce’s toasted bread he’s smeared with peanut butter and jelly and the home made chocolate c0vered peanuts I pull out of the zip lock bag.
Works Cited
Newport, Cal. Digital Minimalism. New York: Penguin, 2019
Shaw, Martin. Smokehole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass. White River Junction: Chelsea Green, 2021.
.