Notifications

I bicycled over the river today in the morning fog. There were rows of spider webs catching the wind from the bridge railing, about 500 or so. Never saw them before. Saw them today because each strand carried moisture that illuminated their webs.

At the arch of the bridge, there was a group of a half-dozen people talking without voices, only hands and arms and fingers swooping in the air. They were signing. I didn’t hear any sounds, just saw their words in motion, in 3-D.

I read yesterday about how we move and pass through our existence. A visual was used about a woman taking laundry down to the river to wash it and how the water briefly lifts and fills the clothes with the flow of the river. For a while, there is a shape that comes from a larger source.

This summer, I watched a guy step up and stand on the top of the bridge railing, while staring down at the river. He kicked up into a hand-stand, controlled, perfectly still, fingers curled over the railing, wearing only underwear and a t-shirt. If the wind blew or someone bumped him, he’d go down and land on shallow rocks below. I wondered why he took that risk. 

I am in the process of turning off all my notifications. The kind on my phone and my computer. Because I want to be ready for other notifications and not looking at these mostly empty notifications. It’s part of this mindfulness class I am doing.

Here is the latest definition of mindfulness from the Oxford Mindfulness Center:
“Mindfulness is moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience, without judgment.”

Basically, sort of the opposite of what most of us have been taught or modeled.

When I walk my dog without technology, I am holding the leash and moving my legs. Doing one thing at a time is back in favor. Just walk the dog. 

We have a lot of textures around us, in our experience. They are all notifications, notifying us. The natural ones need us to be slower, to look longer, to possibly stop. To disable the notifications in our own heads. We might try to shut off the apps within us, the ones that judge, compare, organize, rationalize, digitize. We take in the input and apply our rubber stamp to ready for output. We can’t stop all of this as it’s sort of our nature. But, we can become more aware of it and build in space around doing it all the time. 

Tonight at a gathering, the subject came up about having a “spiritual friend.” One woman recently celebrated an anniversary with hers: 26 years. My interpretation of a spiritual friend is someone with whom you share talk and communion about your life and spirit. She said they often start out their conversation by asking each other something like, “how does truth speak through you?” 

“In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.”

– Denise Levertov