Finding the one thing amid everything

The work to be done when everything is before you.

Formerly Feral has been quiet (or absent) enough to hear the rise of late summer katydids, and I want to thank you for being okay with that. Save a post or two. I took the summer off as my wife, oldest son, and I relocated to southern California. There is freedom in a modest Substack among friends who appreciate when I show up. There is no need for a big announcement. I’m announcing it after the fact, and collectively, the reaction is likely, “You were gone?” Lol. I value that friend. It invites an ease to my mind. But I’m returning to the discipline of weekly-ish offerings.

Everything, all the time Socal

I have some thoughts I’d like to share before restarting at the autumnal equinox. (next week).

In the early goings here in southern California, I’ve had surreal moments that made me realize how much goes on around the clock.

One evening, I was watching a gorgeous Pacific Ocean sunset while two beach performers suddenly began a fire juggling show for tips. Fire juggling is ambitious; competing with a sunset borders on hubris. But they were doing well, busking with flames on sticks.

My wife and I were walking in a city park, and suddenly, a steady stream of sports cars with loud music playing from them and lights beneath them began to roll into parking places. Someone sent a video drone skyward, and people began to step out of their cars and greet one another. I learned from a young guy in the gathering crowd that it was a grassroots car show that was rapidly put together by a simple social media post.

One evening, near 9 p.m., I pulled from a grocery store and was greeted by the incredible aroma of a mom-and-pop, pop-up tamale station encircled by folding tables and doing a brisk business. Parking lot and side yard food offerings are pretty regular.

A short thirty minutes away lies a stretch of beach towns along the Pacific Coast that tourists invade all summer. They descend into competitive food joints and bars that live on the strength of Yelp reviews and have to be great to survive.

It is everything all the time. No matter the store, the service, or the experience, it is all within a short ten-minute drive. There are three climbing gyms nearby that I’ll likely never enter, but if needed, they stand ready with indoor ‘mountains’ to climb. And I presume ropes and harnesses. Everything but views. You know, the reason you climb almost anything.

What’s missing?

When it’s everything all the time, depth can become the one thing that’s hard to get. Depth of experience is achieved in the slow ferment of solitude. In the margins of free space and boredom. When one can bounce from experience to experience, there’s less time to get steeped in the meaning of any of them. Part of me wonders if the appetite exists for it.

Merton observed,

The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude,which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living. Man cannot be happy for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the dephts of his own soul. If man is exiled constantly from his own home, locked out of his spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person.

Thomas Merton

Avoiding the slow ferment

Herein lies the devil in the details of excess. When everything can and often does happen all the time, the chore of getting into meaningful spiritual thinking becomes exponentially more challenging. Bear in mind that the work of spiritual depth is already a countercultural upriver swim, but with the next thing always waiting and sometimes the next thing driving into your present thing (whether you want it or not), I wonder if a man can meet the challenge of deep thinking.

The fear that deep thinking may not have an audience is even more concerning. I talk with people and feel the competition to hold their attention without resorting to an emotion of anger, distaste, or shock to get their attention. I notice a slow, creeping realization that if deep thinking is asked of many people, there isn’t time for it.

It’s not merely a SoCal thing

No offense, SoCal, but I struggle to think of the last great writer/thinker to be produced here. Steinbeck? It’s been a minute. I don’t blame you; a lack of depth is catching on in many places with far less going for it.

I suggest that what I’m observing here is hardly a contextual reality. It’s here to an exaggerated level. Cartoonish, caricature, parade ballon level. However, we can make everything all the time, wherever we are. It’s not about locale; it’s more a case of involuntarily stepping away from the churn of activity. The mimetic desire that keeps us chasing what our neighbors have, the disdain for slow processes, and making an enemy of boredom for our children and ourselves all combine to become a ruthless giant to slay.

Damn the torpedoes

Regardless of the challenge or the lack of an audience, we’ll reenter the fray for spiritual depth and have conversations again next week. As we tip into autumn, the voiceovers will return for posts, and I hope you’ll share this little quiet project of revolt. Please share something you’ve read this summer in the comments.

Be well.