Look up

Okanagan hills

I'm not a person with a grudge against technology, but I've been thinking how social media, in my case, specifically Facebook, has caused my experiences to have this odd third person feeling. I already tended that way, since I'm a writer and I'm constantly processing and shaping my experiences into stories. Now the phenomenon is even worse. I stand outside myself, sometimes at my most private moments, watching. I'm present, but I'm also conscious of the moment as precious and worthy of sharing.

The other day I was in the scrub pines on a dry hillside up a backroad near here. I was looking for some pine poles to build a gate (to keep the deer out of my garden). I had my head down, scouting the ground. I'd pick up a length of pine and test its strength by cracking it over a rock. Some beautiful twisted lengths flew to pieces, rotten already. So I kept looking. They had to be longer than 6 feet and preferably with a lovely bend or twist. The relentless sun and wind on that east side of the valley makes curved sculptures of the pine boughs. I was absorbed in that, eyes on the ground, watching my feet, stepping over little piles of scoured clean deer bones (I think) and I turned to see where I'd left the poles I'd found so far.

It was almost by accident that I looked up and the view slammed into my field of vision. An incredible sweeping 180 degree panorama of mountain after mountain after mountain in shades from deep navy to sky blue to white where the snow was caught, and then the sky as many shades of blue above that. It took my breath away. It made me smile. I had that moment all to myself -- awe, gratitude. I took a few steps back at my task, then I stopped and fished my phone out of my pocket.

Already I was processing it. The moment had passed. I couldn't quite find the same view in my phone camera frame as what I'd seen when I first looked up. Even now as I'm writing this I'm tempted to Google what I'm grappling with. I'm trying to think of the search terms I'd use to see if someone else has already thought this out, and better than I could. Then I think, wait, I'm allowed to have this insight and think it is original. I'm allowed to ponder it slowly and deeply myself, exploring my own messy questions and revelations instead of boarding that wearying Google train lurching from idea to idea to idea until I've lost the curiosity that made me wonder in the first place.

To leave the phone behind is the obvious solution. But that would mean a consciousness about the potential for these random moments of beauty that seems contradictory. I was just out to find some sticks. I told David I'd be back in half an hour. I brought my phone along partly for safety. I did mention the picked-clean bones?

I'm learning to meditate. I'm an absolute beginner and there is so much I can't get my head around. But I think I have an inkling about what it means to be present, attentive to what is. The problem is in the hyper-consciousness of experience, processing it, a word I associate with processed meats -- same de-naturing. Once I begin to process it, break it down, add to it, I'm no longer just there, experiencing the richness and complexity. I'm assessing and judging. And this is a loss.

"One seeks and seeks but cannot find. One then gives up and the answer comes by itself." Alan Watts.