Habit Forming

This post may ramble a bit--more so even than usual--because I'm trying to knit together a number of thoughts that have occurred to me over the last few days. Earlier this year I posted about ways to get by under the current regime in Washington and its (as promised) ensuing idiocy. The idea was to cultivate habits that might help one survive the almost overwhelming deluge of anti-intellectual diatribe issuing from the White House and Congress. I focused on several centers of effort (eat real food, get real exercise, make stuff, write more, read even more; see Sunrise, Sunset from 19 January), all of which I fully intended (and still do) to establish as habits. This intent has since led to ruminations on the word habit itself, and all it entails--including words like inhabit, habitat, habitable, and the like. There's probably no better word to describe my basic materialistic view of life, because it comes from the Latin habeo: to have, hold. Bundled in this one little word is a universe of ideas encompassing carrying, wearing, possessing, holding, wealth, inhabiting, ruling, conversing, using, managing, keeping oneself, and disposition. Thus, it also contains within it many of the basic themes considered on The Farm. And so, as often happens, my simple curiosity about the nature of habits has led my back to my usual philosophical playground: economics in the form of home-keeping.

Due to my diminishing ability to remember stuff consistently, I have been thinking lately of seeking a technological solution: something to help me perform the tasks I mean to do but don't necessarily remember to get done. As many of you already know, my relationship with technology is ambivalent at best, and although I've succumbed to many aspects of digital culture (computers, smart phones, and the internet), I have avoided many social media outlets even as I embrace others. I eschew the more egregious offenders, but find others useful--such as Blogger, which has enabled me these past ten years to get thoughts into the universe, whether anybody's interested or not. It took me many years to adopt my iPhone, and now it's become part of my life. Too much, in fact, because when I decided to use a movement tracker to help keep me from becoming a total blob, I found myself practically welded to the device. I quite literally could go nowhere without my phone if I wanted to keep track of my activity level. This entails always wearing pants or jackets with pockets. Given my rather limited wardrobe, I found myself needing to stuff the phone into my knickers or brassiere if my trousers were missing something to carry it in; retrieving it in the checkout line at Whole Foods caused double-takes all around.  The solution became obvious, but involved another technological concession: either a fitness tracker or a smart watch.

In the end I opted for the Apple Watch because it so easily wedded itself to my phone, iPad, and computer. The Beloved Spouse and I headed for the Buy More last weekend and got a deal on an out-of-box Series One in basic black. I haven't worn a watch in years, and used to prefer the face on the back of my wrist so I wasn't constantly looking at the time. This one has to be worn on top, but it only activates when I tell it to. It does nudge me to get off my keester and move around every now and then, and I have told it to prompt me to breathe several times a day (other than reflexively). Now, as if by magic, my intention to get real exercise is well on its way to becoming a well-established habit. In addition, my phone doesn't have to follow me around and I don't always have to have pockets, even though I prefer them to purses and such.

When I was looking up habeo in my Cassells Latin Dictionary, I anticipated only a handful of the definitions attached. The notions of wearing, carrying, managing hadn't really occurred to me, and yet here they are, all bound up with this new habit of walking around purposefully, noting my range of activity, and nudging myself toward better health. Coincidentally enough, the Beloved Spouse informs me that some of our Continental philosophy colleagues are thinking and writing about the relationships among habit, habitation, and Heideggerian "dwelling." Of this I was unaware, but will certainly pay more attention to in future.

Some habits have evolved more naturally over the length of my retirement, and require little technological assistance. I find myself getting into the garden on most clear mornings, to drink my coffee, read, write a little, hang out with my animal companions, and enjoy the natural wonders that reveal themselves when one isn't consumed with time tables and administrative obligations. I have, for example, spent an afternoon watching a Black Swallowtail butterfly flirting with my dill and fennel plants, and later discovered that she'd laid an egg (and then several others), which then hatched into a quickly-evolving larval form (all of the photos below are of the same wee beastie).

Alas, this little critter and its later siblings have all disappeared, perhaps victims of a wasp-like creature I noticed hanging about the fronds after they were all gone. Nevertheless, it's quite wonderful to be able to observe all this, even if it's a bit "nature red in tooth and claw."

The ability to grow at least some of my own food has finally become a reality, as the habit of daily tending to the garden has made timely planting and appropriate husbandry possible. The tomatoes and butternut squashes are on their way to edibility, peppers are almost ripe, lettuces and even a couple of radishes (which need re-seeding) have made their way into salads. The pods of Anasazi beans are bulging, but I need to let them be a bit longer. The bush beans I planted on the previous compost bin site (which I moved over and re-started after I harvested the compost) have already borne fruit, even though the spot doesn't get much sun. New projects include beginning a hügelkultur on the north side of the house to take advantage of the sun next spring, and trying to tame the herb garden enough so that everything has room to grow--not just mints and garlic chives. [Edit 05.18: just this morning the Daily Poop included an article on Bokashi composting--prompting me to restart mine. I have two bins and used to alternate them, and will reinstate the practice anon.]

The rest of the sanity-saving habits list doesn't really need electronic enhancement, and I'm actually using pencil and paper for some of the writing. I've collected a massive number of notebooks over the years (many are abandoned sketchbooks from former students, who turned in a couple of completed pages and then gave up), so I'm assigning separate tasks to some of them, and they accompany me into the garden, or are housed on the table next to my reading chair in the living room. I need one upstairs, too, next to the bed, for remembering stuff that occurs to me during occasional bouts of sleeplessness. As I sort through accumulated "collections" of materials from my past, I often find old notebooks used for similar purposes, indicating that this is a long-established habit that's simply being resumed after a hiatus.

Thus, this ramble comes to an end. My little digital watch has just told me that it's time to get up and move around, so I think I'll go out and look for caterpillars. After having exceeded all of my goals yesterday, I'll need to mow the front lawn in order to keep up the good work. But that's also a habit worth cultivating.

Of Comfy Chairs and Soft Cushions

I have many things for which I am grateful, not the least of which is the fact that I can spend my mornings tucked into a comfortable, if not beautiful, chair, with a couple of pillows to support my aging lumbar region. Here I read the paper, and then, if there’s time, I read another chapter in one of the books I keep on the stand next to me, under the stained glass lamp we got on sale not long after we moved in. The chair is set in front of the living room windows, three double-hung jobs badly in need of re-glazing and painting, that face east: the best orientation for the house, according to my Asian-influenced upbringing. Artifacts from our stints in Japan and Taiwan lie around the room, and many of the aforementioned soft cushions are covered in fabrics from China—probably woven in some sweatshop or other for the export trade. I am always torn between my love for the colors and patterns of the East, and the ethical questions that arise from purchasing them so far away from their origins. I have no way of knowing how the people who made them are faring; so I can only hope that some portion of their cost makes it back to the weavers, fullers, and tailors responsible for their manufacture.

In fact, a good deal of the time I spend in my chair each morning is devoted to thinking about utopia—or reflecting on these dystopian times. The pile of books from which I glean ideas and which provide the fodder for most of my blog posts, almost always focus on what human beings have done to the world that makes it necessary for thoughtful people to wonder about the environmental and cultural impact of everything we buy, eat, wear, or otherwise consume. It’s not that I mind being mindful; it’s just that it would be better for us as a species, and better for the world as a whole, if we were more able to “spend” that time living in the world rather than worrying about it.

Writing and thinking occupy almost all of my “off” (i.e. non-teaching/grading/prep) time during the winter. I often spend Saturdays ensconced in my chair with my laptop, working on the “Farm” or on my latest literary effort (a science fiction novel about an older woman on an archaeological adventure), at least until the sun has risen enough to suggest the possibility of working in other parts of the house. The study is, unfortunately, the coldest and darkest room in the house, even though it faces south, because of the deep eaves that shade the windows. These conditions make it pleasant in the summer, but in winter I often have to sit at my desk with a comforter around my knees and a shawl over my sweater. It’s a bit like writing in a garret in a tenement somewhere, but not terribly romantic. On sunny mornings, though, the Comfy Chair is the venue of choice, especially when there’s a fire going, and one of the puppies is napping on my feet.

Come spring, when the morning temperatures are above 60°F and the weather fine, we move into the garden for our morning read. This year, since we’ll be rearranging things a bit, we’ll be able to sit at a table, with the coffee carafe and the newspapers, and perhaps even the laptop (I’ve recently discovered that the wireless connection reaches out there), which should make for some pleasant writing-mornings. The seasonal migrations through and around the house are something I’ve become much more aware of since I began working on the “Farm” in the first place. As I was writing More News From Nowhere, I spent much of my time “living” there—thinking about alternatives to “civilization.” But I have since begun to think more about the quality of life in my immediate vicinity, and how what I imagined in the book could in any way be implemented in “real life” (or the “RW” as they call it on my forum).

One of the few ways to escape the constant, intrusive, nagging, and mounting problems in the world has always been to become a hermit, and I can certainly understand the impulse. If I did not find myself regularly in the company of young adults who are inheriting what those of my generation have bequeathed them, I’d be very tempted to simply enclose myself in my little domain and lose myself in the works of Morris and the other utopians I’ve spent the last twenty years reading, or in the ancient world, or some other place not here, not now. But the kids I teach—creative, funny, sardonic, frustrating, but sometimes quite wise and much more optimistic than I—draw me back into the world at least four days a week, and make me want to fix things for them. I can’t, of course. And I’m too old and too tired to do much other than help them know some of what I know, so that maybe they can do something to fix it for themselves. Maybe our job now is to help them keep wanting to figure out a way to keep the world going.

Meanwhile, I need to get out of the chair and into the garden. I picked up herb seedlings and lettuces at Whole Foods yesterday, and need to get them in the ground—or at least into pots where they can be protected if another freeze sneaks in on us. Planting a garden is always a sign of hope, so perhaps I’m actually more sanguine than I pretend. And I now have to go make entries in a new garden journal, which gives me something else to look forward to doing in the Comfy Chair—at least until the puppies start poking me with their soft noses and luring me out to get some actual work done. Perhaps we should have named them after Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam, in honor of their antics in the Python sketch that suggested the title of this post. After all, as long as we live in a world that can remember its past well enough to make fun of it, perhaps we really do have a future.