Thank you, Mary. Elizabeth Bishop is one of my favorite poets. She is so easy to access yet also so profound. I always like to include a poetry reference in my essays.
I am working on a poem that is similar in nature to this...though unfortunately not as eloquent. You brought me back to my childhood trips to the lake where my mom would pack too much food and we would stay until the sun turned the sky pink. Such peaceful priceless moments. They are few and far between these days and so under appreciated. Well done Zina.
Thank you so much, Peggy. It seems like the easiest place to be leisurely (in this sense) is in nature because you are not so plugged in. Back in the day you telephones were on cords! With rotary dials! Things have changed so much. It seems like my children see fewer sunsets than I did as a kid, yet we still have sunsets every day.
Thank you so much! You should have seen all the Simon Weil and Susan Sontag stuff I had the cut out in order to get this short enough to post. LOL I so appreciate your comment and glad you got something out of my piece. :-)
Slowing removing the arts from schools is a part of the dumbing down of American culture. The current threat of book banning is un-American. Books, music, visual arts, movies, live theater, all expand our minds and lives. Who goes to museums on a vacation? I do.
The power of slowing down, walking in nature, and unplugging from our culture of distraction have become essential to our mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
I love museums! And for my birthday my father-in-law gave me funds so I could go to the opera for the first time. There is so little time and so much to experience, but it is so tempting to speed up and learn for the sake of learning. Slowing down and doing things that seem to have no purpose than to be an experience is a practice of trust. Trusting the world has so much to give that if we just open our arms... something will be presented to us.
Your faucet analogy is a great one and reminds me of college, where there was always a radio or stereo going somewhere. I much prefer today’s world of personal screens and headphones. That people might be streaming short-form video instead of listening to Wolfman Jack hardly seems like a difference with much of a distinction. But headphones provide them with privacy and means I don’t have to hear it.
As for cults of personality, nothing today quite tops Beatlemania. Yesterday I was reading a memoir extract of someone who as a teenager was hired just to sort Beatles fan mail in their New York office. Today we digitize our desires, but same thing.
Is watching TikTok really that different from taking an old-fashioned elocution lesson? Both teach effective oral presentation, the latter by prescription, the former by example.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve turned into one of those boring early-to-bed-early-to-rise people, but binge watching through the night doesn’t really sound much different from reading a fat novel far into the night as I once did. It was as much about escape as it was about replenishment.
Seems to me there’s an economic angle to leisure as well: who gets it and who gets what kind of leisure. Thorstein Veblen said the rich got the most and the best leisure, turning it into a kind of a fetish. But even amongst the rest of us, who flies on vacation, who goes to the museum or opera, who takes the trip to the seaside?
Hi Frank, Great points! I think if I had five room mates instead of five kids I would feel the same about people wearing ear phones. However, as a parent it is my duty to know what the kids are watching... I mean... it could be seriously messed up. Sure, twenty years ago some neighborhood kids could get some saucy material, but nowaways it is everywhere and the kids all know workaround (we had 2(!) software program as gateways... they worked around them). Also, in my childhood boredom I ended up reading a lot of good Ray Bradbury and just about all the Agatha Christie novels so with junky over-produced videos out there it keeps them from desperate to reach for Treasure Island or The Princess and the Goblin or The Hobbit.
Yes, cults of personality have been around--oh yes, Beatlemania is hard to beat. And Elvis. Michael Jackson. There will always be idols, our golden calves.
From what I have seen, the quality of shows has not been as high as the quality of novels one could read. Reading does something to the brain, and it isn't nearly as passive as watching something. Although I have to say my father loved David Lean movies and I would watch them. However, the pacing could drive a modern audience mad. I don't think we have the wherewithal to sit through a long take of the sun's slow rise burning its way over the horizon. It's a beautiful scene that is just preceded by Lawrence blowing out a match. I was little when I first watched it and it was mesmerizing.
Reading is something that takes so much effort. No wonder my children don't read so much and why literacy rates among kids are so troubling.
BUT AMEN to your comment about the economic disparities to accessing leisure. I can only afford music lessons for two of my kids and that can't even be a steady once a week. It is $45/30 mins. This is such a hardship. When we access trumpet through the school for my other daughter it still is not free. It is such a high cost for something we are getting through public education. I sacrificed and brought two of my kids to the ballet so they could see live dancing with live orchestral music for once in their lives. It was amazing, but we had to save up money to do it. Accessing culture has come to be a sacrifice. It shows us who we are and what we value. We had to eat more spaghetti that month more than I would have liked, but the look on the girls' faces as they saw the opera house with all the chandeliers was magical. No screens. Just THREE HOURS of ballet, and only toward the last 15 did the youngest get antsy. It shows what high art can do.
I have not once taken the kids to the beach. I can't afford the parking or the stress of getting there only be to told that there is no parking. Ugh. Those with beach homes have it made. Fortunately, we have that lake near us (as you could see) and it is $5 admission for residents so that helps... if only the rest of the kids would go!
I hear you. Accessing culture, as you put it, can be expensive if it involves a live performance. Movies, novels, recorded music are good bargains because they can be mass-produced and transmitted cheaply with only a brief involvement by a minimal number of intermediaries (the ticket-taker, the bookseller, etc.), particularly if the Internet is involved. Whereas a lot of so-called high culture really demands live transmission and so can be pricey. I suspect this has always been the case.
For example, pre-pandemic I saw Hamlet done by a touring theater company. Even though it took an entire page of the program just to list all the corporate sponsors, the tickets were still quite expensive. But because it’s live and being performed for a relatively small number of people and involves highly trained professional actors (can’t utilize foreign or immigrant or student labor to keep production costs down), that takes a lot of money.
Same with a Taylor Swift concert. That’s why locally produced music and theater, often with amateurs and volunteers, is such a bargain.
I enjoyed some of these moments in Montana this summer, fishing while my kids played in the shallows, spreading mud on their arms and cheeks like they were at a spa. Such a nice respite. Thanks for sharing this, and happy birthday!
Thanks for the birthday wishes. It seems that now more than ever it is up to parents and guardians to make it a priority to create these leisure-filled moments. And also to model what it is like to experience leisure (instead of constantly looking at screens ourselves). I need to take my earbuds out more often and just listen to my kids play (i.e. cheat at Battleship or chess).
Thank you so much! I am glad you liked the post. (It's also a lovely birthday present for me because today I turn 49. What a treat to get your note. :-))
A lyrical essay on beauty, life, discovery and "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop towards a beautiful close like the turn of a poem.
Thank you, Mary. Elizabeth Bishop is one of my favorite poets. She is so easy to access yet also so profound. I always like to include a poetry reference in my essays.
So on point, as she was ...
Happy Birthday.
I am working on a poem that is similar in nature to this...though unfortunately not as eloquent. You brought me back to my childhood trips to the lake where my mom would pack too much food and we would stay until the sun turned the sky pink. Such peaceful priceless moments. They are few and far between these days and so under appreciated. Well done Zina.
Thank you so much, Peggy. It seems like the easiest place to be leisurely (in this sense) is in nature because you are not so plugged in. Back in the day you telephones were on cords! With rotary dials! Things have changed so much. It seems like my children see fewer sunsets than I did as a kid, yet we still have sunsets every day.
Absolutely loved this and your knowledge of the history of these words is incredible and really added to my enjoyment of this piece of writing.
Thank you so much! You should have seen all the Simon Weil and Susan Sontag stuff I had the cut out in order to get this short enough to post. LOL I so appreciate your comment and glad you got something out of my piece. :-)
Slowing removing the arts from schools is a part of the dumbing down of American culture. The current threat of book banning is un-American. Books, music, visual arts, movies, live theater, all expand our minds and lives. Who goes to museums on a vacation? I do.
The power of slowing down, walking in nature, and unplugging from our culture of distraction have become essential to our mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
I love museums! And for my birthday my father-in-law gave me funds so I could go to the opera for the first time. There is so little time and so much to experience, but it is so tempting to speed up and learn for the sake of learning. Slowing down and doing things that seem to have no purpose than to be an experience is a practice of trust. Trusting the world has so much to give that if we just open our arms... something will be presented to us.
Your faucet analogy is a great one and reminds me of college, where there was always a radio or stereo going somewhere. I much prefer today’s world of personal screens and headphones. That people might be streaming short-form video instead of listening to Wolfman Jack hardly seems like a difference with much of a distinction. But headphones provide them with privacy and means I don’t have to hear it.
As for cults of personality, nothing today quite tops Beatlemania. Yesterday I was reading a memoir extract of someone who as a teenager was hired just to sort Beatles fan mail in their New York office. Today we digitize our desires, but same thing.
Is watching TikTok really that different from taking an old-fashioned elocution lesson? Both teach effective oral presentation, the latter by prescription, the former by example.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve turned into one of those boring early-to-bed-early-to-rise people, but binge watching through the night doesn’t really sound much different from reading a fat novel far into the night as I once did. It was as much about escape as it was about replenishment.
Seems to me there’s an economic angle to leisure as well: who gets it and who gets what kind of leisure. Thorstein Veblen said the rich got the most and the best leisure, turning it into a kind of a fetish. But even amongst the rest of us, who flies on vacation, who goes to the museum or opera, who takes the trip to the seaside?
Hi Frank, Great points! I think if I had five room mates instead of five kids I would feel the same about people wearing ear phones. However, as a parent it is my duty to know what the kids are watching... I mean... it could be seriously messed up. Sure, twenty years ago some neighborhood kids could get some saucy material, but nowaways it is everywhere and the kids all know workaround (we had 2(!) software program as gateways... they worked around them). Also, in my childhood boredom I ended up reading a lot of good Ray Bradbury and just about all the Agatha Christie novels so with junky over-produced videos out there it keeps them from desperate to reach for Treasure Island or The Princess and the Goblin or The Hobbit.
Yes, cults of personality have been around--oh yes, Beatlemania is hard to beat. And Elvis. Michael Jackson. There will always be idols, our golden calves.
From what I have seen, the quality of shows has not been as high as the quality of novels one could read. Reading does something to the brain, and it isn't nearly as passive as watching something. Although I have to say my father loved David Lean movies and I would watch them. However, the pacing could drive a modern audience mad. I don't think we have the wherewithal to sit through a long take of the sun's slow rise burning its way over the horizon. It's a beautiful scene that is just preceded by Lawrence blowing out a match. I was little when I first watched it and it was mesmerizing.
Reading is something that takes so much effort. No wonder my children don't read so much and why literacy rates among kids are so troubling.
BUT AMEN to your comment about the economic disparities to accessing leisure. I can only afford music lessons for two of my kids and that can't even be a steady once a week. It is $45/30 mins. This is such a hardship. When we access trumpet through the school for my other daughter it still is not free. It is such a high cost for something we are getting through public education. I sacrificed and brought two of my kids to the ballet so they could see live dancing with live orchestral music for once in their lives. It was amazing, but we had to save up money to do it. Accessing culture has come to be a sacrifice. It shows us who we are and what we value. We had to eat more spaghetti that month more than I would have liked, but the look on the girls' faces as they saw the opera house with all the chandeliers was magical. No screens. Just THREE HOURS of ballet, and only toward the last 15 did the youngest get antsy. It shows what high art can do.
I have not once taken the kids to the beach. I can't afford the parking or the stress of getting there only be to told that there is no parking. Ugh. Those with beach homes have it made. Fortunately, we have that lake near us (as you could see) and it is $5 admission for residents so that helps... if only the rest of the kids would go!
I hear you. Accessing culture, as you put it, can be expensive if it involves a live performance. Movies, novels, recorded music are good bargains because they can be mass-produced and transmitted cheaply with only a brief involvement by a minimal number of intermediaries (the ticket-taker, the bookseller, etc.), particularly if the Internet is involved. Whereas a lot of so-called high culture really demands live transmission and so can be pricey. I suspect this has always been the case.
For example, pre-pandemic I saw Hamlet done by a touring theater company. Even though it took an entire page of the program just to list all the corporate sponsors, the tickets were still quite expensive. But because it’s live and being performed for a relatively small number of people and involves highly trained professional actors (can’t utilize foreign or immigrant or student labor to keep production costs down), that takes a lot of money.
Same with a Taylor Swift concert. That’s why locally produced music and theater, often with amateurs and volunteers, is such a bargain.
I enjoyed some of these moments in Montana this summer, fishing while my kids played in the shallows, spreading mud on their arms and cheeks like they were at a spa. Such a nice respite. Thanks for sharing this, and happy birthday!
Thanks for the birthday wishes. It seems that now more than ever it is up to parents and guardians to make it a priority to create these leisure-filled moments. And also to model what it is like to experience leisure (instead of constantly looking at screens ourselves). I need to take my earbuds out more often and just listen to my kids play (i.e. cheat at Battleship or chess).
Oh what a lovely way to begin this day ❤️
“And leisure is doing nothing but receiving the grace offered in the moment.”
Thank you so much! I am glad you liked the post. (It's also a lovely birthday present for me because today I turn 49. What a treat to get your note. :-))