Rings of Saturn

There are motives and methods for attempting to get away from the world, but in fact, do so is ultimately an impossible task. I accept that wherever I go I am always in the world and am subject more and less to its slings and arrows. Perhaps it is truer to say that there is no getting away from the world until one recognizes the world that I am always of and in. That recognition entails acknowledging and understanding the myths by which I have lived in the world. But even more, I have always said that wherever I go, well, there I am, and I carry with me all of my neuroses, peccadilloes and, even amazedly, gather together some of my somewhat positive and appealing character traits. All that being said, nevertheless there is motive for removing myself from as much of the external inputs as I can tolerate—to get away from the world, that is— and by doing so leave time and energy to focus on those stimuli and events that derive from within, recognizing that the presence of the unconscious colors all the remembering, itself always a problematic and imprecise process, and that any control over memory is only partially illusory. I always respect what dreams may come . . . And anyway, the act of remembering is inevitably partial and imperfect and influenced by the present. There is, then, no way to get away from the world and rediscover the self. James Baldwin has written of his own expatriate experience, “I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed home.” Getting away from the world to find the self is a fruitless endeavor.

Nevertheless, there remain motives for reducing contact with the world even as there are various methods by which such withdrawal can be made. By the world I refer to the ever presence of words, events and personages of which I am made conscious, some of which I love and some that are anathema to me. Marx has said that men and women make their own histories but not in conditions of their own choosing. One motive for getting away from the world was to eliminate as much noise as is possible so that the choices I would make were somewhat but never completely free of some uninvited and unwelcome influence. But as I have said there is always the influences of the unconscious to acknowledge and accept.

We have traveled to Costa Rica to get away from the harsh mid-west winter of Minnesota. In my aging I have grown intolerant of the cold wind and snow. Once these meteorological events did not trouble me: I would run with pleasure in the early morning dark, sub-zero weather only sparely bundled in expensive running gear. Or maybe it is that I have in my life preferred the sun and heat to the cold—I have always eschewed air conditioning—though regrettably now my skin shows the long-term results of my sun worship. The dermatologist kindly refers to these marks as wisdom spots but I know them as blemishes and ugly. Occasional basal skin cancers have been excised from my surfaces, and I am forever anxious of suffering more serious cancerous eruptions. I maintain my annual appointments to the skin doctors. But now on the quiet, sun-drenched and sizzling beach I sit in my chair slobbered over with sunscreen lotions and sprays, and am not troubled by invasive external noises, though occasionally a boom box blares and disturbs my rest. But then, I just move my chair a bit to the north or south and the quiet returns. My breaths echo the crashing of the waves; the yoga instructors reminded me to breathe, and the ocean rhythms return me to my breaths. In this environment the external world can with some effort be kept at bay though I appreciate the paradox that considerable energy and funds has been spent in order to achieve some seclusive peace.

The political situation in this moment is so dire that not to know about it seems to me an absolute motive to leave the world and any news regarding it. The reports today seem to me too ominous, and though I am not personally threatened by events, at least, not yet, I am concerned about the children . . . Paul Siebel sang, “We can teach them nothing, nothing, but survival in a desert bare . . .” Politicians are making the world a desert bare. In my life, the news had always arrived via print copy, computer and phone. At the time of the election, I had stopped paper delivery of the New York Times and relegated its reportage to a location buried in the my stuff bookmark on the computer. I can choose not to go there. I also can choose not to go to the websites for CNN and Politico which I have also buried in the my stuff folder. At the election I had substituted Wired rather than the New York Times as my home page. Most of the articles in the formerare beyond my pay grade and even my interests, and I do not care to devote the energies to learn how to read them. The photos are nice, and I suppose bit coin and cryptocurrency and other neologisms might be important awarenesses, but not for me, I think. My cash-in-pocket, credit cards, and investments are sufficient. I am amused sometimes at the newer technological products Wired recommends, most of which I will not purchase and don’t even understand their purpose, but all of which entice me to live a better life. Away then from the immediacy of the news I have been partially successful at avoiding the fetid political atmosphere, though, alas, I still awaken each morning and feel soiled by even a minimal awareness of the appalling attempts by the present government to destroy a democracy as it has been known for more than 250 years. 

But James Baldwin notwithstanding, perhaps the motive for retreat is not an escape that I seek at all: it is a recovery—a re-focusing—of my internal operations that in the absence of the ever-present stimuli of the external can be better seen and heard. Away from the devices by which the world becomes instantly available, I can listen for my own callings and then make assessments and adjustments. I have put away the phone but I’m writing on the computer. On any of my devices a simple click of the fingers on the keyboard attaches me to the world with which I am trying to minimize contact. It is that easy to re-enter the world. On these devices any question I might have can be effortlessly addressed with just a few clicks and alarmingly soon I have fallen into a rabbit hole and have even forgotten where I had started when I picked up the smart phone or clicked some Googled search. Sometimes I realize that after some time down there in the hole I grow alarmed that I haven’t even found an answer to my original question. The whole motive of escaping the world was to avoid the rabbit hole in the first place and not to follow it down, though my partner who has not had the same desire to leave the world, occasionally offers me news of the headlines that often sadden me. Not her, but them. I have been asking her to refrain doing so, but perhaps it gives her comfort to share the horror. And who am I to deny her that relief. Townes Van Zandt sings, “Maybe she just has to sing for the sake of the song/And who do I think I am to decide that she’s wrong.” I am weary of being chastised by my phone. It tells me that today I am not walking as much as I did yesterday, and that this year I am walking less than I did last year. I know that I can turn off the recording of my activity, but I also like to listen to music that tends to relax me when I walk; then the recording of my steps and calorie expenditure continues as does the judgement. Even my electric toothbrush castigates me if I do not spend the required two minutes caring for my teeth. When I place it back down it displays a frowned face. My writing on the computer keeps me above ground with some effort, but I could too easily become distracted or frustrated in the writing and follow these disturbances down into the rabbit hole. I have to learn to tolerate frustration again and eschew instant gratification.

It is of course possible not to turn on the computer or the phone and return to the manual toothbrush . . . but actually that radical isolation that would result does not appeal to me. I can’t completely abandon the phone because some actual people do call me on it. For example, my daughters, my brother and sister and a few dear friends. And occasionally news of a tragedy back home occurs—a death or illness that requires my attention. Though it strikes me . . . that the wanting to know the details of life and death that surround me a part of an attachment to the world that I have not successfully abandoned. Somehow, it suggests that I want to continue the attachment. When I used to look at the print copy of the New York Times I first turned to the Obituary pages as a way to measure the remaining size of my world, and now even when I have partially buried the Times on the computer, I still do want to know who in the world has left it because this awareness helps me know the world in which I continue to live, announces how with the deaths of those with whom I have grown up the world tends to shrink a bit. I continue to monitor the deaths so that I know the lifes. I know that if I do not track these events in the immediate present, I will catch up later with them when I return to the world in which I daily live, but the apparent distance I experience days and miles away offers me comfort and keeps me in the moment unmindful of the changes. Here, in Costa Rica, I don’t carefully track who has live and who has died. Maybe it is that a motive for getting away from that diurnal world and its obituaries has been an unconscious now made conscious attempt to get away from death. 

As this page and others like it show, I like to write, and it is on the computer that I make that effort. And again I recognize that the clicks away from the current page too easily can lead me back into the world from which I have wanted to minimize contact. There along with the current news that I am trying to avoid I can discover announcements about opening new movies, new streaming shows, new products from Amazon shopping (mostly), Skellig Store (occasionally), even eBay (rarely). I have taken to this latter site for less expensive rimless eyeglass frames, a style I have been wearing for upwards of thirty years. In my inbox seemingly hourly there appear dozens of requests by the Democrats pleading for monies, but these urgent requests return me to motive #1 and my wish to lose the politics and find myself again. As if the politics isn’t one of the myths by which I have lived. The assault on the senses from the computer that comes from the world creates tensions and they seem to me now inevitable. Wherever I go, there I am.

Sometimes I realize that it requires an expenditure of some considerable energy not to go on the various devices and lines and to resist the call of the world. Too often I feel myself drawn to attend to notice of the events as if to a magnet; such attention serves as a means of grounding myself, suggesting that I need news of the world in order to situate myself in it. W. G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn explores just how close one can get to tragedy without being destroyed by it. Saturn’s rings are situated just far enough away from the planet’s gravitational pull to keep from being drawn down onto its surface and smashed to bits. I think I require the connection to the world to maintain the necessary distance from it to avoid being smashed to bits by its gravitational pull.

It begins to appear to me that motives for turning away the world already contain the methods for doing so, though it appears also that a complete escape seems unlikely or even sought. And it takes an honest effort to understand the necessary distance to maintain from the world which must always be held in view.