new tatters

vacation and focus

Every year Caitlin's family goes on a week long vacation to Michigan. I've been fortunate enough to go the last two years and looked forward to just being able to decompress get away from all my distractions and reset my focus. The internet runs janky if at all and cell phone service comes in and out at best. Without the allure of facebook or watching rap battles on youtube I was left with endless hours of reading ( "Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into The 3.5-billion-year History Of The Human Body" by Neil Shubin)

, sketching, laying in hamocks, going for long walks, breathing in fresh air, stargazing, and
 even getting in to watch Stepbrothers with her family the evening before we left. Avoiding my phone, youtube, facebook and only checking Daily.com every so often to catch up on space news was as you can tell extremely freeing. I'd liken the experience to learning to avoid a friend who's taken up too much of your time with nothing much to show for it. Sure they're great to hang out with once in awhile but the relationship becomes ultimately draining and you haven't grown and infact may have even pedal backwards in your life's larger pursuits in exchange for short-term entrainment/indulgence. Instead my day were filled drawing meditatively unclouded by thoughts of rap battle arguments (i belong to a facebook battle rap debate group which i've allowed to consume hours of my time) or the petite quarrels that manifest themselves due to differences between something like dietary choice (this happends quite often since i have many friends in the paleo/atkins community and i myself am i fruitarian)

 If only the simplicity which afford such unfragmented thought were easier to obtain. On one of our walks in the woods we ran across two baby racoons. It was difficult to ignore their intelligence when one of them noticed us while his or her brother was busy rummaging for food. Noticing their sibling was oblivious to us it placed it's paw on it's sibling and for the next few minutes we both starred and inspected each other at a distance. I'm sure that they were much more frightened of us then anything else. With due reason, life as any cub/baby in the wild is a life of dealing with numerous predetors and the racoon babies were only right to be cautious. After a few minutes they worked up the courage to scamper off at a moderate rate; while they didn't trust us they didn't all together think we were out to get them.

 All in all if anything the trip taught me many of the things I enjoy I could be doing now with better time management. Also the differences in quality of rural life vs city life never have become more apparent to me. Outside the price of fruit and produce one pays living outside a major city in the United States there wasn't much else I could vouch for in terms of living in a city. People's fascination with the city reflects a remnant of our hunter/gather past. A modified pact mentality that comes off as progressive because groups gather around issues/music/art vs. religion and politics. The amount of real physical and psychological stress on the body living in a overpopulated city creates by most goes unnoticed because they've lived in a city so long they don't know anything else. They arn't privileged enough to breath clean air or to be surrounded by silence. To not have to listen to a neighbor's quarrel, to be able to take a long quiet stroll without being surrounded by a population who's sweep it under the rug mentality has covered the city in trash. The country is not without it's issues. Close by our cottage there was a barn that it's owner had downed with a confederate flag (of course i've heard the arguments on that the confederate flag represents "freedom" to some, but so did the swastika to many Germans who called the early 40s the good ol' days. Though in my own apartment complex I'm judged by it's mostly Indian population who doesn't so much as nod when I say hello or good morning. If this trip motivated me in any way it's to leave the city and peruse a cleaner more productive life.