distraction | Neal Lemery

Some of the best conversations I’ve had occur in the aisles of the local grocery store. There, in those spontaneous and seemingly random encounters, I find the greatest wisdom, coming from longtime friends who speak profound wisdom and solid Truth.

We nearly ran into each other, grocery lists in hand, and quickly caught up on the successes of a mutual friend. Our similar political views led us to some hand wringing about one of the current scandals on what I’ve been calling our collective national news feed.

“But, it’s really all a distraction,” my friend says. “Keeping us from talking about and taking action on the really important stuff.”

My friend is right. I am distracted, feeling like I’m jumping from one outrageous story to another, never having the time to be fully morally outraged about an event or a trend, when another absurd or unsettling story blips on my radar screen, stirring up my indignation, and leading me down another rabbit hole in the political and cultural scene.

Some of my angst comes from not feeling I’m taking action myself, righting some injustice through my own actions, or simply not speaking out at all, because I’m distracted.

I’ve been finding some direction and camaraderie with a wise person from the nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Politics and culture in his time weren’t tranquil and serene, and, in his writing, he spoke out against injustice, hypocrisy, and what one of my social worker friends calls “stinking thinking”.

“At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—’Come out unto us.’ But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I’ve been distracted from being purposeful, intentional, and acting against the intolerance and injustice of our times.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived, and lived well.”

_Ralph Waldo Emerson

Am I living well, am I living to be useful and compassionate, and making a difference? Like all of us, I suspect, I want to be living in the here and now, to be productive.

My grocery store conversation stirred me up, and I’m motivated to keep at it, keep doing my life work, and making a difference.

I’ve long believed that social ills and “stinking thinking” are best addressed by a good public airing, so people can truly see a thought or an attitude for what it really is. One of my missions in life has been to seek the truth, and bring it to light.

My friends in the medical community often talk about the curative properties of sunlight and fresh air, and how infections often respond to a change in the environment, and the need for a thorough examination under a bright light, bringing in fresh air, and creating a place where healing can begin.

I’ve long enjoyed the idea of clearly identifying the elephant in the living room, so people can begin to talk about the real problem, take ownership and responsibility, and move towards finding solutions. Such clarity and directness gets us “down to brass tacks”, as my grandmother used to say.

Then, another news story, and a flurry of unreasoned opinions, rants, and personal attacks. Distractions, again.

Uncivil discourse, a sign of the times.

Blindsiding and personal attacks; not having meaningful, purposeful conversation about the issue at hand — it all reminded me of what our national political conversations have turned into, a lot of noise taking away our need to focus on productive discussions and the elephant in the living room. We are being distracted from expressing and sharing, not having well thought out and articulated debates on issues vital to our national health and direction, and respecting people’s views, even if we might disagree with them.

My grocery store encounter with my good friend reminded me that distractions are simply that. They get in the way, and keep me from my purpose in life and in my community. I need to keep focused on the task at hand, the issues we are facing, and carry on, “to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived, and lived well.”

–Neal Lemery, 6/1/2018

There are dangers in being a writer. The jaws of the Muse’s trap can take form in the laptop by my chair, waiting for me and the Muse to connect.
Often, the Muse doesn’t come. It’s not always my procrastination. But when she does, she’s sneaky. She will wait for me, hoping I’ll be there to catch that poem by its tail and write it backwards, as it slips through my life. That’s what Elizabeth Gilbert thinks. And she’s right.
In that “writing it backwards” before the Muse laughs at you and slips out of the house, that I must pounce and capture the idea before it leaves.
All else stops, and time becomes something else, not anything like clock hands moving around the circle, or even the sunbeam silently moving across the floor, until I suddenly realize its dark outside and maybe I should turn on a light. It’s another world, this writing life.
Yesterday, I decided to boil eggs, so that I would have some hardboiled eggs for my breakfast the next day. We were going out of town, to a hospital for a medical procedure for my wife. I don’t wait well in hospitals anyway, and waiting rooms and I don’t do well together on an empty stomach. We had to be there just after six, and my wife couldn’t have breakfast, or even coffee. So, I needed to be sneaky, and smuggle my breakfast into the waiting room.
I had a writing assignment for a newsletter. I’d been obligated to write a short piece, just three to four hundred words. Something chatty and newsy, about something related to the work I was doing for the group.
“Do something fun, whimsical,” the newsletter editor had told me. “It’ll be easy for you. You write a lot anyway.”
Doesn’t she know there’s always blood involved in this writing thing?
Of course, the idea for it hadn’t arrived in my brain yet, and I was fretting about the deadline in a few days, and not having it done. And, I had to get it done before we were off to the hospital, and the couple of nights in a motel, so that my wife could recover, yet be near the doctor if anything went wrong. Hospital waiting rooms and motel rooms with bandaged limbs and ice bags and rows of pills on nightstands aren’t good writing venues.
All the usual pre-op anxiety wasn’t good for my chatty little writing assignment, and so I procrastinated.
But, when the eggs were done, I WAS going to sit down and write. Maybe something would come.
I put the eggs on to boil.
“No need to set the timer,” I told myself. Once they boiled, I was just going to leave them in the pan for an hour and they’d be nicely hardboiled.
I put the eggs in the pan and turned on the stove.
“I’ll flip open the laptop, and get myself set up to write,” I thought.
“I’ll be right back.”
Ha! That was not to be. As soon as I sat down and got going on the computer, to set up that scary fresh new page on the computer screen, the Muse decided to pay a visit.
“Oh, that’s a great idea,” I thought, and started to write. First a sentence, then another, and the first paragraph shaped up.
On to the second paragraph, and a third. A little editing, a rephrasing, and off I went.
Lost to the world, oblivious of anything around me. I wrote and wrote, and a good first draft of the essay was there, right in front of my eyes.
“”What’s going on with your eggs?,” my wife asked.
“What eggs?” I said.
“Oh, those eggs. Oh, I’ve forgotten them,” I said, hurriedly putting down my laptop.
Reality again.
Most of the water had boiled away. And that was an accomplishment, as I’d put a glass lid on the pot, one of those with the little metal rimmed hole, so just a smidgen of steam can come out. Unless you forget and just let it boil and boil, until that essay is looking good.
It must have boiled for quite a while, as only about a tablespoon of water was left, and the shells looked grayish brown, almost smoky. In another two or three minutes, they would have started smoking.
I wondered what burned hardboiled eggs would be like, how the house would probably be filled with clouds of burned hard boiled eggs. Sulfurous. Nauseating. A stench that would still be noticeable a week later, leaving me to explain to friends and visitors what that stench was, and how it came to be. How I came to ruin a perfectly good pot. How to explain why I can’t seem to even be able to boil some eggs.
And why Bon Appetit or Gourmet magazine won’t be asking me to contribute a story.
I could blame it on the Muse, couldn’t I? Wasn’t it her fault, waiting around until I put the eggs on, and flipped open the laptop, when she struck. Distracting me, leaving me to forget a scant two minutes into my project, that there was a decent essay in the room, and I needed to get it written. Forget the eggs.
And so I did. I moved into another dimension, leaving my wife to come by in the nick of time, and rescue the household from another one of my cooking disasters, one of my projects gone awry.
I’ll blame it on the Muse. It’s all her fault. Even when she shows up.