Hello,
Dear heart,
And welcome.
At dinner with my family the other day,
My nephew asked me,
If you could make one invention disappear without erasing the progress it enabled or the tools it inspired,
What would you choose?
Being silly,
I blurted out,
Electricity.
Then I added,
Unicycles.
I quickly told him I knew electricity wasn't technically an invention before he could school me.
We laughed and he said he'd get rid of back scratchers.
Later that night,
I lay on my patio staring at the bright,
Burning star,
Vega,
In the Lyra constellation.
I wondered why electricity had jumped out of my mouth.
I realized I was craving simplicity.
I was craving quiet.
I was craving space.
I was craving the stars.
There was a time when I crewed on a 52-foot sailboat,
Leaving from the San Pedro docks on the Southern California coast to Catalina Island,
About 22 miles if I remember right.
At anchor,
Overnight,
We took turns on anchor watch,
Two at a time,
Waking the next pair every hour or two to sit beneath the sky and make sure we didn't drift.
The first few nights,
I brought books,
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer,
But soon I left the books in my bunk and sprawled out on the cockpit cushions to watch the sky.
Off Catalina at two in the morning,
The sky is nothing but stars.
Empty spaces,
Hard to find.
I watched them glimmer and leap and glow.
Shooting stars were abundant,
Blazing across the dark faster than I could think of wishes to pin to them.
Even at 14 or 15 years old,
The glittering skin of the Cullen vampires couldn't hold my attention like the real stars of the California night.
Sitting at the granite kitchen counter with my nephew,
I wasn't conscious of those memories.
I didn't realize how much I missed the lap of water on a boat hull,
The quiet giggle of my friends,
Or the sound of silence blazing with starlight.
But it was in me.
The simplicity I craved was already there.
When I imagine electricity disappearing,
My nervous system clenches.
Smartphones turning to bricks,
Televisions into questionable wall art,
Satellites dark,
Cars still,
Our modern life coming to a halt.
My body recoils because my inner electricity has oriented around the outer electricity,
The technology that fuels my days.
I see the paradox.
These tools powered by electricity take up so much space in life in the name of simplifying life.
And still,
A part of me longs for simplicity,
Enough to fantasize about turning it all off.
I have to laugh.
My mind loves binaries,
Yes or no,
Black or white,
An electricity-free simple life.
Or fast,
Complicated,
Technologically forward life.
But my heart knows,
Elimination isn't required for peace.
All it took was walking outside,
Lying down with a blanket,
And gazing up at the southern California sky again.
Even in the middle of the city,
With only a handful of stars visible,
Planes tracing bright lines,
A neighbor's television drifting through the window,
And the city lights echoing against the night.
I find peace.
Simplicity.
I find it in accepting the moment exactly as it is.
I find it in letting sweet memories wash over me,
Through me,
And beyond me.
I find it in the temporal nature of life,
Right?
And I find it in the truth,
That no matter how this planet spins,
And my life with it,
There is a part of me that always has been,
Always will be,
And always is,
Oriented towards stillness.
For just a moment,
Any moment,
I can let myself feel my sweet friend.
I'll meet you there.
