Flow
I've returned from a weekend trip to the Philly area
and now I'm thinking about “flow”. There was a river behind my
hotel which I would have liked to explore for birds, but time flowed
too fast to allow such a river-flow digression.
However, a digression: I'm a member of a book-study
group that lives on digressions and I recently mentioned the books on
flow written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (last name pronounced, I kid
you not, “Chick sent me high” - if I made that up no one would
believe me). I'm not going to talk about that type of “flow”
which involves focusing attention, though the concept is worthwhile.
But, I digress …
Just
as water is made of H2O
molecules, which flow around each other, so traffic is made of
vehicles which flow around each other. Except when I drive to
Philadelphia. Word travels ahead of me and incantations are invoked
to stem that flow, so I spend large amounts of time studying the
interior of my car and unsuccessfully trying to peer around that
stupid SUV in front. Traffic flow gets my attention for its absence.
Once I reach the convention, narrow hallways between
the rooms constrict the human flow. Your first thought would be that
you could meet a lot of interesting people in that closeup
environment, but the truth is that everyone is late and pushing
through. So we remain strangers.
The in-hotel restaurant handles flow well, except for
those breakfast and dinner times when we all demand to be served.
Then I look around and make poor jokes about getting out of line and
simply having a candy bar for dinner, getting weak laughs from people
within earshot. After ten minutes, however, I get out of line, buy a
candy bar and continue on to a panel discussion that started ten
minutes earlier.
Oh,
“what about gardening?” you say. Well, I'm getting there, with a
confession. After reincarnation, I plan on coming back as a ditch
digger. You see, I really
dig digging in the ditches which border my property. My neighbors
don't really keep up with them and they fill with debris (the
ditches, not the neighbors.) Flooding rains force me to dig,
releasing enough water so that the azaleas and hosta aren't killed.
Nature wants to put water lilies in those spots. Over the years, some
beds have sunk and, by not raising them, I've allowed plants to
die. This winter the Satsuki bed will have to be raised about four
inches or so.
 | ||
| Wapama Falls, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, Yosemite, CA May 20, 2008 I did NOT dig the dirt releasing that water. |
I
get a surprisingly strong satisfaction from sinking my shovel into
the final load of muck, releasing stagnant water, forming a healthy
stream. I really
like that. Did I say that before? I don't remember.
I
came back from my trip today in early afternoon. By late afternoon I
was digging in the southeast ditch. After talking with my neighbor, I
had the ditch on his side of the fence to myself as he did wheelies
on his riding mower, denuding the lawn of leaves. Luckily he agreed
to throw the leaves over the fence onto my leaf pile. In five years
it will be compost for top dressing the azaleas. But I hardly
noticed. After two hours of lifting muck, roots and leaves, and
watching the water move slowly toward the drain by the road, it began
to get dark and was time to quit. How could two hours pass so
quickly? Completely the opposite of the traffic jam, I was so focused
that time didn't exist. I simply enjoyed the experience. Just as
Csikszentmihalyi said. But, I
just
said that I wasn't going to talk about his book …
