washing dishes: a father’s glimpses

we get a glimpse of longing, then we get busy

Through the guidance of some higher powers and local friends who, 30 minutes before 5:30 p.m., informed me of a conversation between authors Prentiss Hemphill and Mia Birdsong yesterday evening as a part of the Bay Area Book Fest. I’m learning to travel more impulsively, less scripted days with more spontaneity, so I surround myself with more surprises that allow for more unknowns. I’ll choose the known of my morning practice triumvirate: black tea, incense, morning pages. After that, there’s a full day of life.

The motifs* of longings, fertilizing each other’s imaginations, mortality, and how we living our days recur and re-appear.

As do reminders of the people to stop messing with, and who I could no longer wrangle since they, too, are distracted by old shit and are embroiled in boring habits. For a decade, I’ve recoiled at describing myself as busy though it may be the response that I hear most often when people are asked How are you? In the last year, I’ve honed in the answer that my life is full, but not busy. I say this often, to differentiate so that I’m not perpetuating a dominant narrative, which is a lie. And to recognize that I have agency over the hours and minutes each day, and more significantly **, that how I interpret and remember and therefore retell the stories about me, I have even more authority.

Now, I’ll hear busy as a synonym for distracted. Distracted from what? From what someone longs for, including simplicity, slowing down, meaningful relationships right now. As I watched The Bear, I was struck by the black plaque on the white-tiled wall that read <<every second counts>> as it irritated me. Literally, rubbed my comforted self to a place of imbalance. Now, I’m more aware of precision — when I am precise; and all the ways in my life, living, loving, and relationships where I am precise; and, increasingly how I lack of precision when I’m distracted.

One new move for me could be responding that “I’m distracted” when someone asks me how are you? and I wanna tell em that thing that is close to busy but if I use precise language, if I tell them how I deviated from the path, the practices that animate me, fallen away from my longings and therefore fallen away from irimi.

Last night, Hemphill and Birdsong also talked about how 5 guys manipulate social media spaces, cultivating the same old songs. [There’s a cartoon or caricature in there of the 5 guys peddling burgers of social media.] I’ve also refrained from spiraling around celebrity culture since I don’t know those actors, musicians, celebrities and now “creators” in real life: I don’t know who Joe how they are as a sibling, friend, neighbor, parent, and whatever is put online most of the time is masked or performative. Numbers of followers or likes, like crypto, isn’t a currency that I trade in, which further reveal me as a Luddite born in the last quarter of the 20th Century.

A few other tidbits that I carry forth after last night are:

• “Mia: How do we get in touch with longing? Prentiss: trying to map a feeling is weird.”
• “disregulation is a paradigm shifting thing”
• “the tremble is when you’re scared to say it because when you say it will change everything.”
• “most of us are defended most of the time”
• “[in this time of political, social, cultural and economic upheaval] orient to one’s self and relationship.”
• “practice is confronting the obstacles that keep you from being present.”
• “relationships are vehicles that we change and grow through”
• “sometimes we can’t say the thing, unless we come undone”
• “fear and awe sit right next to each other”

If I could have asked one question, it would have been either: What’s the significance of your name(s)? or How do Prentiss and presence play with each other? [no, in fact, it would be:] Where/How do presence and Prentiss currently play in your imagination?

Significance:: I’ll forever tie back to Adriana/Cambio’s insistence of repeatedly asking about the significance of experiences, not just the story alone. Significance exceeds the 4WH — who, what, where, when, how — I learned during the Coro Fellowship. To be honest, it is 5WH, because why is significant but 20 years ago Coro insisted on concrete data and harbored an aversion for why’s abstractions.

motif (noun): 1/ a recurring subject, theme, idea, etc., especially in a literary, artistic, or musical work. 2/ a distinctive and recurring form, shape, figure, etc., in a design, as in a painting or on wallpaper. 3/ a dominant idea or feature.