...more-a-torium...
…more or less on making more or less of less…
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
-Robert Frost-
“What are you getting up to today?”
“I don’t know brudder. Maybe dinner?”
I daydream about Jamaica. Not because of the beaches, the water, the incredible food, people and music. I daydream because when I visited my concept of time was destroyed. Everyone moved and lived at half-speed. I could live a day where all I did was dinner. I had never been so relaxed. So purposeless and in the moment. For six days I walked the sand and dunked my head in waves unconcerned that I might have to do anything.
When I made it back to the states it took less than ten minutes to lose my jamaica mind(set). I had tests, family obligations, goals, practices, books, phone calls and work to attend to. I couldn’t do just dinner. I needed to do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do as much as po-po-po-po-possible. The island simplicity grew distant.
Honk-honk “what da fugg buddy”, and a car crash half a mile up the road has me stuck in traffic and late for an appointment. I have so much to do today. I start the brain list while the car sits still. Groceries, six meetings, four articles and five videos to edit. Dog walk. Laundry folding. Buy new insurance. Draw up a contract. In my fully stopped car, talk radio hammers my ears with brash idiocy and distracted idioms start to flop through my brain like a struggling bay striper flapping all over the wet deck of a fisherman’s dinghy.
Less is more.
Make more of less.
Take the sloppy pizza and put it in your pocket.
I daydream. A seabird sings to me. I island.
I need a more-a-torium.
I don’t need more. All over I see more. Too often I want more. I want less. Less isn’t more. I find it tempting to pretend that an endless horizon, that pure line of gorgeous profound simple, is so so much more than that. But it can happily, and easily, be so little. I make too much of almost everything. I am always in my head. I overthink even when I’m not consciously thinking.
What am I up to? What are my goals? Where am I going? How am I doing? Me me me me me. Mind mind mind mind mind. More more more more more.
Life is abundant regardless if I notice it. Seeing more doesn’t mean that I see more. Being seen more doesn’t mean that I mean more.
More towers above us. Box offices, revenue goals, stock trackers. New content, cars, kids and stars. A data driven existence is driven to goals of more-ing. How can I do better, faster, quicker, and more efficiently? What is A.I. if not the premiere tool of more? With A.I. in seconds I can perform facsimile functions of tasks I couldn’t do without it. Look how fast and how many ads, contracts and spreadsheets we might make now!
Each day on Earth we generate 500 million tweets, 294 billion emails, 4 million gigabytes of Facebook data, 65 billion WhatsApp messages and 720,000 hours of new video on YouTube. People are creating an average of 34 million images with A.I. every single day. Over 100,000 new songs get uploaded to streaming services every day. These numbers are increasing too.
The race to create more means less to us all. I can’t read everyone's everything. I can’t see everyone’s every-things. Maybe just a thing is just the thing we need?
I want to get smaller. I want to do less with less. I want to be a lesson, not a more-on. This isn’t nihilism, isn’t-ism, contrarian-ism, or ism-ism-ism-ing. It is that seabird coming back to the boat seeking to see the sea alongside me. In some sense it is about acceptance. We can accept what we have. We don’t always need to have more or other. Who is going to piss in the tenth bathroom in our fourth house near Lake Tahoe?
More means waste. Americans throw out 5 pounds of trash per person per day. That is absurd, obscene, maybe even obnoxious. We are making mountains of old shirts and peninsulas of old pepsi. I probably throw out more than that. I am to blame. Blame me. I am that more-on.
Life isn't a job. I don't need it to give me more compensation or more benefits. I am full of life and couldn’t use more of it. I am maxed out. Less allows me to be as I am. Less might be a new lease on life. But that is more again, isn’t it?
…here is a list of things I could do less of…
Complain
Bemoan
Fein interest
Say stupid things out loud (fat chance)
Make trash
Eat trash
Be online
Make lists
I want the least amount of less allowable. An empty bagless bag. Less culture is full of emptiness, but not meaninglessness. Actually it might mean less. Unless someone wanted to look into it more which would defeat the purpose.
Less culture is accepting what we have. It is the IS of now, not the NOW of later. The future will happen regardless if we try to shape it and make it our own. Perhaps pursuing something beyond the self could merit an interesting contrast to the trash piles we are currently building?
What would a day without building look like? Weeks, months or years? We have endless everythings to take part in right here and now. What if we take part in them? You don’t need a shrink to shrink, you can just get smaller here and now.
Look. I am as just a pixel. Can you see me?
Early in my Jamaica trip we passed a road with a sign on it that said “FOOD”. According to the bartender who served me tall rum colas it was a restaurant. We went our last night, winding down a half mile road to a tiny blue roofed home with a picnic table and two kids playing out front.
Their dad came out, set us down, gave us Jamaican beer and sugarcane drinks. For over four hours we sat and had a family dinner of lobster, ackee, black beans and curry. We listened to half a dozen records. We played jacks and cards and told stories.
I did more stuff that trip, but none worth remembering. But that day. That night. All I did was dinner. And I can’t forget it. So maybe it’s less about doing less, and more about doing just one thing exactly how it needs to be done.
The idiom says “the less said the better”. So I guess that means.
“Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.”
-Andre Gide-
…thanks to
& for your feedback and assistance on this piece…i couldn’t have done less without you…all photos taken and edited on my camera around the oakland bay area (except for the list and trash)…if you have read to this point please accept my gratitude…
You couldn't have done more to make your point.
That was one of your best posts do far. I just lived it. Every word play hit a solid idea, it was structured beautifully, and most of all it made me laugh till I cried at my own craziness. Thank you.