Routine

When I was living in Tokyo, my landlord’s husband took me to see some Kyudo or Japanese archery. Kenji spoke almost no English and I spoke even less Japanese, so we walked in silence through the park. We passed a couple children on swings and a father teaching his fat diapered 8-year-old how to Sumo wrestle before we came to a wooden stage and a beautifully manicured grass shooting range. I tolerated the pain and sat seiza-style beside Kenji as a young man shot at tiny brown targets.

The archer started with a kneel while looking down, he then stood, looked at the target, placed his feet, looked at the target, kneeled down again, looked at the target, spun right, grasped his bow, looked at the target, secured his hands, spun left, looked at the target, stood, placed his feet, looked at the target, secured his hands, looked at the target, placed an arrow, secured his hands, looked at target, drew, held, held, held, and shot. It was a miss. He then repeated this ritual twice more and missed twice more. It took about three or four minutes to shoot each arrow, which is an eternity when sitting seiza. After the archer finished, I asked if I could hold his bow. He said no.

Our world is saturated in routine. Some, like the archer’s, are a challenge. Others are necessity. Every day, Soulless Hedonist walks the dog in the morning, at lunch and when he gets home from work. Some are simply habit. Every day, unless he has a meeting, Rick, a guy from work, eats at Potbelly’s and gets the same thing every time. And some, we simply just enjoy. Every Wednesday, I read the Onion on the way home from work because I like it (and the online version is blocked at work).

There often is monotony to routine, but there is also extreme comfort. I imagine the archer wants to set his mind at ease by completing his ritual. I imagine if Soulless Hedonist didn’t go home, we have to start worrying about his dog. If Rick broke out of his Potbelly’s lunch, I would suspect something was wrong with him. And there is a beauty to the reliability of a routine. In an unsure world where so much is unpredictable, we take comfort that some things, like the rising sun, we can depend on and will be there every day.

Packrats

We all like to keep things around that remind us of the past. We snap photos, we keep souvenirs and some of us even fill attics with relics. Interestingly, we can each only handle a certain about of nostalgia. For some, letting go of objects is like wasting life. They fear that without the object, the memories will fade and experience will all be for nothing. Others hate the clutter and the constant reminder the past. They simply want to move on to better and different things. With both, though, there is an underlying sense of mortality. Objects seem to remind us and distract us from death and yet their existence enhances and assuages our fear of death. It is a remarkable contradiction.

I was in my parents’ basement a while back figuring out how I could clear the place out. They want to uproot and move to San Francisco, but have not been able to for years. There were five sets of cross-country skis there from back when we lived in Wisconsin. I remember not wanting to go ever because I would miss Voltron, but we went as a family and skied around during the Wisconsin winter. It was cold and monotonous and difficult and, yet, looking back, I think I loved it. The skis haven’t been used in over twenty years and they are hopelessly outdated. You couldn’t give them away. My parents packed them up, brought them to Baltimore and they have been sitting in this basement ever since. I’ve wanted to throw them out literally a hundred times, but haven’t been able to do so. The joy and sadness from seeing them has prevented me from bringing them upstairs every time I visit. And that goes for a million other pieces of trash in that basement.

I found out about Noah K Everyday today (everyday.noahkalina.com). He takes his photo every day and has done so for a decade. He’s not the only one, either. There are apparently dozens of other people who have been chronicling their daily image. And while it’s a neat concept and I always think I never have enough photos of myself, I think it would be overwhelming. Such harsh, precise documentation of mortality would be unbearable. Watching someone else age on Youtube is one thing, but to watch oneself would be like watching a clock tick. For Noah K, it’s a fairly unique accomplishment, but for me, it would be hell.

But, in the end, we keep what we need to keep and we toss what we need to toss and we handle what we can handle. That’s mortality.