Nostalgia – Light Getting In

More Stuff

Back in September I published a post named Stuff, about my mother’s move to Minnesota. I promised a followup, which is this post here, “More Stuff”.

It’s hard to see how the subject could warrant another discussion at this point, because it is so repetitious and predictable. Stuff piles up in people’s houses, we’re all materialistic to a fault, we overbuy things, and so on, and then when we are old we suddenly have to watch helplessly as someone else disposes of it because we failed to do the job when we could have had some control over the process. It’s also easy for onlookers, adult children especially, to shake their heads and think, “What is the matter with these people!” In truth, however, we are all in thrall to our stuff, one way or another.

In December of 2001 and then a month later I and my husband traveled to Vietnam to adopt our son. While we were there we saw people living in the streets at a level we’d never experienced before. In the meantime the exchange rate between American and Vietnamese money allowed us to buy whatever we wanted for almost nothing; it was almost like grabbing things off the shelves. We were limited only by what we could take home with us.

After getting home I vowed that I would never again take for granted all that I had, and that I would be satisfied to live in our 1800-foot house (which isn’t even the average for the U.S.). The effect lasted for about two weeks. After that my perspective returned to what it had always been, and soon I was complaining about the neighborhood, the kitchen, the floors, and the furniture, wanted something larger, newer, more convenient. Our son grew up with all the luxuries he wanted, which were what most of his peers had, even though we tried not to spoil him.

When my mother moved to Minnesota, she moved into a 1400-square foot apartment in senior housing that had more closet space than our house, plus rented a storage area in the basement. Boxes upon boxes, mostly books, went down there, the plan being to open them over time and sort through them. I spent months opening the boxes that remained, pulling out packing paper, toting it off to the recycling down the hall, and trying to find places for their contents. We bought new furniture for the larger bedroom, which became a study, but no matter how many shelves or drawers there were we were unable to find space for everything. I had all I could do not to lose my temper as I went through it all.

My mother lived in that apartment for almost six years, for the most part happy ones. The time came, however, when she had to go into assisted living. She wasn’t ready to do it, and the fact that she was developing dementia made it impossible to convince her that it was necessary. She ended up in a tiny apartment less than half the size of the one she left, so once more we were faced with the job of dealing with her stuff.

The books in the basement went to a fundraiser without our even having opened the boxes (apparently among them was the wedding album from my first marriage, I later found out). A lot of the furniture, china, crystal, and other kitchenware came over to our garage, which I eventually let go for a song to an antique dealer who took on the task of carting it away. We paid $100 a month for a storage unit for whatever was left beyond what we wanted to keep for ourselves. In the meantime, we lovingly arranged what would fit in her small apartment, although she scarcely recognized most of it because she was so miserably unhappy. Within six months she had to be moved into memory care, this time a single room, and we shuffled things around yet again.

The cruelty of dementia, of watching one’s parent disappear by inches, is compounded by the sense of violation one feels in disposing of all that was precious in that person’s life. As I live surrounded by my parents’ things I feel they’re not really mine, even though my mother made it clear that she wanted me to have them some day. In another five years or so my husband and I will move into an apartment half the size of our house and more of this stuff will need to go. We are already beginning the process.

My parents enjoyed their possessions while they were alive, and when they passed them on to me, they hoped I would enjoy them as well. Now that I face my own choices I realize that I can’t keep most of it, nor do I even want to. It’s hard to know how to evaluate my own priorities while the tug of nostalgia is so powerful, but I have been forced to do so over and over, packing my mother’s gowns for charity, sifting through her jewelry. I hear that younger generations, millenials in particular, want a simpler life. I am glad of it.

The Default Mode

During the course of our daily lives the vast majority of us spend almost all of our time in what is called the Default Mode, activated by the Default Mode Network of the brain. It’s the DMN that gives us our very selves, constructed from memories of the past, observations during the present, and projections into the future.

This way of existing is so utterly familiar that we don’t even notice it unless we are forced to pay attention—if, for example, we are overwhelmed by ruminating on something embarrassing we did, or on someone’s slighting us. Even then we have no idea what we’re doing or why, and are helpless to stop it. And so we thrash around with various attempts at an explanation (“I’m so stupid! Why did I do that?!” “That person is such a jerk! I hate her!”). These thoughts may be painful, but they appear to point to a solution. If I’m stupid, maybe I can figure out a way to wise up, or if I can identify another person as a hateful jerk, maybe I can undermine them in some way.

We need the Default Mode Network to get through the day. It’s what keeps us on track, helps us know what to do next, and makes it possible for us to learn from our mistakes. Alzheimer’s patients are progressively hampered in their functioning by the erosion of the DMN. Unfortunately, the DMN can drive us crazy when it is overstimulated. People suffering from depression have an overactive DMN. The symboliste poet Charles Baudelaire describes this condition in Spleen II from the Fleurs du Mal: “J’ai plus de souvenirs que si j’avais milles ans”—

I have more memories than if I’d lived a thousand years.

A heavy chest of drawers cluttered with balance-sheets,
Processes, love-letters, verses, ballads,
And heavy locks of hair enveloped in receipts,
Hides fewer secrets than my gloomy brain.
It is a pyramid, a vast burial vault
Which contains more corpses than potter’s field.
— I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon,
In which long worms crawl like remorse
And constantly harass my dearest dead.
I am an old boudoir full of withered roses,
Where lies a whole litter of old-fashioned dresses,
Where the plaintive pastels and the pale Bouchers,
Alone, breathe in the fragrance from an opened phial.

Even without running amok, the DMN is behind what causes ordinary dukkha, dissatisfaction and unhappiness. I’ll give an example from this morning when I took the dog out for his first walk of the day. Just as I stepped out the door I was immediately struck by the warm, humid air and the breezes. “It feels like swimming,” I thought, as the dog urged me forward from the driveway to the sidewalk. There was something delicious about the breezes, about the way they caressed my neck and entire body, as well as the smells of vegetation and the sounds of the morning. I saw the leaves of the trees rustling gently in a delicate dance.

Meanwhile, my dog was sniffing along the walkway for information about what other dogs might have passed the house and when, adding his scent at strategic points. My mind began to wander, thinking about the day ahead, wondering what I would try to do with my time, and evaluating my level of physical energy. I stopped being aware of what was going on around me as I became absorbed by pictures in my head. I saw myself doing laundry, doing dishes, sitting in meditation. Imaginary conversations popped up.

Later, as I was digging up a few weeds, I began talking to some image of a younger person—maybe my childhood self?—about the kinds of weeds I was seeing. “That big sprawling grass is actually pretty easy to yank out, but the taproot thistles are the worst! And those smaller grasses have networks of roots, and if you break them off and leave a piece, they just come right back.” Maybe I wanted to share my knowledge with someone. I used to be a teacher, and had a young child once who is now 17 and doesn’t listen to anything I say. Who knows.

We live with stories about ourselves, some of them helpful, others not so much. Some are paralyzing. At different times in our lives, different stories capture our interest. Sometimes we go to therapy, where we can learn to identify disabling stories and substitute positive ones. When stories become dominant over a culture or subculture they can harden into ideologies or belief systems. The work of historians is to make sense out of data and turn it into a narrative, an explanation, an account.

These activities are our defense against chaos, but underlying the stories about who we are is a noise machine in the brain that we scarcely notice, spouting random thoughts and images without letup. I sometimes play a game of trying to trace back a chain of thought to its origin. The mind leapfrogs from one idea to another, based on associations, puns, or resemblances, beginning its journey with an input, something we see or hear that strikes our notice, and ending far, far, away. In the meantime the leaves are shimmering with a light breeze, and the body is alive with a play of sensations, and we aware of none of it.

In the Default Mode we sleepwalk through our life, dreaming our dreams while life goes on in and around us. The consequences of not paying attention can be tragic and deadly. The work of spiritual practice is to open our minds to awareness, to move us in the direction of waking up from our enchanted sleep.

Time (in a Bottle)

Every so often something opens up a time warp and I find myself awkwardly split between the past and the present. So yesterday I was sitting, or rather lying back, in the dentist’s chair getting my teeth cleaned when a song came over the Muzak: Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle.” I groaned out loud, telling the hygienist that I found the song depressing, but I knew even then that the word “depressing” doesn’t really describe it because it’s so much more than that: it’s genuinely sad; tragic, even, both because of the artist’s early death and for what it says about the human condition. Here are the lyrics:

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
‘Til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with

I thought back to the time when I first heard that song. It was featured significantly in a TV movie from 1973 called “She Lives,” a movie about cancer and young love, like “Love Story” and “The Fault in Our Stars” and so many others I’ve forgotten. I remember that one because of the feeling of tenderness and wistfulness it elicited at a time when I was the same age as the young lovers.

I went home and forgot about it until it was time to go to bed, at which point a demonic little impulse prompted me to find the song online and listen to it again. Next I read what Wikipedia had to say, and when the article mentioned “She Lives” I thought, “I’ll bet that movie is on YouTube,” and so I looked it up and ended by watching the whole thing. What surprised me was how well I remembered details of the dialogue after more than 40 years, even though I can’t remember precisely where I was when I saw it.

“Time in a Bottle” tells of the impossible desire to save what is most precious, one’s love for a particular mortal being, from the relentless march of chronological time. There is the consolation of going through whatever time one has with one’s love, but the tug is always there. My time in a bottle is a fragile memory captured from a distant time, of a young person I used to be, who lives in me still. I can watch that movie and see it from an adult’s perspective, or I can suddenly be just as I was when I first saw it as if no time has passed at all. I can even do both at once. The trouble is, I would rather not be caught up in a wistful dream of temps perdu. It’s like an incubus taking away all one’s energy for the task at hand. And now that I think of it, the couple from the film are dreadfully tedious in their absorption in each other, and the film itself is sweetly insipid. Even the song can grate on the ear with endless repetition.

Time for bed.