As I have said before, I prefer to take my nature walks towards the end of the day. Whether or not this is because the end of the day is the only time that I have to do any walking, I still find it personally enjoyable because of the overall experience that I get from finding a nice quiet place to pass the remaining hours of light in the day. This week, I found a nice inconspicuous spot at the base of a tree in the thinning (and by now leafless) woods near campus, and I sat down to write a little bit about other similarly quiet moments in my life. I'm not really sure how I got into this habit, but writing or thinking about past nice calm moments during present nice calm moments has been a sort of saving grace for my sanity this year.
Anyway, an important realization that I came to was that the extent to which I could write depended entirely on how much sunlight I had left before nightfall. I was deep enough in the woods that as every minute ticked by I had less and less light to work with. Soon I felt as though I was racing against the clock, trying to condense my ideas enough that by the time the sun went down I could come up with something that didn't seem to end too abruptly. I noticed, however, that the race to take advantage of every last ray of daylight wasn't too stressful. The whole time that I was concerned with finishing my little entry, I had barely noticed the quickly fading light, and by the time I had finished, I was completely in the dark.
Later, I thought about Berry's fascination with the "Old school" of thought, and the conflicts with functionality and enjoyment that he raises when describing his conversations with his farming friend, who preferred to use horses on his farm rather than tractors. I thought Berry sounded a bit like Thoreau (at least the cynicism is there) when he describes the farmer's use of his tractor:
"Last spring he used his big tractor only two days. The last time he went to use it, it wouldn't start, and he left it sitting in the shed; it was still sitting there at the time of our visit" (155).
Here, I think that Berry is trying to outline what he doesn't like about the advent of quick, labor-saving technology by showcasing this particular incident, where something that might be completely practical could also be entirely impersonal. Not only does the farmer apparently have a hard time justifying its use, but once it proves unreliable, it is unable to be improved upon, and is thus left alone to rust in his shed. While I think that Berry is far from the point of despising technology to the extent that Thoreau might have, he makes a compelling inadvertent statement about the importance of the enrichment of one's own life over the practicality of modern advances. Berry says,
"At year's end, his bank account will show a difference that the horses have made, but day by day his reason for working them is that he likes to" (155).
I felt as though this passage connected with my sense of enjoyment and understanding of practical application when it came to writing things down in the dark. For me, the focus was the enjoyment that I got out of writing about something. Whether or not it entailed more work or became less efficient, at the end of the day, I didn't fuss about whether or not I was able to fill two whole pages with something brilliant and concise. That wasn't at all the point. The point was that I was happy with the way I chose to work. While I think that it might be a stretch to expand this little scenario to the economic extent that Berry brings his farming examples in "A Good Farmer of the Old School", for me the good economic sense was of personal satisfaction. After all, I don't have to worry about selling anything I write to make a living. . . well, not yet anyway.
I think this a particularly interesting argument in relation to our food production. As we saw in Food Inc, we have applied the methods of industrialization on how our food is mass produced, thinking about its efficiency instead of its quality. This has lead to a compromise in the health of our environment and the health of our bodies. It reminds me of when we talked about "What is lost?" when we "gain" something. I think these are important lifestyle questions to analyze, especially for our generation who has grown up being fed Happy Meals.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I worked at Whole Foods Market in Portland for the last year and saw the convergence of "corporate" and "local." I still have hesitations about the Whole Foods agenda (my paycheck, for instance, was shipped from headquarters in Texas) but at least think it's a step in the right direction. While Whole Foods is a box, chain store, they provided an abundance of fresh, organic food and do support local farmers. However, as they operate in a capitalist society, they were ultimately, of course, concerned with sales and generating max profits as any business venture desires.
So it goes.
Yeah I think this is a really interesting point you bring up as well John. I think universally speaking, most people who find a strong enjoyment in anything will likely develop ways to be both extremely efficient with what they are given, in addition to producing foods/writings/etc, at the highest quality. I can't help but think of that farmer in the film "Food Inc." who seemed to be obsessed with his farm and how to run it. Because he was having so much fun and joy in running his farm, he was also able to produce food so good and independently grown that big corporations couldn't touch it.
ReplyDeleteThis make me wonder though. Are we as people lovers of grocery stores and fast food because in some way shape or form we love them? Or are we just conditioned within our society to accept the ebb and flow of big business and mass produced foods?
It makes you wonder because I know so many people we do indeed derive a certain level of joy out of many of the mass-produced foods that are blatantly the causes behind going away from farming our own food (I'm looking at you McDonald's!).
Anyway, that was just some food for thought (pun intended)!
I really enjoyed this essay of Berry’s. I think it might be something to do with growing up on a farm, and being witness to a bright red and yellow tractor slowing giving itself over to rust and weeds on our lawn. It had never worked in my lifetime and had been sitting on our farm for at least a generation. We couldn’t use it, but one difference is that we didn’t start using our horses, which we had a surplus of. We used our beat-up truck, a wheelbarrow and a profusion of contraptions (inventions of my father…) held together with string and duck tape. Surprisingly these other options proved successful, but I find it odd that we didn’t consider having the horses help. At the time we had a lot of really nice and well-bred show horses in our barn that were probably worth more than whatever profit we could get from anything in our garden, and I believe this is why we didn’t even consider using them an option. So, my experience is like an inversion of the farmer’s experience that Berry talks about. It starts the same, but instead of going back to the land, it was almost as if we went further away from it. I have to say, though, that I liked helping my dad “putter” on mechanical things, because they were things I could make sense of. I love horses, but horses are like people, and so therefore they have to be in the mood to do whatever it is that you are asking them to do, or else they’ll let you know how much what you’re asking irks them. I think some of our draw to machines is that they don’t talk back, that they’re flatter characteristically. It’s funny because I don’t think I’d derive the same enjoyment “puttering” today, I think I’d rather have a talk with a horse.
ReplyDeleteAnd, because my mind works in mysterious ways…
Your discussion of writing makes me think about how this month is National Novel Writing Month, a time when thousands of people try to pound out 50,000 words in a month (a relatively short novel, around 175 pages). The website pitches it as unfiltered stream of consciousness writing. The goal is simply to achieve 50,000 words, not necessarily to write 50,000 words that will make you proud. A bunch of my friends are participating, but I am not. I’d rather give myself the time to write and enjoy what I’m writing and be able to get down exactly what I want to say without time constraints. I’m curious though about what people think of this program and whether or not they love this way of working, or if it would concentrate too much on quantity rather than quality of words written and the enjoyment of writing these words...
Heres the website if you want to check it out: http://www.nanowrimo.org/