Paying Attention: What to See When There is Nothing to See
There are family stories from my childhood that involved me sleeping in the car. But they are not, obviously, things I remember -- I know the stories second hand. I put boredom in the same category. I am sure that I have been bored at various times -- during a tedious sermon, perhaps. But I do not remember being bored, ever, actually, and I do not remember sleeping in a car unless I have been sleep deprived and my body shut itself down.
During our return to the States after a good will basketball visit to Russia in 2004, while my teammates slept or watched an out-of-sinc Bruce Almighty, I looked out the window. Whenever the cloud cover broke, I looked down at the expanse of the Atlantic and at the land as it gradually emerged from the horizon. Waves, currents, boats, icebergs, coastlines -- not to mention the subtle shifting of blues, greens, greys -- you get the picture. It was all good. Not only was there something to see, there was much to contemplate, to feed the mind.
On our first morning in LuHe, January 1, I wrote in my notebook, "Praise God for this opportunity!" We saw a lot in our three days there, everything we had asked to see and more. At the same time, we hadn't asked to see nearly enough. We had not known what to ask for. What we saw raised new questions for us, created new curiosities, and revealed doors I could not have imagined before.
On the day we left, all we had planned was the trip back to Shenzhen. It was to be, essentially, a travel day.
Nevertheless. The raw data in my notebook for this travel day reads as follows:
"7 a.m. [wake up] call for 7:50 departure [It was cold every night but by this last morning it felt less
Breakfast -- same restaurant as yesterday [around the corner from the Zhang "town house]
3 or 4 kinds of noodles -- soy drink -- fried bread [outside the restaurant, two women are repairing a hole in the street. One is wearing a red jacket; the other, black. Beside the hole in one direction is a pile of sand; in the other direction, a two wheel hand cart filled with what I take to be bricks. On our first short trip to the Zhang village we had seen something similar: two women screening gravel to mix with powdered cement in the mixer they were operating.]
[the common American impression that Chinese streets are clogged with bicycles is no longer true]
scooters /car garages next to restaurants, steel (rebar) sellers and stone cutters next to food shops, half built houses between/next to old houses and, new houses
much rubble/ red plastic trash bags, clothes hanging on lines from hangers, here and there vegetable plots (always neat [as I have noted often]) or larger fields (rice terraces [easy to spot now that I know for sure what they look like]), cows grazing [on stubble] in last year's rice paddies, stacks of product from bamboo to bricks to wood posts to rebar to building materials -- cement bags boxed cases of whatever [not being able to read Chinese], soy jars, dried plant material
[there is a lot of litter and litter is a problem, but I think litter is a problem nearly everywhere. the questions is what to do about it. the solution will, I think, require the cooperation of everyone]
from a distance the square buildings look like Soviet era buildings in Russia, women laboring alongside of men, digging trenches, working in road despite traffic [a Soviet era building is essentially a square or blocky concrete structure with a somber, grey, aging utility to its appearance]
household goods, chickens, cats, stray dogs (all tan) [am I missing something?] pens with animals, police stations and walled government buildings, lots of concrete, all farm roads are raised, most fields systematically scoured with irrigation trenches
so far I am handling the food OK . D less so.
Duck ponds with hundred of white ducks [around the edges and in the water]
Once we got back on the big hi-way, the view changed. Like American interstates, the farms and towns and backroads are hard or impossible to see, the details harder to absorb. To the west in the distance rise the mountains; to the east somewhere beyond the shrubs and trees growing up along the route lies the sea.
My conclusions about what we had seen and what that might mean are still tentative, subject to reconsideration and new information.
At some point in the years after I stopped napping in the car and forgot how to be bored, I adopted a life principle that has served me well. It has served me well.
It is simply this: pay attention.
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