This American Guilt

I did not do much today, in the American sense of the word "do" -- and I won't parse it like Bill Clinton would: "It depends on what you 'do' do."

When an American does, he drives about, runs about, taking in sights, riding, climbing, running, jogging, eating, drinking and verily any verb that can end with in "-ing."

And I had every intention of "'ing"ing, as it were, by going hiking at the Indiana Dunes State Park, which serves not just as a park, and not just exercise, but as a holy place of nature I feel fortunate to consider my backyard.

But first -- and I've started two paragraphs with conjunctions here so bear with me -- I had to clean the apartment. Not so daunting, after all it's just an apartment. But I loathe the prospect. I almost feel lucky having lost not one but two houses to foreclosure just for the sake of not having to do upkeep. (I find strength in finding the upside of the down -- also the title of my next alternative spoken language EP.)

I then thought of my epiphany from yesterday and epiphanies only count when you hold on to them and use them. Forgotten and left to wander, an epiphany is nothing more than a synapse in the wind -- the title of my next duet with Sting.

I strung that epiphany together with a thought from the Buddha, who suggested that attention to even the most mundane of tasks before you is a mediation itself. Buddha wrote about washing his singular pot -- he carried only one because he only used one at a time -- and how scrubbing the dirtiest part of the pot was a perfect meditation, the forgetting of oneself and of just doing.

Washing the dishes this morning became my meditation, as well as a fine metaphorical erasing of this week's mistakes in cooking and dietary habits. And my attention to each spot, every grease mark, any crusted-on piece of whatever might have once been a consumable took me away from worries, concerns and self-attention. It made me think of my favorite line from "Winesburg, Ohio," by Sherwood Anderson, where he described a young man thinking of himself and when young people do that, it invariably brings a self-loathing.

In this meager enterprise -- washing the dishes -- I'd strung together three epiphanies, that from yesterday about concentration, one of several years ago taken from the Buddha and finally a line from a book I read some 20 years ago.

Finally, when I sat down to write tonight -- with a righteously clean apartment; I mean you could almost eat in here -- I remembered once again that becoming a better person happens only in the most minute of stages, so subtle it can't be noticed during a day or a week or even a furlough. So I can look back now and see an individual education between ages 20 and 30 and then 30 and 40. Henry Adams would be proud of me.

And these little epiphanies -- the intellectual photographs that James Joyce used in his "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man" -- only matter when used and then strung together to become a continuing whole.

Perhaps I did do today.