Book Report: Four Thousand Weeks

8. Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021) (3/29/23)

Like most of us, I suppose, I often feel like I'm not doing "enough" with my life, and fall into the trap of thinking I should do more, be more. This book is the perfect antidote to that sort of self-defeatism. As Burkeman points out (via Heidegger), we don't really have time to use up; we are time—and a very limited amount, at that. 

Before I can ask a single question about what I should do with my time, I find myself already thrown into time, into this particular moment, with my particular life story, which has made me who I am and which I can never get out from under. Looking ahead to the future, I find myself equally constrained by my finitude: I'm being borne forward on the river of time, with no possibility of stepping out of the flow, onward toward my inevitable death—which, to make matters more ticklish, could arrive at any moment.
     In this situation, any decision I make, to do anything at all with my time, is already radically limited . . . in a retrospective sense, because I'm already who I am and where I am, which determines what possibilities are open to me . . . [and] in a forward-looking sense, too, not least because a decision to do any given thing will automatically mean sacrificing an infinite number of potential alternative paths. . . . Any finite life—even the best one you could possibly imagine—is therefore a matter of ceaselessly waving goodbye to possibility.
     The only real question about all this finitude is whether we're willing to confront it or not.

But let me back up: the 4,000 weeks of the title refers to the amount of time the average human has on the planet, some more, some much less. That underscores the finitude. And then there's our capitalistic mania for productivity, goal-setting, success, career—often to the exclusion of plain old living. Which is really all we get to do in the first place: just live. And yet it's so easy to get drawn into an abstract spiral of expectations, based on delusion and the ridiculous idea that we have all the time in the world to "figure it out and get it right."

This book combats that. It's listed under self-help, but also under philosophy, and it does have much practical advice—like having two to-do lists, one existential, the other practical; like putting your phone on gray-scale mode so it's less alluring (I'm giving that a try). But what I enjoyed most was being immersed in the beautiful open-endedness and uncontrollability of time. Yes, we can make plans, we can create our to-do lists, but if we forget to stop, right here, right now, and simply be, we're cheating ourselves of the amazing gift that is life, that is our life. 

In a chapter on impatience, Burkeman describes an exercise of going to an art museum and sitting in front of a painting not for fifteen minutes, or even an hour, but for three hours. 

You spend the first forty minutes wondering what on earth you'd been thinking. You remember—how could you ever have forgotten?—that you've always hated art galleries. . . . You contemplate switching paintings. . . . But then you're forced to admit to yourself that making a fresh start, by picking a new painting, would be to succumb to the very impatience you're here to learn to resist. . . . And so you wait. Grumpiness gives way to fatigue, then restless irritation. Time slows and sags. You wonder if an hour has passed, but when you check your watch, you find it's been seventeen minutes.
     And then, around the eighty-minute mark, . . . there's a shift. You finally give up attempting to escape the discomfort of time passing so slowly, and the discomfort abates. And the Degas [Cotton Merchants in New Orleans] begins to reveal its secret details. . . . Before long, you're experiencing the scene in all its sensory fullness: the humidity and claustrophobia of that room in New Orleans, the creak of the floorboards, the taste of dust in the air.
     The second-order change has occurred: now that you've abandoned your futile efforts to dictate the speed at which the experience moves, the real experience can begin.

My favorite chapter, called "Rediscovering Rest," extols the simple activity of going for a hike, or of cultivating a hobby—purely because it gives pleasure. I can get into that! It reminded me of geocaching, which surely has no practical purpose, but it gets me out into the world, looking around, enjoying the moment—all the better if I'm with a good friend or two. 

There's much more food for thought in this book, but I'll end with five questions that Burkeman poses to grapple with the deluded notion that life is provisional, "as if the point of your having been born still lies in the future." 

1. Where in your life or work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what's called for is a little discomfort? (Alternatively, one can ask, Does a particular choice diminish me, or enlarge me?)
2. Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?
3. In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be? (A corollary question: How do you enjoy spending your time?)
4. In which areas of life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you're doing? (Consider the possibility that that will never happen. Then just start doing.)
5. How would you spend your days differently if you didn't care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition? 

Dennis Wojtkiewicz, artist

Scrolling through FB, I spotted a gorgeous photo reminiscent of a stained glass window. 

The search to identify the photographer revealed that this wasn't actually a photo, but an oil painting! Until recently the artist, Dennis Wojtkiewicz, was a professor at Bowling Green State University, where he taught painting and drawing since 1988. He retired last fall, in part to spend more time with his own art.

He says of his hyper-realistic approach: "This idea that you can be surprised, that you never figure it out and that there’s always something new ahead. Even if I’m working with the same subject matter, there’s a way to see it anew, a way to see the same thing but it’s different. With being engaged on a steadier basis that’s what I’m looking for, to see what happens." I appreciate this healthy attitude of curiosity, which could be applied to any creative endeavor, or to life generally.

Here are some more of his pieces, many of citrus, but he explores various kinds of fruit, as well as flowers, mostly in oils but also in pastels. He seems to approach his subject matter in series: citrus, watermelon, onion, etc.; also in shapes, such as rosettes. His ability to depict light is extraordinary. Just wow! (Click to view larger on black.)

Here are a couple of pastel flowers:

Milo

Our dog, Milo, a 52-pound goldendoodle, is starting to falter. He is 13½. It’s his legs that are going, not his happy attitude, not his appetite or his heart. Whenever he slips on the hardwood floor and falls down, or doesn’t quite make the jump onto the couch or into the car, he looks at us with a puzzled expression, like he doesn’t understand what’s happening. We don’t really either. He trots along on his daily walk as usual—though there’s that dragging front left foot, which the other day started bleeding as the asphalt ground away at his nail, right down to the quick. On Sunday, on a longer hike, he started stumbling on the downhills; we finally leashed him, lest he lose his footing entirely and tumble down the steep hillside. He’s sleeping more, and has taken to occupying the folded fleece blanket at the bottom of the stairs leading to my little office-loft. He very rarely comes up the stairs anymore, but he lifts his head whenever I come down, inviting a neck scritch. I know he will die. It breaks my heart. And so I’m trying to use this end time to feel all the love and sweet pleasure—his, mine, bundled together. As Ted Kooser describes in his poem “Death of a Dog,” I fully expect our house to come unmoored and float away when Milo is no longer here to hold it down. But for now—and, I hope, quite a while longer—he continues to provide crucial ballast: love, connection, trust, joy in living. 

Here is my first post about him, from seven years ago, complete with baby photos.

Postscript 3/24: We took Milo to the vet today, and she prescribed some pain meds, thinking it might just be pain from arthritis that's bothering him. So we'll try that and see if he responds. Here's hoping.

Postscript 4/25: Turns out, I was wrong about him being 13½: he's only 12½. He will be 13 this year. Which, maybe, means he'll live an extra year? One can hope... Or at least, I can. And do. As for the pain meds, they didn't seem to have much effect, except in the gastro-intestinal category, negatively. So we went for the vet's second recommendation: CBD. And it's working a charm! Milo seems peppier, more his normal self. It could simply be that he's learning to tolerate his changed condition—the new normal. But no: he seems much more like his old self—with the exception of the dragging foot, which we stick in a booty now when we go for our walks. He doesn't seem to mind. Yay for CBD!

Anne Carson, poet

Pretty much every day, three friends—me, Kim on Kauai, and Sherilyn in either Santa Clara, where she is a caregiver for her father who suffered a serious stroke several years ago, or Burbank, where she is, briefly every week, home with her husband—meet virtually to write, at 7:30 Hawaii time, 9:30 or 10:30 here in California, depending on Standard or Daylight. We meet via WhatsApp, where we call ourselves "Let's Howl!" (the image here is our WhatsApp icon: a photo of Decomposition notebooks). Usually, we greet each other with an emoji of the local weather: a cloud or a sunshine icon, say. We may engage in a bit of conversation. The other morning, Kim greeted us with a  poem. And I thought I'd share it on. It's by Anne Sexton.

The Poet of Ignorance

Perhaps the earth is floating,
I do not know.
Perhaps the stars are little paper cutups
made by some giant scissors,
I do not know.
Perhaps the moon is a frozen tear,
I do not know.
Perhaps God is only a deep voice,
heard by the deaf,
I do not know.

Perhaps I am no one.
True, I have a body
and I cannot escape from it.
I would like to fly out of my head,
but that is out of the question.
It is written on the tablet of destiny
that I am stuck here in this human form.
That being the case
I would like to call attention to my problem.

There is an animal inside me,
clutching fast to my heart,
a huge crab.
The doctors of Boston
have thrown up their hands.
They have tried scalpels,
needles, poison gasses and the like.
The crab remains.
It is a great weight.
I try to forget it, go about my business,
cook the broccoli, open and shut books,
brush my teeth and tie my shoes.
I have tried prayer
but as I pray the crab grips harder
and the pain enlarges.

I had a dream once,
perhaps it was a dream,
that the crab was my ignorance of God.
But who am I to believe in dreams?

"Ode to Joy"

Amanda Palmer posted this video on FB today, saying, "I have run into enough people lately who have never seen this clip. So I am sharing it here as a sort of public service announcement. This is one of the most delightful pieces of art I have ever had the pleasure of enjoying."

I confess, I was one of those people. And in the comments, I found others—as well as some links to related clips, such as one featuring the Swedish Chef and Beaker singing (or rather, mi-ing) "Habanera." And, on a more serious note, another featuring this, a flash mob in Barcelona:

which took me to another flash mob, this one in Nürnberg:

Oh, I'd love to stumble on a flash mob sometime! What a joy it must be to be part of.

And finally, here's Marin Alsop and the Stay at Home Choir, with hundreds of singers from all over the world, in December 2020:

What are they singing, anyway? Here are the words in full:

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen,
Und freudenvollere.

Freude!
Freude!

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Wem der große Wurf gelungen
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein;
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen
Mische seinen Jubel ein!
Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele
Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund!
Und wer’s nie gekonnt, der stehle
Weinend sich aus diesem Bund!

Freude trinken alle Wesen
An den Brüsten der Natur;
Alle Guten, alle Bösen
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.
Küsse gab sie uns und Reben,
Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod;
Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben
und der Cherub steht vor Gott.

Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen
Durch des Himmels prächt’gen Plan
Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn,
Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.

Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Brüder, über’m Sternenzelt
Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.
Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen?
Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?
Such’ ihn über’m Sternenzelt!
Über Sternen muß er wohnen.

~~~~~~~~~~

O friends, not these tones!
But let’s strike up more agreeable ones,
And more joyful.

Joy!
Joy!

Joy, beautiful spark of Divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Heavenly one, thy sanctuary!
Thy magic binds again
What custom strictly divided;
All people become brothers,
Where thy gentle wing abides.

Whoever has succeeded in the great attempt,
To be a friend’s friend,
Whoever has won a lovely woman,
Add his to the jubilation!
Yes, and also whoever has just one soul
To call his own in this world!
And he who never managed it should slink
Weeping from this union!

All creatures drink of joy
At nature’s breasts.
All the Just, all the Evil
Follow her trail of roses.
Kisses she gave us and grapevines,
A friend, proven in death.
Ecstasy was given to the worm
And the cherub stands before God.

Gladly, as his suns fly
through the heavens’ grand plan
Go on, brothers, your way,
Joyful, like a hero to victory.

Be embraced, millions!
This kiss to all the world!
Brothers, above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving Father.
Are you collapsing, millions?
Do you sense the creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy!
Above stars must he dwell.

Okay, finally finally, one last quarantine performance, by members of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra—because some days, you can just listen to the "Ode to Joy" forever.

Book Report: Entangled Life (100)

7. Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures (2020) (3/10/23)

I'm not sure where I heard about this book, but its subject, fungi, would have been enough to capture my attention. I've enjoyed hunting (and eating) wild mushrooms for decades now, and I figured this book would give me insight into that pastime. Well, insight, yes—not into fungus foraging per se, but much, much more.

The author is a British mycologist who, for his PhD, studied the way nutrients circulate via underground mycorrhizal networks linking fungi and plants in the forests of Panama. But that was just a start: he has a mind brimming with questions—and lots of tentative answers as well. Tentative because the lifeforms he explores in this book—mushroom mycelia, yeasts, lichens, the "wood wide web," etc.—are so wide-ranging, their means of growth and thriving impossible to observe in their entirety, their effects on our world and on us so complex that we can only really investigate simple aspects of them.

The book was slow going—generally lively enough (Sheldrake is a very good writer), but technical and occasionally rather repetitive and rambling. It was fascinating, but I did have to take my time. In its 225 pages—eight chapters, plus intro and epilogue (also 50 additional pages of tiny-type notes, which I am drawing the line at)—we learn about such varied matters as how underground truffles attract animals—such as pigs and dogs when it comes to our own hunting of these delicacies—in order to spread their spores; the motility of mycelium, "living labyrinths" of hyphae that are constantly sensing where nutrients are available or are needed and adjusting their physical structure and interactions in response; fungi as manipulators, as in the case of psychdelic psilocybin mushrooms or the "zombie" mushroom Ophiocordiceps (popularized lately, in a way, in the TV series The Last of Us, but acting in the real world to take over the minds and bodies of ants and flies, again as a means of spreading spores); research into the use of fungi's digestive powers to mitigate environmental damage, or of their shapeshifting abilities to create alternatives to plastics; the very everywhereness of these lifeforms. And on and on. 

Reading this book was mind-blowing: I had no idea how ubiquitous fungi are, how crucial they are to the above-ground world as we know it (some 90 percent of plants and trees depend on mycelium to thrive), how powerfully varied and influential they are. In an effort to describe their mystery and magic, Sheldrake often resorts to anthropomorphism and analogy, but he also goes to pains to remind us that trying to understand these lifeforms on our terms does them a disservice. They have been around since land became habitable–since well before we came along—and have been working out relationships, networks, and agreements with all manner of other lifeforms (including us) that entire time. We could certainly be taking a lesson on cooperation and mutual assistance, adaptability and possibility, from them.

For my usual quote, I will go with the final paragraph of the introduction, "What Is It Like to Be a Fungus?" It doesn't give a sense of Sheldrake's descriptive powers, but it gives an idea of what his goal was in writing this book.

Fungi inhabit enmeshed worlds; countless threads lead through these labyrinths. I have followed as many as I can, but there are crevices I haven't been able to squeeze through no matter how hard I've tried. Despite their nearness, fungi are so mystifying, their possibilities so other. Should this scare us off? Is it possible for humans, with our animals brains and bodies and language, to learn to understand such different organisms? How might we find ourselves changed in the process? In optimistic moods, I've imagined this book to be a portrait of this neglected branch of the tree of life, but it's more tangled than that. It is an account both of my journey toward understanding fungal lives, and of the imprint fungal lives have left on me and the many others I've met along the road, human or otherwise. "What shall I do with the night and the day, with this life and this death?" writes the poet Robert Bringhurst. "Every step, every breath rolls like an egg toward the edge of this question." Fungi roll us toward the edge of many questions. This book comes from my experience of peering over some of these edges. My exploration of the fungal world has made me reexamine much of what I knew. Evolution, ecosystems, individuality, intelligence, life—none are quite what I thought they were. My hope is that this book loosens some of your certainties, as fungi have loosened mine.

Georg Wilhelm Steller, naturalist and explorer (99)

Today is the 314th birthday of the German naturalist and explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709–1746). In 1740, he joined the Second Kamchatka Expedition of Vitus Bering, a Dane in Russian service. After spending the winter exploring Kamchatka, Steller agreed to serve as scientist and  physician on Bering's voyage in search of America and the strait between the two continents. On July 20, 1741, he became one of the first non-natives to set foot on Alaskan soil when he spent ten hours on Kayak Island, where Bering had stopped to take on fresh water. (We all know where that initial encounter led, sadly... to Russian plundering of Alaskan resources.)

On that voyage, Steller described numerous new plants and animals,  including Steller's sea cow and the spectacled cormorant, both of which are today extinct, and the Steller sea lion, Steller's eider, and Steller's sea eagle, which today are endangered or in serious decline. One creature that is not in trouble is Steller's jay—whose familial identity he discerned after having seen a volume on the birds and plants of the Carolinas: this allowed him to verify that the expedition had indeed found North America. 

Here are a few of the animals that Steller discovered or that are named for him:

Steller's Eider (Polysticta stelleri)
photo by Ron Knight

Sea otter (Enhydra lutris)
photo by Marshal Hedin

Steller's sea eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus)
photo by Michael Pinczolits

Short-tailed albatross, aka Steller's albatross (Phoebastria albatrus)
photo by James Lloyd Place

Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus)
photo by G. Frank Peterson

Steller's sculpin (Myoxocephalus stelleri)
illustration by Kim In Young 김인영 그림

Gumboot chiton (Cryptochiton stelleri)
photo by Jerry Kirkhart

Hoary mugwort (Artemisia stelleriana)

Stellerite crystals, a rare mineral
photo by Ivar Leidus

1898 illustration of Steller's sea cows (Hydrodamalis gigas)

Spectacled cormorant (Urile perspicillatus)
illustration by John Gerrard Keulemans

Steller's jay (Cyanocitta stelleri)

Steller died in Siberia at the young age of 37 from a fever as he was making his way back to Moscow.

Greg Brown's "Ella Mae" (98)

A simple offering today: a song I love. I first heard it in the second version here, from Going Driftless, a tribute album to the singer-songwriter Greg Brown. How I stumbled on that record I don't know, but I'm glad I did: it introduced me to Brown, whom we've since gone to see perform a couple of times. His own rendition of "Ella Mae," which is about his grandmother, is the first one here. The second is sung by Greg's daughters, Pieta, Zoe, and Constie Brown, and it breaks me every time I hear it. "Ella Mae." Enjoy.

David Lance Goines and Chez Panisse (97)

Today I learned that David Lance Goines, whose art came to define a certain Berkeley aesthetic, died on February 23 at age 77. So I thought I'd feature some of his work. The New York Times obituary outlines his career, which was launched in 1971 with his poster for the brand-new restaurant Chez Panisse, founded by his by then ex-girlfriend (but lifelong friend) Alice Waters:

As the Times says, "His distinctive images and lettering, inspired by German Art Nouveau and Japanese woodblock prints, among other influences, and refracted through his own fastidious sensibilities, appeared on Chez Panisse matchbooks, menus, cookbooks and the posters he made every year to celebrate the restaurant’s anniversaries."

He also created posters for all manner of Berkeley (and beyond) businesses and venues, such as Acme Bakery, Rivendell Bicycle Works and Velo Sport Bicycles, the Berkeley Horticultural Garden, Cody's Book Store, the University Art Center, the Pacific Film Archive, and even Asilomar, here on the Monterey Peninsula. He was politically active as well, as his art again reflects. 

My original intent here was to share a variety of his subjects, but I got entranced by the Chez Panisse anniversary posters (what a gift!)—so that's what you get today. Maybe another day I'll visit his other work. (Click to view larger.)

And here is a link to a nice little story about his printshop, St. Hieronymus Press. I was glad to make Goines's acquaintance again today and to recall his vast talent. RIP.

Jane Hirshfield and Tassajara (96)

Yesterday on my daily walk I listened to Ezra Klein in conversation with Jane Hirshfield. One of the poems she read was perfect for my mood of late, which is one of resistance—to most everything. I have been in a funk. As of today, I am vowing to make a concerted effort to emerge from the funk. Maybe that will include showing up here again every day. It does help me to stay grounded, engaged. Anyway, here's the poem:

A Cedary Fragrance

Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water—

Not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,

but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.

She was referring back to the eight years she spent at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in the 1970s, when the bell would ring at 3:40 a.m. and you would get up, get dressed in the dark—no electricity, no heat, no hot water—and you would go sit. Is the sit an hour? I don't recall, but it's certainly longer than the fifteen minutes I sometimes manage to make myself do. Going to the zendo involves a rigid "form"—a set of actions you perform as you step over the threshold, bow to the wall and to your zafu meditation cushion. It's a discipline that takes you out of your ego, as much as anything can. 

Thinking about it makes me want to go back to Tassajara—not for eight years, but a week might do my head and my spirit some good (and they now have electricity and hot water, at least for paying guests). Alas, the Zen Center seems to still be closed, due to a shortage of staff following the pandemic. I wonder if they will ever open up to guests and workshops again. I expect so. It's a good source of income. Then again, the peace of a monastery is something to be cherished. 

Here are some photos I've taken in the past.