Slowness

RFK Bridge Bike Path 

The passage of time goes quickly, as the days accelerate, I mark the exit of yet another week gone by with different boxes to check. 

My Daily markers: feed the goldfish, feed ourselves, monitor the millimeters growth of the windowsill egg-carton garden, and mentally note how many deaths from Covid19.

Weekly markers: Another New Yorker Magazine appears in the mail to be put on the stack that I will never take on vacation, Hiro's violin lessons, Zoom trivia with our local bar and family cocktail hour, where I make them play our literary games.

When you exist in a world that is going so fast, one tends to take things for granted, make assumptions, jump to conclusions about what they see and hear, create shorthand definitions, make up stereotypes.  We are impatient with ourselves, with others.  There is no time for reflection. These actions combined with unfamiliarity may cause confusion, fear or anger.  Isn't where racism hides, when close-mindedness fences us in and jumping to conclusions is so easy to do?

Recently we watched two films based on true stories which took place in Africa; Queen of Katwe about a young Ugandan chess prodigy and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind about a brilliant Malawi boy who invents a wind powered pump to save his community.  The first thing I notice in these films is the absence of white people.  The first thing I notice about myself is that I notice this fact.  The second thing I consider, is the presence of a community resembling any in the United States, there is injustice, good and perseverance no matter what part of the world you look at.  Just as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said in her TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story,  these are other stories that our kids should be reading (and watching) along with Wonder , The Diary of Anne Frank, and Tom Sawyer.

Slow Reading.  Books help me look at the world, as well as look at myself more deeply.

Recently I have been reading two different books with the same title:
1. Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation, by Shari Tishman
2. Slow Looking : The Art of Looking at Art. by Peter Clothier.

They both detail the pleasures and the necessity for looking at the world slowly.
I am slowly developing a game to play with my family for next No Technology Saturday,  using these slow looking techniques and will share with you soon.

I'm reading a chapter on slow journalism now, which seems like an oxymoron.  Shouldn't news be current, immediate, ever changing every second?  How can one cover the world slowly?  But then I realize that there really was no need to be glued to CNN, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, have NY Times alerts pinging at me every 20 minutes on my phone the past week. I could have gotten the same amount of dread by engaging once a day.  The idea of slow journalism is that thoughtful, accurate, compelling storytelling takes time.  Journalist Mark Berkey-Gerard succinctly outlines slow journalism this way, it:

• Gives up the fetish of beating the competition
• Values accuracy, quality, and context, not just being fast and first
• Avoids celebrity, sensation, and events covered by a heard of reporters
• Takes time to find things out
• Seeks out untold stories
• Relies on the power of narrative
• Sees the audience as collaborators.

So I'm looking forward to slowness this weekend.  Unplugging and taking a deep breath and letting it out very gently, calmly, and deliberately.