This morning, crows sang
Their own devotions while we
Were meditating.
I went on Saturday evening after teaching two classes and a workshop. I arrived at the 5:20 show of Harry Potter just as the opening credits were rolling, having intentionally missed the ads and the trailers (17 minutes of them by my clock). After the movie was over, and I was walking to catch the bus home, I overheard a young woman loudly giving a blow by blow to a friend about the ways the movie was unfaithful to the book.
I was raised to think the book was always better. I read all of the Mary Poppins books (yes, there are several), first seeing Mary Poppins in college. In the books, Mary Poppins has quite an edge; she is not the saccherine being of the movie. I’d read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory years before I saw the first movie. The book is fantastic. The movie is its own art. The list could go on.
I’ve taken these days — thank goodness I never did realize the ubiquitous adolescent dream of being a movie critic — to just enjoying movies about books for their own sake, without undue comparison. (It does help, sometimes, though, to be familiar with the books on which the movie is based, for example: Cheri).
If it had not been for the yoga practice, I do not know whether I could have reached a stage where I could watch the movie without comparing it to the book after my Woody Allenesque how to watch a movie upbringing. To be open and fully accepting of what comes takes many forms. This is just a very small and rather unimportant one. Having come with no expectation of the movie being faithful to the book, though, gave me a much greater possibility of enjoying it for the bit of summer afternoon entertainment it was.
I was reminded this weekend to remember this: we all have
After 27 hours, plus or minus a few minutes–but who is counting–service was restored to my Blackberry this morning. The reason I had a Blackberry instead of an IPhone in the first instance was because I preferred CREDO (which donates a percentage of profits to causes I support) instead of giving money to political candidates I oppose as do Verizon and AT&T. CREDO now has Android-based phones, which offer all sorts of exciting features that are really quite mind-boggling, if I stop to think about it. I have never been one, though, to give up something that still works fine, just because I could get something newer and more exciting.
It is interesting to see the articles and comments on the internet about the worldwide Blackberry outage. Much is being said about how this outage will tip users over the edge and send them out to buy another phone because of outrage because of the loss of service. Others note their attachment to the Blackberry and say they will get over the outage because of their attachment. Still others note that doing without email on one’s phone for a day or two is just not a big deal, and they, on their high horses, post mocking comments at the crackberry addicts.
I most certainly noticed how accustomed I am to sending and receiving communications with my handheld when I didn’t have it for a day not by my choice. My other computers (plural is not a typo) were readily available, so it was no big deal. If I were to lose service when on the road and expecting to meet other people with whom I had not made prior specific arrangement, as is the case for tomorrow and the coming weekend, I would have had to make some shifts. It would have been annoying, though, and would not have felt like the end of the world or a cause for outrage (there are just too many other things more worthy of outrage).
The episode did leave me thinking about our dependence on technology and how that dependence has shifted both for the good and bad how we relate to our family and friends and the tens of millions with whom we are connected in the ether; how we are attached to our habits and our expected ways things should work, and whether we get stirred up when things don’t go according to plan, desire, or expectations; and how a steady practice of non-attachment can help us open to make the best of things.
Yes, I looked at the latest phones offer out of curiosity, but no, I won’t be getting one just yet. My three-year old BB is working just fine for now.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
How would we behave, what would we say, how would we relate to ourselves and all in the world if we treated all as sacred?
