Take time to smell me.

I don’t know about you, but this is what happens when I rush:

I break things. Dishes, fingernails, even, recently, my laptop monitor because I rushed to pick it up. I nearly broke my new mini book light when at first I couldn’t figure out how to open the battery door. (Hint: it helps to look at the clearly labeled diagram.)

I hurt myself. I bruise my leg on the open dishwasher door, or the footboard of my son’s bed. I whack my forearm on the doorknob in the hallway, or the back of my head on a fence I’m leaning through.

I hurt others. Being in a rush means my mind is often elsewhere. When this is the case, I’m not looking at or listening to the person right in front of me. (And if I’ve done this to you, let me apologize right now.)

What's your hurry?

“Rushing blinds you to the obvious. Rushing comes from fear and is designed to keep you from looking down into the canyon and seeing how tenuous your perch on the wire is,” writes Heather Sellers, in Chapter After Chapter. She’s talking specifically here about rushing while writing, but I think it’s one reason so many of us rush through our own lives. We’re afraid. Afraid of letting someone down, afraid we’re not accomplishing enough, afraid life is passing us by—when it’s really us passing life by. It will not matter how much you “accomplish” if you’re not paying full attention when you accomplish it.

In order to slow down, I have to make some hard choices. I limit my activities, even, alas, the fun ones, so that I truly experience the ones that remain. I also cut the daily to-do list in half, and I don’t compare what I can get done in a day with what my friend down the street accomplishes. I lower my standards in certain areas. I’m not always successful—but I’m working on it.

Do you find yourself rushing through your days? What have you done, or do you plan to do to slow down?

Last week Laure Ferlita and I took a field trip to the University of South Florida’s Botanical Gardens. Laure’s preparing an online class, “An Imaginary Visit to the Garden,” and I haven’t been to the gardens since last year’s trip to the spring plant festival.

The USFBG is a relaxed and friendly sort of garden. Mostly cared for by volunteers, it’s the perfect place to wander aimlessly, forgetting the world speeding by on the major streets that run on two sides of the garden. The carnivorous plants bloomed

and this lovely gentleman

But of all the areas of the garden we visited, my favorite this time was:


Faery (or fairy) houses, musical frogs, gnomes and fairies of all sorts peeked out from the plantings of impatiens, violas, ornamental cabbage and other magical plants.

After last week's power outage, I've been thinking about how dependent we are on electricity and technology.  While I’m grateful for the technological advances we take for granted—I’m typing this on a laptop computer instead of a manual typewriter, and don’t know how I’d cope without the internet, for example—sometimes I long for a simpler, quieter, less electronic atmosphere. So this weekend, I'm going to unplug and do some of the following:

Chat with my visiting mother-in-law.
Cuddle with my dog.


I'm snuggle-icious!

Lean into Tank’s body and feel his warmth and strength.
Sip a cup of tea.
Take a walk for pleasure, not for exercise.

This looks like a good place to walk.

Play a game.
Hug someone.
Put together a jigsaw puzzle.
Take a nap.
Work a crossword puzzle.


Sketch.
Watch birds in the backyard.
Write in my journal.
And, of course, read a book.


These are some of my favorite low-tech pleasures. What are yours?

To get you started, here is a poem from American Life in Poetry, introduction by Ted Kooser:

So often, reading a poem can in itself feel like a thing overheard. Here, Mary-Sherman Willis of Virginia describes the feeling of being stilled by conversation, in this case barely audible and nearly indecipherable.

From over the wall I could hear the laughter of women
in a foreign tongue, in the sun-rinsed air of the city.
They sat (so I thought) perfumed in their hats and their silks,

in chairs on the grass amid flowers glowing and swaying.
One spoke and the others rang like bells, oh so witty,
like bells till the sound filled up the garden and lifted

like bubbles spilling over the bricks that enclosed them,
their happiness holding them, even if just for the moment.
Although I did not understand a word they were saying,

their sound surrounded me, fell on my shoulders and hair,
and burst on my cheeks like kisses, and continued to fall,
holding me there where I stood on the sidewalk listening.

As I could not move, I had to hear them grow silent,
and adjust myself to the clouds and the cooling air.
The mumble of thunder rumbled out of the wall
and the smacking of drops as the rain fell everywhere.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by Mary-Sherman Willis. Reprinted from The Hudson Review, Vol. LX, no. 3, (Autumn 2007), by permission of Mary-Sherman Willis. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation.