San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
From big shopping days to a nothing day
Well, by now we have survived the annual assault on thrift and prudence that happens just after Thanksgiving. We lived through Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday. We were pleased to still have anything left to spend by Gratitude Wednesday.
The madness comes back every year: shopping season. The pressure is on. Television is full of holiday commercials: new cars wrapped in red ribbon, beautiful coats, jewels, even gifts for dogs. And it’s only just begun, as the old commercial put it.
It is only early December, so there is still a chance to take a pause before the big holiday rush. I think we should have a day to stop. Just stop. I’d call it Nothing Sunday, or maybe Nothing Monday, if you can swing it.
It would be a day to do nothing special. To stop and look around, to sniff the wind, go for a walk, notice the turn of the season into winter. It would be an antidote to Black Friday and those other days. A nothing day.
The idea came to me the other weekend. We had rented a little cabin on Tomales Bay and the weather was fair. We could go hiking or sightseeing or kayaking, visit an artist’s studio, or go shopping. Plenty to do. We’d gotten a late start. There was a bit of a chill, but it was still warm in the sun. I thought let’s not do anything. It sounded like a good idea.
I sat in the sun for a while, just looking out, trying to notice the surroundings. I had done this before, a few times standing watch on a merchant ship, looking out at the sea. Mostly
“It would be a day to do nothing special. To stop and look around, to sniff the wind, go for a walk, notice the turn of the season into winter. It would be an antidote to Black
Friday and those other days. A nothing day.”
there was nothing to see, except there was always something — changes in the waves, clouds, other vessels. One night, coming up the coast of Central America I saw a thunderstorm ashore, flickering lightning, miles away.
Another time when I was required to spend time watching the world was when I served as a volunteer fire lookout in Marin County atop Mount Tamalpais or Barnabe Mountain near Lagunitas. My job was to watch for fires or smoke. I spent my time scanning the hills and looking down at the towns that ringed the mountain. On Tamalpais I could see from Mount St. Helena at the head of the Napa Valley down to the South Bay.
Barnabe had a view of rolling hills, Tomales Bay and north to the Sonoma County coast. I could see the light change in both these lookouts as the day rolled by, saw the fog come in, saw the traffic on the highways ebb and flow. Sometimes I could see smoke from fires far away.
That’s where I got my idea of spending time watching for changes in the landscape.
But working as a lookout was a different animal. It carried responsibility. This time I wanted to make quiet time into an event: I’d spend a day trying to do nothing.
I had to see if it would work. From the deck of the Tomales Bay cabin I spent a good part of the afternoon watching the seabirds wade in the shallow water at low tide and pick at something, I watched small boats fishing in the bay, people paddling kayaks. I watched the autumn afternoon fade away.
The sun goes down early this time of year. By 5 p.m. it’s gone. The setting sun has moved far to the south.
Some say this is the best time of the day, especially if you take time to watch. There are a dozen words for day’s end. Twilight and dusk are my favorites, especially in the clear, low light of the season, especially if you sit and watch.
The sunset in the country, all red and gold, is always impressive. After sundown the light fades, the dark hills turning deep gray and then black. It’s different in the city, the lights coming on one by one and then all at once when the streetlights come on. Sometimes the city lights sparkle and flicker, sometimes not, depending on the wind and the clarity of the light. You notice these small things when you watch.
I also spent some nothing time keeping an eye out for birds, especially in the city. Like most of us, I’m only dimly aware of birds, but I know a hawk from a turkey buzzard, a seagull from a crow. I keep an eye out for the spring migrations when the small birds pass through on their way somewhere else.
This summer and fall I began to notice that the neighborhood crows in San Francisco began to flock together in the afternoons. Some days there are only one or two, and on others dozens of crows swirl in the sky, like flights of planes. They make loud cries as if talking to each other, and then they land on chimneys and rooftops, as if they were having a conference.
Sometimes, of course, the world presses in. Your inbox fills up, there is work to do. You can’t spare time for a Nothing Day. So you can try a Nothing Hour to notice the sky, the birds, the clouds, the world around you.
I tried it the other afternoon for an hour, maybe less. “What are you doing?” my companion asked. “Nothing,” I said. Try it out. You have nothing to lose.