Number 14: Hear a Life
Have private experiences, unrecorded. Maybe unplanned, discovered, and then let them fade into memoryol
The Old Truck on Tyranny.
This week continues a series inspired by Tim Snyder’s 2017 book On Tyranny and the “20 Lessons” derived from his study.
Lesson 14: Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the Internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble.
Wake, and realize that your phone is dead, you did not plug it in and it worked all night to take in messages you can not read. You put it on silent finally at midnight but it kept taking in messages.
Do something different. Do not charge it.
Make coffee. The sun is starting to lighten the grass. Don’t turn on a light, allow the spin of the earth to turn the light on slowly, as your body takes it on.
Feed the dog, who eats quietly, who is present with the bowl, the food, the light emerging. Who is private in only the current moment…Why only?
…Is private in all that is the moment.
The keys to the truck are on a hook by the door. It is an old enough machine that it does not have a screen glowing in the cab nor ask satellites where it is. Pour your coffee in a thermos and load up the dog.
Drive out the spur road, past the neighbors you know and the neighbors you don’t. Jerry and Ann are taking their morning walk. Stop to talk with them. Pause on smiles too big for the nothing conversation. The light is on Jerry’s face.
None of you will remember what you talked about by lunch time.
Take a right onto the highway. Gas up in town. Pay cash, confusing the attendant.
Drive over the mountain. Stop at the meadow that becomes a lake in the spring. See the light now full upon the grass.
Stop at the pool of water that hundreds stop to see every day in the summer. Chat with some of them. Introduce your dog.
Crest the mountains, come into the vast valley and turn South. You learned the old road through the orchard lands that exist after you cross over the Interstate.
It could still be breakfast time when you drive up to your uncle’s house. He and your aunt are at table. Surprised to see you, they check their phones to see if you sent any warning. You did not.
They do not look at their phones too much, anyway.
He makes you eggs and toast. You talk and those smiles that go beyond what you say happen again and by sunset none of you will remember what was actually said. But other than the words you will recall the exact sound of the kitchen, then the back porch you sat upon.
Your dogs play, then curl up on the grass.
You remember this as you load up the dog again, picking some of the hay off of him: Your aunt asks why you drove all this way to see them and you say you don’t really know but that’s what you say just because you don’t normally say weird things in front of your uncle then you say
I came because life told me to.
