Media fast

I am going cold turkey on news and media. I'm starting with a one day fast, hoping to stretch it to three and possibly to a week. That means no reading the LA Times at breakfast, which will be the easiest of the various media blockages. Becca serendipitously decided this morning to put us on vacation hold after feeling the weighty heft of the newspaper recycling yesterday. No more online comics (A Multiverse, Freefall, Questionable Content, Girl Genius, and XKCD). No more NYT. I'll just let this week's New Yorker come in and go straight to the magazine bin and won't flip through old issues. No podcasts on the walk to the park (This American Life, Radiolab, Marketplace). No talk radio (KCRW and KPCC are the NPR stations in LA). I haven't decided about music in the car.

Once, before parenting, I decided some Saturday morning when Becca was working to avoid all media completely, not just periodicals but books, music, mechanical reproductions of any kind. I poured myself some cereal and stared out the window for an interminable time, which clocked at around 4 minutes. The light was bright and diffuse, the floors glowed yellow and gold. I could hear every crunch of my cereal, and feel each movement of muscles pulling on bones to move the spoon from bowl to mouth and back again. Each foot was planted firmly on the floor, as in a meditation or yoga pose, as my mind raced for something to occupy it, settling on sensory awareness, of sound, taste, and proprioception.

Then I decided to go for a walk and found myself living again in the world and lost the moment of infinite slowness. I don't imagine I'll have anything like that as part of the current fast, not least because it is a lesser news media fast and not a fast of all printed and recorded language.

Off to read more of The Montessori Method!