Survival Mechanisms

Technology is not your friend. But it can help you cope.

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

I highly recommend finding something or someone to lose yourself in for the foreseeable future.

I raft rivers. I write. I love my wife…and our life. And I read.

I can lose myself doing any of those things.

I once climbed rock faces and — though I was terrified often — I appreciated how the extent of your world was drastically reduced to ten square feet of quartz monzonite. You don’t think about car payments, relationship problems or work issues when you’re clinging by the tips of your fingers to a rock face. No matter how far off the ground you might be, or how “protected” you may be.

I don’t climb anymore. I never got very good. My body is designed for earthbound activities like horseshoes and lawn chair tai chi. But, I do run rivers. Which entails navigating whitewater rapids now and then.

It’s a similar experience to rock climbing, in terms of getting lost in the moment, except it’s much wetter and the field of vision expands and contracts but is almost always hundreds of times larger than rock climbing. I much prefer that.

Lose yourself in a book. Audible or otherwise. I just finished The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor. Light sci-fi focusing on AI and an android but also involved octopuses. A community of exceptionally large octopuses who a dastardly mega corporation in the near future seeks to exploit for their enigmatic means of communicating. Octopuses are all the rage these days (Remarkably Bright Creatures - two thumbs up. The Netflix movie, My Octopus Teacher - two more thumbs in the air. Get your hankies at the ready for both of these.)

I’m surprised I remembered that much about The Mountain in the Sea. Especially since the primary purpose of my reading was to get lost.

I’m also losing myself in the simplistic world of Chet and Bernie novels which remind me of The Hardy Boys, or Nancy Drew, or the Chip Hilton series (be careful, look for original 1950 copies, a Christian writer “reframed” Chip Hilton in the late ‘90s). The Chet and Bernie novels are mysteries with Chet being the hound and Bernie being the private investigator. Every story’s perspective is entirely Chet’s. You should — at the very least — check out the punny titles.

Documentaries about cults and podcasts about serial killers (or true crime) are a couple of coping mechanisms I’ve dialed up. I’ve always been fascinated by cults. Rarely been interested in true crime.

Cults from Charles Manson to Jim Jones, L. Ron Hubbard to Brigham Young, Mother God to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, aka — apparently — Zorba the Buddha.

Bhagwan and the Rajneeshees of Rajneeshpuram hold a special place in my heart because the scalawag’s promised land of hedonism was in Antelope, Oregon only a hop, skip and a jump from the Deschutes River corridor which I have been visiting and rafting since 1980. Additionally, we began calling box wine (of either variety) “Bhagwan” as a silly back-handed reference to the man with 93 Rolls Royces who had convinced gullible Americans to relocate to the high desert of Oregon, tithe their incomes to him and wear clothes the color of the sunrise or sunset.

All of Bhagwan’s shenanigans (you really should watch Wild, Wild Country to fully grasp what was going on) happened as we lolled about on the Deschutes River throughout the ‘80s tanning and team-building. I do regret not having taken a gander at Rajneeshpuram in its hey-day. We literally drove past the turn-off half a dozen times a rafting season.

As for True Crime podcasts, I went all in on the CBC’s Someone Knows Something. Or SKS for short. I listened to every season available on Apple podcasts. Something about David Ridgen, the narrator’s voice, and his perspicacity, coupled with his brazen tenacity tracking down people to interview, drew me all the way in. I found his voice and demeanor soothing.

The seasons which stood out were the one covering the abortion shootings; the one about the mail bomb; another about a woman who went missing two days after accepting a wedding proposal live on a New Year’s Eve broadcast and one about unearthing evidence related to a murder during the Civil Rights era. David Ridgen is so methodical and unwavering. He doesn’t always solve the case (most of them are pretty stale) but he certainly turns over a lot of rocks and uncovers a lot of information the professionals didn’t take the time, or didn’t have the time to discover.

Desperate times and all, y’all. Serial killers and cults for ‘escape’ entertainment.

A few of you texted me after November 6th and asked how I was doing. My offhanded remark was “I’ve got my head buried in the sand.” I’m going to leave it at that for now.

Here are my survival mechanisms:

• Avoid ‘talking heads’

• Ignore American mainstream media (should have been doing that all along)

• Read Heather Cox Richardson if you want to know what’s going on

• Listen to apolitical podcasts

• Read apolitical novels

• Listen to jazz, Spanish guitar, classical music

• Buy as little as possible off Amazon, go to the product’s source

• Cancel Amazon Prime

• Take solace in your pets

• Acquire a pet if you can afford to and don’t have one

• Spend time in pet friendly spaces otherwise

• Go out into the world to meet with friends

• Love those you love

• Find things and activities you can get lost in

• Appreciate the natural world

Don’t forget, however, that, as good citizens, we’ll need to speak up when the times come. I’m confident those times will crop up quite a bit. I’ve re-installed the Resistbot app on my phone which I used relentlessly during the first go-around.

I’m mentally exhausted.

But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to — figuratively, and I apologize for the mental image — ‘gird my loins for battle.’

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There’s a great app out there if you want to know the political inclinations of your favorite product or service. Since we can’t vote again for another two years, we’ll need to ‘vote’ with our dollars.

The app is called GoodsUniteUs.

Also, since we appear to be mirroring history — Prohibition Redux, anyone? —, I’ve taken to listening to Cladrite Radio — music from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. I know at least one of you took me up on the app RadioGarden. An app that allows you to easily tune into radio stations around the globe. You can find Cladrite Radio on Radio Garden by zeroing in on Manhattan. You can also just go straight to their website.