ON LIVING ALONE, FLOTSAM, AND JETSAM

Kurt Andersen, True Believers: A Novel(New York: Random House, 2012) ("Living alone has also made me much, much more conscious of the inconsequential things, the sweet banalities of a day in a life. I feel now as if I spent most of my previous time on earth in a state of perpetually frenzied obliviousness, intent on executing all the Important Tasks at Hand. The test to take. The application to finish. The man to marry. The job to get, the brief to write, the motion to file, the verdict to appeal, the meeting to schedule, the PowerPoint to prepare. The apartment to buy, the meals to organize, the two mile runs, the sex to have, the kids to get to school and playdates and doctors and volleyball games and SAT tutors and colleges. The marriage to end. The books to write. I was always good at screening out the noise and focusing exclusively on the signal, which made me successful in school and at work and (more or less) as a parent. Until I lived alone, I was not so good at understanding--really understanding beyond the obligatory modern lip service to smelling the roses and living in the moment--that the extraneous noise can be lovely. The Buddhist call it mindfulness, a word I sort of hate but an MO I've come to believe in.... We deprive ourselves if we ignore all the tiny, inconsequential bits and pieces, the flotsam and jetsam of life. Quarks and neutrinos and atoms and molecules, the earth, asteroids, stars, the shaft of light angling through the kitchen window right this second, illuminating the slow-motion Dance of Ten Thousand Dust Motes: isn't it all flotsam and jetsam?" Id. at 93-94.).