Nothing, Really

I can’t think of anything to write today. Well, actually I can; there are several topics in my mind that I’ve been bouncing around. But perhaps this is the day that I don’t do any real thinking.

Today is the Fallow Day. Good farmers will let a field lie fallow for one season, to give it recovery time. The Jewish tradition gives us a fallow day, one per week, a day of rest, which gives us a day of rest – which we seldom take advantage of.

Even Musak, that ever-flowing motivational background music service (which is how the company describes it) has several minutes of silence every so often. It is necessary to have “down time” even from music, to give us quietness in our lives.

Quietness. Yeah, quietness. As in, no noise: no radio, no television, no compact discs. It gives your mind time to sort things out and you’d be surprised how nice it can be when there are no sounds pouring in on you. It gives your mind time to digest your thoughts and concerns, which you can’t really do when you are continually taking in new information.

But we live in a culture of noise, as well as of sights. The “bottom third,” as tv people refer to where visual information is put, contains the “bug” or channel identification, a note about the next show, an upcoming program later that night or next week. You have a program, a “bug,” a promo and another promo, all pushing at you to watch. TMI, as they say; “Too Much Information.”