Snow daze

Friends--I do not know if news of our mercurial weather has reached all parts of the country, but let me inform you that it is a regular Ice Storm 2007 here in Maryland. Schools have been closed for two days and I'm hoping for a third day just to make it a clean sweep. In my time off, I have been watching the Wire, reading, and baking. It all sounds so Amish, doesn't it? Except the part about the Wire of course. Owen and I have become quite adept at kneading and rising up delicious loaves of bread, many of which I have pictures of on my trusty digi cam. One day I will upload them and ye can marvel at the variety, from Victorian milk loaf to rye-walnut bread. Truly bread baking is a gift from the gods, a chance to reconnect with earlier times, and an inexpensive form of therapy. I love it, I love it, I love it.

Beginnings

We've just returned from church this afternoon. We have attended the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, on Charles in Mount Vernon, just south of the Walters Gallery, since sometime this fall. Although our attendance began rather spottily, we now go regularly and decided to enter the "Beginnings" class for those who want to learn about the church, what it means to be Unitarian, and what membership entails. In our first meeting today we shared our stories, explaining our religious history, our beliefs, and what brought us to the church. Sophie, as you might expect, was eloquent; I found it hard to speak, which surprised me. Bear with me as I attempt to explain how this all relates to the no-buy adventure.

Over the past year much has changed for Sophie and me. I feel like we've begun to slip truly into adulthood; college, with its turmoil and its sense of open vistas and possibilities, seems far away. We have both begun to succeed and thrive in our jobs; we are also facing the changes that Stage Two -- graduate and medical schools -- will bring. What has surprised me is how focused and self-enclosed I've become: for me there is only time and energy for Sophie and mathematics. For both I feel a passion and single-mindedness (perhaps double-mindedness?) that overwhelms me at times. After spending a long day dwelt in abstraction -- mathematics is a realm that I can't help but explore, and yet there is nothing visceral or easily rewarding about it, and it's a rather lonely place, of which there are few fellow explorers, and we each tend to follow our own paths through it, shouting our individual discoveries to our near neighbors across a distance -- after a day at work I return home to the warmth of home, time spent with Sophie. Too often this past year other aspects of myself have disappeared: we didn't cook, rarely exercised, and I only read math. The year of no-buy has reopened me. Over the weekend we bake bread, which has brought a lot of joy into my life, and cook. When we see friends (Sophie wrote about this last week), we don't spend half our time watching a movie or television. Instead we talk or work together. We are also reading more, because time has been liberated from the easy consumption of movies and cafes and restaurants. Somehow, although cooking takes more time, that time feels more open, is more easily shared with Sophie, and is more rewarding personally. In my soul I feel tectonic shifts; I feel the pressures of temperament and age reshaping me in ways I never expected or aimed for.

Church is part of this general trend. It is a clear sign that we are moving towards the rigors and rewards of adulthood that we want and savor a day spent ruminating beyond our own lives and joining a community built around the desire to contribute to our city and to share our struggles. When I was in my teens I pushed back against my parents' church, not finding it compatible with my aspirations; but this church, for all its seeming fluffiness and over-eager welcomingness, feels right. No-buy is giving me the time and shape to open myself to the possibilities of adult life, just when I need them most. At work, for instance, I feel like I have finally contributed something worthwhile and people want to understand my research. I feel obligations that were inconceivable even a year ago, and it's tiring to try to fulfill them. When I return home and share my time with Sophie, the year of no-buy has led us to renew ourselves in better ways, to spend time together in more fulfilling ways, than we had when we turned to the easy, quick solutions.

I'm rambling almost incoherently now, which isn't exactly unbloggish. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, although I battled against Sophie's idea for this year at first, no-buy has contributed to an unfolding of our lives that I think is necessary and is helping me to become the person I ought to be, even if it isn't the person I thought I wanted to be. My friend John told us yesterday that he seeks to simplify his life and to remove temptation not because he is put off by things like television or frozen foods, but because if he removes in a drastic manner the options that he finds easy and appealing, he opens space for the things he really wants -- like reading and thinking -- that get blocked out by the barrage of options and information that our society provides. Americans think they ought to face temptation directly and then berate themselves for failure; John's approach is wiser and ultimately easier and more rewarding, even if it seems less glorious to cut out temptation completely rather than face it squarely. Life as an adult seems to be a matter of finding effective coping strategies, strategies like no-buy or drastic simplification that are workable and that arise from admitting the bent of one's temperament and acting in response.

All the Lonelier for it

So one of the things that I anticipated as a problem when this year of nobuy began was that I would be lonely. Locked in my little enclave of homemade food and slowly greying clothing, it seemed there might not be a place for my friends in this barren landscape. This has proved somewhat true. I am not available in a commercial setting any more. Movies, drinks, dinners on the town, all out. If my friends want to see me, I am asking them to bend to my crazy whims and bake bread with me or go for a walk. This may be asking a lot. We are not accustomed to nobuy friendships. This will probably mean that I will not see my friends as much. But I will very likely see new people, in novel situations. And while I do not want to suggest that this is by any means an even trade, there is something valuable in reinvesting in and re-exploring my community. Sure, I attend our neighborhood association meetings now. They are free entertainment. I look for free films showing at the art museum. I'm going to the Unitarian church book group. While these low-budget, low thrill options are not how I want to spend all of my time, they are introducing me to people that I would have never met otherwise. And breaking out of my enclave into the bizarreness of Baltimore has been one of the most unanticipated delights of the nobuy.

As you might expect, the most difficult part of not-buying-it is explaining it to others. Both Sophie and I have remarked that it imposes drastic simplifications on our lives: options, like buying that cup of coffee, are removed before they can tantalize. But explaining why we would choose to eliminate unnecessary consumption when we don't have to, such conversations are delicate. On the one hand, you don't want to sound sanctimonious. People often think you are passing particular judgment on them. (This is an annoying feature of vegetarianism, too. Not liking meat or avoiding meat for health reasons are universally acceptable; deploring the meat industry, both for its cruelty to animals and for its environmental consequeces, provokes sharp responses from many people.) On the other hand, you don't want to sound like you're a raging consume-a-holic or deep in debt. Although Sophie and I are fairly frugal, these past three weeks have shown just how freely I spent money and how frequently I indulged little impulses. Perhaps the hardest part, though, is losing certain social possibilities: on Friday some friends were going to lunch at a restaurant I quite like, people I hadn't seen in a while and want to see more frequently, and I had to turn down the offer due to not-buying-it.

I have come to rely on an analogy to fasting when I try to explain what Sophie and I are up to. One doesn't fast to save money on groceries or to shame others (of course, people go on hunger strikes, but this is not the only or predominant role for fasting). One fasts to grapple with one's embodiedness, to face hunger, to remind oneself that food isn't just about pleasure, to put oneself in communion with others who are hungry, to break up the soul's stagnancy under the routine and repetition of daily life, and to turn one's thoughts elsewhere. We're fasting the will to consume American-style, we're rediscovering that the ordinary routines aren't all there is, we're opening another region of the soul. It is both nice and misguided when friends offer to buy something for us, like a cup of coffee: you don't offer a fasting person food because they're not eating out of choice, not stinginess.

Some ramblings on food

We are now finishing the third week of our foray into unconsumerism, and things seem alright, no hints of dissension in the ranks, no slips, no secret trips to malls or Costco or restaurants. Then again, the year is still young, and my coworkers brought in donuts every day this week. It doesn't take much strength to resist the siren call of the cafeteria when donuts of every dough, icing, sprinkles, and filling are available. What I fear most is that, after the gluttony of the holidays, when I ate tasty foods nearly every day at work, it will be tough in the afternoons when my stomach yearns for some cake or cookies and a fresh cup of coffee. I fear I'll look into my crumpled lunch bag, see only a healthy granola bar, and then my will will weaken. Food, I fear, will undo my resolve. For me at least shopping of the usual variety has never played a significant role in my daily life or functioned as a means of self-reward or indulgence. But I do love my coffee shops, my restaurants, my impulse purchases of chips or cake.

So far, though, I have enjoyed preparing lunches and dinners, which has surprised me. As an occasional activity, cooking pleased me; as a regular duty, it had never enticed me. What i appreciate about "not buying it" is that it has forced my hand on many issues. No longer do I wish I'd cooked and berate myself for simply buying my lunch at work. I just put together something in the morning and hold on till I get home. (My lunches are usually rather pathetic, whatever I can see quickly in the fridge, but I have high hopes as the year progresses. My breakfasts are improving now that we shop more regularly: omelets several days this week.) Likewise, when I stroll down the hall at work past the vending machine, I no longer muse on whether to buy Doritos "just this once." It's not an option. This not-buying-it resolution actually removes my usual challenges and stumbling blocks because where there was a decision to be made before, there is no possibility to tantalize me. Sophie and I have imposed a constraint on our lives that removes a whole range of possibilities, but in turn it is allowing me to explore possibilities that I had essentially blindered myself to and protecting me from choices that I tended to "lose."