Brueghel left out the mobile device.

Lately, I’ve been pondering that horrible state of mind that happens when I turn on a computer. You all know the story. You check your email. Then Facebook. You respond to an urgent Twitter message. You send an invoice. Then, somehow, an hour later, you’ve fallen down some deep click bait hole, “This Dog Was Rescued from a Sewer Tunnel. Within Hours He Was Transformed.” You’re what our culture describes as “busy” and even “productive.”

And yet this “busyness” is actually a form of inactivity. It’s a way of looking like we’re doing things without actually doing anything. A remarkable book I’m in the middle of, Josef Pieper’s Leisure The Basis of Culture, paradoxically, connects this false busyness with sloth:

At the zenith of the Middle Ages, on the contrary, it was held that sloth and restlessness, ‘leisurelessness’, the incapacity to enjoy leisure, were all closely connected; sloth was held to be the source of restlessness, and the ultimate cause of ‘work for work’s sake’. It may well seem paradoxical to maintain that the restlessness at the bottom of a fanatical and suicidal activity should come from the lack of will to action; a surprising thought.

Bruegel, anticipating our addiction to mobile devices by several centuries, depicts this state of Acedia, or restlessness, in the engraving above.

It should be noted that Pieper calls “leisure” is not the same as “taking a break.” It’s a state of deep contemplation:

Leisure is not the attitude of mind of those who actively intervene, but of those who are open to everything; not of those who grab and grab hold, but of those who leave the reins loose and who are free and easy themselves — almost like a man falling asleep, for one can only fall asleep by ‘letting oneself go.’ Sleeplessness and the incapacity for leisure are really related to one another in a special sense, and a man at leisure is not unlike a man asleep. Heraclitus the Obscure observed of men who were asleep that they too “were busy and active in the happenings of the world.” When we really let our minds rest contemplatively on a rose in bud, on a child at play, on a divine mystery, we are rested and quickened as though by a dreamless sleep. Or as the Book of Job says, “God giveth songs in he night” (Job 35:10). Moreover, it has always been a pious belief that God sends his good gifts and his blessing in sleep. And in the same way his great, imperishable intuitions visit a man in his moments of leisure. It is in these silent and receptive moments that the soul of man is sometimes visited by an awareness of what holds the world together:

vas die Welt
Im innersten zusammenhält

only for a moment perhaps, and the lightning vision of his intuition has to be recaptured and rediscovered in hard work.

Fr. Mark Kowalewski, who tipped me off to Pieper’s book, describes this state of leisure as “profoundly counter-cultural.”

And yet I hear Gmail calling me. Time to update my Facebook profile and get out some tweets.

How do you deal with life’s distractions? How do you carve out some time for true leisure?

Our local utility is offering residents a sizable rebate to remove lawns and replace them with less water intensive plantings and mulch. This makes long term sense in what appears to be a permanent, climate change related drought here in California.

Unfortunately, Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge is pushing for the inclusion of artificial turf in that rebate program. He, apparently, has a vision of Los Angeles, as one big tawdry miniature golf course. Here’s his motion annotated with my opinions:

As drought conscious residents of the City of Los Angeles look for ways to reduce their water consumption, business is booming for the synthetic turf industry. [And that’s a reason to give them more money?] A recent study revealed that the annual amount of water needed to maintain the average lawn each year is about 34,000 gallons or about 670 bathtubs full of water.

The quality and appearance of synthetic turf has gained popularity, and especially with the drought, turf has become more accepted. [By whom? It’s still plastic. And you need to water it in the summer to make it cool enough to walk on and to wash out pet urine. It provides no benefit for wildlife.] Residential turf is growing exponentially in Southern California, but home installation still accounts for less than 13% of the total turf installations. [Again, is this a reason to subsidize it?]

With rising water rates and with the current lawn removal rebate programs that are offered to residents of the City of Los Angeles, there is a need to look at options such as artificial turf as an alternative for drought friendly landscaping.

I THEREFORE MOVE that the Department of Water and Power be requested to report back with a study on the potential benefits of implementing artificial grass for home installations and how it can make an impact in the current drought conditions. [I’m certain that local water officials already studied the option and, wisely, concluded that they did not want to subside artificial turf. Why waste staff time?]

Let me predict the results, should Tom’s AstroTurf vision become law. In a few years we’ll see acres of ripped, smog and dog feces stained plastic turf that will eventually end up in our overflowing landfills. The present rebate program is an opportunity to create landscapes that support birds, bees, butterflies and other wildlife at the same time as they reduce water consumption.  Tom’s future is just a plastic version of the same old lawn paradigm that just doesn’t make sense in our climate.

Thanks to Travis Longcore for the tip on this.