The Sunset Photo
What a cliche taught me about writing
One of the gifts of writing is that it gives me some distance from my experiences. In a stressful situation, such as a phone call about family drama, imagining what I might write about helps me tap into a more mindful, observant part of my brain.
If I describe the fact that my mother says, “You’re not going to believe it,” every time she delivers a piece of gossip, I am slightly removed from the feelings of judgment or frustration that might otherwise accompany the phone call. It’s difficult to be both observant and actively angry. In this way, writing can serve as a mindfulness tool.
That sense of distance can work in more ways than one way. My husband and I were biking in northern New Jersey when we stumbled upon a beautiful, barren stretch of beach just as the sun was setting. It was the type of sunset that typically sends one reaching for the phone to take a photo. It was day two of a nine-day vacation, and I was still coming down from work mode. For the first time on our trip, I started to feel quiet. Briefly, I wasn’t describing the moment. I was simply in it.
Such moments are rare. I attempted to relish it, but soon, my writer’s brain kicked in. I began to put words to the orange colors of the sun reflecting off of the water. I noted the sound of birds in the bushes behind me. I wondered how my husband was experiencing the moment. I began to imagine writing about what was happening, and as a result, I felt slightly less present. Describing the moment took me out of it.
I began to ask myself. Should I write about this moment, or should I simply experience it?
It’s the same struggle that I have with cameras on vacation. The very act of capturing a moment can place a barrier between me and the object of my experience. Yet, having some tool for framing the experience heightens my sense of awareness.
The philosopher John Duns Scotus termed the coin “thisness” to refer to the individualizing aspects of an object or person that make it particular. Thisness separates the concept of a sunset from the very specific sunset in front of me.
Describing the sunset led me away from the thisness of the sunset and towards the concept. Images of a bland sunset in a commercial satire from the TV show 30 Rock flashed through my mind. I began to think about a sunset as a cliche, as something that many people post or write about. As a result, it became less interesting conceptually, even as the site before me remained utterly awe-inspiring.
I came back to the moment again, then felt the pull to describe it again. I remained in this tension for some time as the colors changed to a darker shade of orange.
I decided to get it out of my system. I took the photo above, brought some observations into my awareness and then put them aside, noting that I would write them down later. Then, I sat down next to my husband to take it all in for a moment. It was a relief to feel that, briefly, the moment was just for us. If I shared it on my socials, it would become something else.
This lasted about three minutes.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “Yup,” I said. We both got up to head towards a restaurant.
Some ideas about the tension between writing and presence percolated. I jotted them down in my notes app while we waited for a table at the restaurant.
I once listened to a video about meditation from the writer Dan Harris. In the video, Harris says meditation is not about being completely present. It’s about finding an anchor (usually your breath), noticing your distracting thoughts and feelings, and then coming back to your breath — over and over again.
Mindful writing involves a similar back-and-forth between the immediacy of the moment and the observer self that comes with being a writer. An idea comes and goes. Some thoughts return. Some drift away. If something sticks, it’s usually something I need to get out of my crawl and onto the page.
This is why I challenge myself not to write too quickly. If I let ideas float around awhile, they take on a life of their own and often, become something else. Rushing to write stops the interplay between writing about life and living it. For me, living life must always come first. Digesting it through writing comes later.
I remember the sunset clearly because I waited to put pen to paper. The goal of my writing is not to create a moment. It’s to let the moment speak to me.
