I was about three-quarters of the way to work on Sunday morning when I saw him. Fort Hill Street was unusually quiet, with little action around the CVS, the Dunkin’ Donuts shop, or the commuter rail station. So maybe I was a little bored, in search of a distraction, as I came to the residential section. The man was round-faced, with curly brown hair and a beard, and he was wearing two tan bath towels—and nothing else. He was barefoot. One hand clutched a car key, while the other held the towels in position. (Barely.) It was a chilly 25 degrees Fahrenheit…
(He reminded me of a painting, one of those allegorical or historical ones of biblical scenes or ancient Greeks and Romans. Pictures where the garments—himations, togas, etc.—seem held together solely with big clumpy knots. No buttons, belts, or seams. The knots tend to look iffy. It may be just my imagination, but it often seems that the characters are clutching at their clothing for fear it will tumble earthward at any moment.
My personal experience with bath towels may have have influenced this interpretation. I’m terrible at fastening terrycloth. No matter how firm the knot, the towel slides off the second I turn on the blowdryer to do my hair. I’d blame my soft surfaces except that many a towel of my acquaintance has also made its way off of a hard-edged chair or hook.)
…anyhow, on sight of the man my mind went into a frenzy of speculation. Medication left in the car? Wife threw him out after discovering he’d used up her favorite shampoo? Friend called needing an emergency pick-up? Lost a bet? Driven to the wilderness by the geas of his god?
Distraction is often positioned as a moral failing, a weakness, as in Australian philosopher Damon Young’s definition: “distraction is chiefly an inability to identify, attend to or attain what is valuable.” The condescension in those 14 words makes me want to stop writing this and doom-scroll for an hour. Although I don’t. It stings especially because I have been feeling particularly distracted lately. Not as much by the usual stuff, the screens and chocolates and fun books, but by the things that I encounter on routine journeys. People, animals, clouds, and other mundane sights. Has that branch always hung that low? Why leave lawnchairs in the snow? How does the afternoon sun make the obnoxious yellow house pretty? Who was that prophet in two towels?
Sunday morning, five-sixths of the way to church: I kept theorizing, trying to tighten the prophet plot. Then I hit a curve too fast and had to force my attention onto the road. I was lucky that Sunday morning traffic was so light.
I wondered whether my distractibility was helping or hurting. There’s a less damning take on the issue from Jud Brewer, who is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Brown University. Brewer’s article “Are You Stuck in the Anxiety-Distraction Feedback Loop?” explains that to cope with anxiety, the brain pursues distractions. The cycle goes Anxiety Trigger, Distraction Behavior, and Reward. The Reward is relief from the anxiety. The problem, as we all discover, and as happened when I tried to chocolate-cake myself through Covid and fascism, etc., is that the relief tends to be short-lived, becomes progressively less satisfying, and can have pernicious side effects.
I let the prophet back into my thoughts during the Sunday sermon. When I was a kid, I was often subject to a post-sermon quiz to make sure I’d paid proper attention. It’s therefore a treat, as an adult, to let my mind wander. If I pay too much much attention I start arguing with the speaker’s points or delivery, which it makes it harder to perform my Sunday morning work of singing with accuracy and enthusiasm. I listened enough to understand that the priest was going on about the prophet John the Baptist. My mind wandered to my surroundings (stained glass and carved wood and organ pipes, fun fun fun) and the man in the towels. He’d looked vaguely like a figure in Stained Glass Window #4, although that guy’s robe was green and covered considerably more of his skin.
Intellectually I know that the world is not trying to tell me anything, but it’s still absorbing to try to make connections. Religious writer Jon Bloom has a point: “When we are regularly distracted by something, we need to take note. Our attention often runs to what’s important to us.” Maybe the message is that I’m spending too much time focused inward. Or maybe that I need more interesting entries in my writing journal.
A couple of days later I edged past a parked fire truck with its lights flashing, and an ambulance. The ambulance crew was pushing a stretcher with a white-haired woman wrapped in a white blanket. Her pale hands were folded in her lap. Two houses farther down was a U-Haul truck with its bay open. There were boxes and a stepladder and tools inside, and also something big, shapeless, and powder blue that fell suddenly onto the road. A tarp or a covering of some sort, I assumed, but then there was a gust of wind and the blob moved. I thought it would blow into my lane, and maybe I’d have to dodge it, but it turned out to be a man in a blue jumpsuit. He picked himself up and leaned against the truck bed, favoring one leg. Lucky for him, in a way, that there were emergency personnel next door, if it turned out that he’d damaged himself.
Jud Brewer’s recommendation is that people not beat themselves up for being distracted. Instead, we should look for the Bigger Better Offer. In other words, experiment with behaviors that have a better long-run payoff than chocolate cake. For me that’s a tall order, but it sounds worth exploring.
On the way to Thursday night’s choir rehearsal I slowed down near where I’d seen the man. It was already dark, with the streetlights set to gently glow rather than illuminate. There was no sign of him.
My image of a prophet, like the picture at the top of the blog*, is messy hair, beard, sandals, a robe, an angry face, and a message. The towel dude had the hair, the beard, and the garments, but not the sandals, and not the angry face. Or it didn’t seem so. His had been the face of a person barefoot in 25-degree weather. As for the message, as far as I could tell it was something born of realizing that he wasn’t outfitted or equipped for his journey, but he’d have to muddle through somehow.
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* New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Master of the Dinteville Allegory, Netherlandish/French, 1537; the scene is of Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh
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