Planning and Other Dangers

The weird thing about being a human being, if you ask me, is this business about past and future. I doubt any species spends as much brain-power and energy as we do worrying about times that are not now. For me, and for several people I know and love, it comes down to occasionally being incapable of being in the moment.

The other day at lunch, for example, my close friend Mary (pictured above) and I were having a very leisurely discussion about what kinds of things we might want to do next week while we're in Copenhagen. Another member of our Seattle Opera contingent heading for Copenhagen--who will remain nameless now, but probably not for long--expected us to have the whole thing carefully spelled out, the schedule carefully arranged on a series of forms, charts, and graphs. We did our best to reassure this person that we wouldn't be wasting anyone's time while on the trip; but I still maintain that the easiest, most pernicious way to waste time is not to live it while it's happening, either because you're spending NOW thinking and planning about what's next, or because you already planned NOW so carefully, thought it through so completely, last week, that when it's happening it's no longer interesting to you.

Don't ask me when a blog is happening...is it now/then, as I write/wrote, or now/soon, as you read/will be reading? I gotta confess, I will have been curious to find out or to have found out.

And all that said, my great WagnerQuest is already planned out pretty darn carefully. The pieces of writing (non-blogs) which are supposed to be created are much more vague...but I've always found that if I've already written a piece very carefully in my head, I have zero interest in writing it down for real. It's all about discovery...about putting down words where once was blank paper. (Or internet space.) Just as travel, for most of us, is about putting down memories, lived human experiences, where once there were just dots on a map.