SLOW TO GO

I was wondering the other day why, as I get older, I more enjoy the game of baseball. It is a slow game, basketball and hockey players would say...the pitcher straightening out the dirt on the pitching mound, staring in for the catcher's signals, the batter finding just the right stance at the plate, and then stepping out to slow down the pitcher even further. And I realized I like slow. Well, not very slow, but a bit slower than the turned up, speeded up, frenetic pace that inflicts so much of what we do these days.

I enjoy the walk a bit more when it's a bit slower...I can sense more of the beauty of the earth and the sky and all that is in it. I enjoy whatever I am working on when I am not hurried and have time to think deeper about the things that interest me. I enjoy a book or a movie that unfolds a bit slowly, giving me the pleasure of savoring the unfolding of the characters in the story, giving me a chance to identify the plot and its implications, to identify with the hero's plight and how I would respond to it.

I love the subtle touches which Arthur Conan Doyle gives you about Sherlock Holmes' place at 221B Baker Street...the crusty old books, the smell of that rare Swedish tobacco, the feel of the easy chair...which adds so much to the flavor and the intrigue and the mystery of that ribboned envelope being slid under the door with three orange seeds in it and the one word note "Finally".

I like conversations with each point of conversation explored slowly and thoughtfully, with quiet spaces for cerebral time. I like more detailed and probing interviews on radio and television, more time to examine the depths of an issue (I shut my mind off when the interviewer says, "I only have 45 seconds, how would you deal with the unfolding nuclear crisis in the Mideast?") Takes me longer than that to brush my teeth, and there's not much to think about when I brush my teeth.

Now, I don't like everything slow...like when the bank teller who counts your money over fourteen times, or when the express lane on the thruway is used for sightseeing, or when the waiter in that fine restaurant seems to have developed amnesia. I don't like dawdling, lackadaisical, lethargic, supine, lymphatic, sluggish, dopey, drugges, leaden, lumpish, stultefied, inert, stagnant, languid, listless, vegetative, dormant, numb, moribund, dead.

But I do like slower than hurried, rushed, pushed, pressed, crowded, hustled, bustled, scuttled, scampered, stampeded.

Know what I mean?