I am tucked neatly inside Willow cottage, here at Hedgebrook for a Board retreat. Outside, pale blue streaks across an otherwise stony sky. The smell as I walked up the path to the cottage was particular to Hedgebrook, to the Northwest, a smell I call “rainforest.” I don’t know what makes it exactly – dampness mixed with pine needles and eucalyptus and cedar, and another kind of evergreen shrub I can’t identify that has a musky smell, exotic and foreign, like the scent of frankincense or maybe myrrh.Inside the cabin, I hear a clock ticking, which is mysterious because the only clock I see is digital. The tiny bar fridge hums every 10 seconds, and of course I can no longer hear the crackling of the logs burning beside me because I have let the fire go out. I am a terrible fire tender.[pullquote align="left" background="off"]As writers, we have grown used to checking spellings using online dictionaries, Googling, Wikipedia-ing and using all manner of online resources at our fingertips. For a writer, “unplugged” is a frightening notion. [/pullquote]It is wonderful being here again. Every detail seems heightened by my senses. I was here for three days last summer, when one of the residents was delayed in her arrival. In that time, I finished my novel. Well, at least the second-to-last draft of my novel. I felt guilty to be hidden away inside Willow when the sun was shining. It’s much easier to be here in February, where do you don’t feel compelled to dash outside to capture a ray of warmth on your cheeks.I saw Ruth Orzeki  last week, talking about her book A Tale for the Time Being. The first time I saw Ruth speak was at Vortext, a Hedgebrook event. I don’t know if it’s her easy manner, the fact that she is a Zen Buddhist priest or that she’s Canadian (or lives there anyway) that captivated me. I just know I would enjoy having her to myself for a few hours to talk about things like time, how to unplug from online life, Buddhism, and Hedgebrook.During her reading, she spoke about the ubiquity of time, a major theme in her book. She spoke of her main character identifying herself as a “Time Being” but how we also look at that phrase as a state – as in “for the time being.” She quoted some Japanese Zen monks from the fourth century for having made this distinction and that made me smile at its Japanese,-ness, like a Haruki Murakami (Wind up Bird Chronicle) novel. When I got home and started reading her book, a section jumped out and has stuck with me. The character of the young girl Nao (I loved realizing her name pronounced in English (Now) is also a statement of time) is speaking about entering a small temple in the middle of Tokyo and how it feels sacred to her.

“The temple was a special place. There was the smell of moss and incense, and sounds too – you could actually hear the insects and birds and even some frogs – and you could almost feel the plants and other things growing. We were right in the middle of Tokyo, but when you got close the temple, it was like stepping into a pocket of ancient humid air, which had somehow gotten preserved like a bubble in ice, with all the sounds and smells still trapped inside it.”

From the perspective of Willow cabin, it seems obvious that Ruth wrote that portion of her book at Hedgebrook. Ruth talked about coming to Hedgebrook for three weeks, nervous about having to leave her online life behind. There is no Wi-Fi at Hedgebrook and cell service is spotty at best. As writers, we have grown used to checking spellings using online dictionaries, Googling, Wikipedia-ing and using all manner of online resources at our fingertips. For a writer, “unplugged” is a frightening notion. Ruth conceded she experienced a kind of withdrawal from her Internet crutch and continued to reach for her computer or phone to “look up” something until one day she realized she had finally stopped needing her crutch. By the end of her stay she discovered she had “gotten her mind back.” Only a few days before, I had written on a similar topic on this blog. I felt a moment of jealousy that she was able to recognize that moment, really feel it. I wanted my mind back too!I am all too aware of this addiction many of us have to the Internet. A five-minute “email check” turns into four lost hours that is difficult to account for. Until the Internet – or maybe it’s Facebook or Google, specifically, I’m not sure – I have never had a real addiction. I never smoked, I don’t drink coffee (I honestly don’t know how I haven’t been kicked out of Seattle), I do things in moderation (I think). Yet I recognize my computer use as an addiction.[pullquote align="right"]And so I see it's important to find ways to ratchet down the brain when you don't have a cottage in the woods or the ability to step back into 1946 at your disposal.[/pullquote]Stepping back into my 1946 time capsule on Vashon, allows me a few days to practice withdrawal, but this never seems an adequate amount of time to complete the process. I smell all those old, preserved smells trapped inside that old house, imagine the ghosts that once inhabited it’s rooms, pour over passages of Betty MacDonald’s book, Onions in the Stew, as a way of fully immersing myself into another life, another lifetime, being a Time Being. As if pretending to be in another time, when addictions like the Internet didn’t exist can make my present mind a little less cluttered.And so I see it's important to find ways (OK, this post is making me think of things I already do) to ratchet down the brain when you don't have a cottage in the woods or the ability to step back into 1946 at your disposal. Here’s how I *try* to be a Time Being in my everyday life by pretending to live in 1946:

1. Spend ridiculous amounts of time staring out the window. Sometimes I’m thinking, but other times I really am just staring. Zoned out. I’m sure the mailman must wonder about state of my mental health. I study the buds on the shrubs outside, watch the humming bird who comes to the empty bird feeder (disgusted, no doubt by the lack of vittles), watch the tops of trees wavering in the wind.

2. Have a dog or small animal that annoys the hell out of you throughout the day with toys to throw and who sits on your lap/computer and forces you from being able to see the screen properly. Fish are not as good for this, but are excellent for #1.

3. Make tea. See? I’m not so crazy for not liking coffee. Unlike coffee, you can drink tea all day long, which makes you get up and make it and then later it makes you go pee a whole bunch of times. Voila! You have risen. And I’m pretty sure they had tea in 1946.

4. Take a break from the computer and read a book (not a Kindle if possible, since they didn’t have those in 1946). You can justify almost any reading as “research” that you need to do for your work. People Magazine is “Research,” OK? Just don’t argue with me on this.

5. Cook dinner from scratch. I am rather old fashioned in this one. I like to cook, so it’s easy. Sort of. The hardest part is remembering to take stuff out of the freezer before 4:30pm. Or to go grocery shopping. A little trick: Do the groceries after school and drag the kid along so he can help carry bags. Caveat: Be prepared for the grocery bill to double with all the junk food you inadvertently collect as you breeze through the aisles. When you have a constantly hungry 14-year-old boy loitering around the kitchen, it’s easy to follow this tip: Get up from the computer by 5:00pm and start making dinner or you will have a kitchen that looks like a mini junk-food drive-by cyclone by 5:45pm.

We all have our little ways of taking our lives back to a simpler time. I find I often forget I even do them, and convince myself that I am a victim of complete Internet domination that there is no hope for me. I convince myself that all my short-term memory is shot, I no longer can keep up with email and my handwriting has gone to hell.  But when I write these things down (I know, it should be with a pen), I realize that I am more of a Time Being that I realized, which is a relief.