Alexandra Kloster, Pass the Hot Dish

“Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing here?”

Somnambulistic existentialism, or as professional sleep therapists would call it, “sleepwalking crazy talk,” struck my mother once about 20 years ago. She wandered into the living room where my sister, Barb, and I were watching TV demanding answers to the big questions. We could only reply, “You’re Mom,” “You’re in the living room,” and “We assumed you walked here.”

“It was more of an amble, Barb.” I offered.

“Really? Because it looked like a shamble to me,” Barb countered.

“No, no, no. It was a shuffle,” I concluded

This riveting debate must have bored my mother awake because she was clearly lucid a second later, ordering us to turn down the TV before we woke my father and with that, she fled taking her Philosophy 101 questions with her.

I found myself demanding answers to the same questions about a week ago while gazing at an e-mail that simply read, “Where is your column?”

Who am I! Where am I! What am I doing here! In my frantic state the metallic taste of adrenaline moved into the place behind my quivering lips. I had lost days, many of them, and as much as I prayed, not even St. Anthony could build me a time machine so I could find them. (Well, I bet he could, but the last time I prayed, “Tony, Tony look around! What is lost must be found!” he told me I was too high maintenance, and he went off to help some dogs find their bones and some celebrities find their dignity.)

Losing time is fine if you’re coming out of a coma or a serious drinking binge, but I had simply raced through a week not noticing a thing, not even the date. When you work on a deadline, it’s a good idea to have a passing acquaintance with your calendar. I had unfriended mine, and we who live by the deadline should know that calendars think revenge is a dish best served three days late. I was scre … (a word perfectly acceptable in carpentry projects, but not in a respectable newspaper).

It didn’t take much reflection to realize what had happened to me. I always prided myself on not being married to technology, being a person who stopped to watch birds, smell whatever season was in the air, and talk to strangers. I liked that I could say to the slow lady in the grocery store, “Don’t worry. I’m in no rush. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

That person did not jive with the woman driving from St. Paul to Elk Rapids, Mich., two weeks ago who had a fit when she lost cell phone coverage in Wisconsin and who looked at the TV in her parents’ den like it was a something from another era — a radio maybe? — because there was no digital box attached to it. Only cable? Impossible!

When I realized their wireless router was not compatible with my computer, I felt the walls close in. Thank heavens I found a Cat 5 cable that keeps me connected throughout the house. It’s about 175 feet long and gorgeous.

Somewhere along the way I began needing to know everything the minute it happened — before, if possible. I was more interested in checking Facebook to see what other people were doing than I was in what I was doing myself. If I wasn’t married to technology, we were living in sin.

Don’t get me wrong. Technology is wonderful. It allows me to work in my pajamas with crumbs on my chin, but I was in danger of losing experiences, losing quiet thoughts and unplugged solitude. Indeed, I had already lost time, a whole week at my parents’ home at the lake. When you’re moving through life in such a hurry there’s no time for walks in the woods, spying on deer or even noticing that suddenly there are no more leaves where there had been leaves, when? Five minutes ago? Five weeks ago?

I don’t advise people to live in the moment. There are times when you just have to ponder the future or when the past takes hold of you and you want to sit with it for a while. I think living in the day, though, is worth trying. I would like to know what day it is, not only because the days go by too quickly to lose them, but also because I don’t want to get fired.

Yesterday, I walked my dogs down the road a ways. We stopped and all three of us stared at Lake Michigan. I wonder if somehow, in their mysterious way, they were thinking the same thing I was. I can’t resolve the thoughts that were in my head, and I kind of hope I never can. My only wish is that I always remember to make time to think them. For a few minutes the three of us stood there quietly, and you could feel our questions in the air: Who am I? Where am I? And what am I doing here?

St. Paul resident Alexandra Kloster appears on two Fridays a month. She may be reached at alikloster@yahoo.com and her blog is Radishes at Dawn at alexandrakloster.com.