Four Objects, Three Pages

On the desk are four objects and three pages trying to teach me things I struggle to learn. I'm slow and stubborn but keep going. One hopes I'll get there eventually. Where? I'm not sure, but I seem headed toward something.

The first two objects are library books, (Frederic Gros's A Philosophy Of Walking and Wendell Berry's The World Ending Fire. Both are good though neither has me glued to the pages. I want to keep reading but also have the cursed urge to finish them. This pushes me to think past the books and miss out on the experience of reading them. It's just that there are so many other books I want to read. The trouble is, no matter how much I might wish otherwise, I can't finish either book in the next hour. At best (or worst), I'll finish both this week. Four more library books wait on the shelf and at least one will likely be due before I get to it. Opportunity lost! Or something like that.

The next object is a composition book that has failed me as a writers notebook. I used to use these all the time, but the paper is terrible and the covers are made too thin. They are still inexpensive but have grown cheap. I'd retire it but forty blank pages remain and I'm unwilling to waste them. It's not that I'm stuck with the notebook so much as sticking with it to the end which won't come for weeks.

The fourth object is a Uniball Jetstream ballpoint pen. I have a box of them but don't especially enjoy them, but can't stand wasting them. I doubt I'll go through the whole box any time soon, but I've committed to writing this one pen dry. I'm curious how long such a pen lasts but mostly trying to teach myself that I can finish most anything if I keep going. I started the pen with yesterday's morning pages and have written most everything with it. I'll likely be a couple weeks writing it dry. Sigh.

All of this not finishing is discouraging. I want to be done and get where I'm going. These objects are trying to teach me the mistake of such thinking but it's the three pages of paper that are my best teachers. They are this morning's pages, ninety-three lines written in about forty minutes and kept on my desk as a reminder to write this idea, roughed out in them, that some things can't be dispatched in only a few minutes, hours, or even days. But those pages one, two, three aren't the real lesson for me. The lesson is that they aren't pages one, two and three but are instead pages 5,362 through 5,364 since I began this daily practice in 2014.

I began with the idea to write three pages that morning. That's all I could control then. The rest had to wait for the next morning and the next. Had I begun hoping only to reach page 5,364, that would have been foolish and weird. I still have no end number in mind. I let 5,000 pages pass without much notice and will likely do the same at 10,000. If I go twenty years, I'll fill 21,918 pages. At thirty years, it will be 32,877 pages in all. But there's no gain in aiming for those things. It's the process of doing that matters. Just keep going.

I'll finish my books, fill the notebook, write the pen dry. Then there will be more books to read, another notebook to fill, and always more ink. None of it will get done today. I'll have to live with that. Maybe I'll learn from it too.

More Papers, No Television or News

This morning I'm attending to a task I've considered for a couple months on and off and pretty much fixated on (without doing anything other than worry about it) for the last week. No, I'm not installing a new sewer line or even replacing the rotted window sill in the dining room. Those would be tasks from which anyone might shrink. I've just been avoiding the pile of papers on my desk. I even wrote about it this week after dealing with maybe a page and a half of stuff there. That post made it sound like I had gotten deep into the task. Writing has that effect. And yet the stack was still there this morning.

Before it seems like I've dispatched all the papers and reached self-actualization, the stack is diminished but I remain far down Maslow's hierarchy. I have read seven articles that friends have sent to me — I am blessed and cursed with friends who want me to read the good stuff they find — but have done nothing with the three essays in need of revision. So it goes. I'm not about completing things so much as giving it the old college try, whatever the hell that means.

As I finished the last of the articles which was about newspapers and kept mentioning the god-awful excuse for a human in the White House, I realized I have been reading a lot and have pretty much stopped watching television. It hasn't been a conscious decision, but I haven't missed the television and its focus on whatever is happening right now. With regard to current events, I couldn't care much less.

I suppose soon enough I'll wade back into all that. I'll resubscribe to the Post or the Times, tune into some show or other either on TV, and otherwise go back into the orange maggot's world. The piles of paper will grow. I'll stop doing the things around the house that feel good and keep things from sliding into disrepair. The books on the shelf will go unread.

It's about balance. I've gone way out on the beam, pulling it down, watching the other pan, empty and light as air, fly up and away. Down here, reading, writing, and making my way through the pile of papers, I'm in the smaller world of neighbors, family, and myself. Other stuff goes on, but the big news of my day is that I've read those articles to reduce the pile and I might revise one those lingering essay drafts.

First though, after over an hour this morning at the desk, I'm going out to see what the blue sky and gentle breeze have to say to me. I doubt they will mention politics, the news, or even remind me of the pile of papers still awaiting my attention. They will have other things to tell me if I'm willing to really listen.

Remembrance Of Albums Past

School is closed in observance of Memorial Day weekend so I'm going to my new job for the whole day. My morning schedule has for decades begun around five with me writing Morning Pages, packing a lunch, grabbing a bite and some coffee, then hustling to school at seven. This new job doesn't begin until nine and so I'm home with time on my hands. It feels lovely and has me remembering high school.

Back then I got up early to dress, have breakfast, and get my books together, but really I got up to have time to listen to "Supper's Ready" from Genesis's double live album Seconds Out before school. That song plays for just over twenty-four minutes, so I got started early and, for at least one school year, listened to that song almost every morning. It was a reliably happy beginning to the day.

This morning I have A Trick Of The Tail on the turntable. My wife and daughters have left for their schools. The cats and dog are asleep and I'm almost back in my childhood bedroom, the door closed, the world contained inside those walls and the song on the record, the world enclosed in the wide pastures of my mind.

What I did I do back then while "Supper's Ready" played? I wasn't writing. Maybe I just listened. Probably I sang along. I know I was happy. Going to school wasn't my favorite thing but wasn't terrible either. Especially at the end of my senior year it could be wonderful. Some days I had to go before the song ended but I hardly remember those days and recall mostly feeling like I was on a lake in the still of morning under a brightening sky.

Teaching school hasn't been good for a long time. Yesterday it was dangerous. I was threatened by three different students and thought I might for the first time take a punch. It took a while to calm down from that and remember there are only twenty school days left for me in that awful place. Thank goodness.

Today, instead of school, I'll go to a new job, one that so far feels good and full of possibility. This morning I've got Genesis on the turntable and plenty of time. Side one of A Trick Of The Tail is almost over. I know what song to play next.

Life Is A Pile Of Papers

Doing Morning Pages at the living room desk I was troubled by piles of paper on the shelves to either side. Mail, drafts essays, reminders, notes, a magazine, two folders, and whatever was at the bottoms of the piles. I kept writing my pages, knowing I’m best served by doing one thing at a time, but those piles nagged at me.

Soon as I finished writing, I consolidated the piles into one and cleared one shelf. I breathed a little easier. Hoarding works up my anxiety. Clarity lowers it. That clear shelf had me feeling better. Not fully healed but a smidge calmer.

The tough thing about a pile of papers is that some of it can’t be cleared easily. The essay drafts, one that’s twelve pages long, need revision that will take hours. More troubling, I don’t know what to do when they’re done. I’d like to think they could be published, but I would need to figure out where and how to do that. Piled papers are daunting, but just the thought of finding somewhere to publish exhausts me so that I don’t want to even begin.

As I worked into the pile, I thought of this Fitzgerald quote: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.” I’ll argue it’s not the past into which I have to let myself be pulled. I beat on against the current to be in the moment. Sure, I’m often dragged back and waste too much energy trying to peer into the future, but I’m trying to be in this moment. That pile of papers is an affront to this moment. It is to me. It represents what I should do or should have already done. How can I be in this moment when I’m embarrassed by the things I haven’t done and wishing for a future in which I am a better man?

Morning Pages served as the first draft of this. I’m done with them now and typing this last thought. Soon I’ll walk those pages downstairs and file them. That much will be done and cleared away. I’ll check if there’s time to dig in more, clear away even one more piece of paper. I’m rowing hard against the current, stubbornly working at being in this moment with a clear mind if not a clear desk, ready for what is happening and whatever comes next.