Idle, Idyl

Thanksgiving break over, there is a return to routine. How much do I mind? I spent five days mostly alone doing much of nothing. It was not a restful nothing but a tortuous, gnawing nothing against which I knew I should be doing something. I should have gone somewhere, I'd say, should have seen new things. Or old. It is increasingly more difficult to do. Harder to travel. Harder to go forward, go backward. Even if I had spent time outdoors, I thought. . . but didn't, and I saw nothing.

Just before the break, though, I was sitting outside with a colleague on a bench talking about nothing, really, when suddenly I watched a bird fly straight into a palm tree trunk knocking itself silly. I couldn't believe what I saw. I've seen birds fly into glass before, but never anything opaque. I got up and walked over to see the bird just rising from the dirt, wobbly, beginning to hop uncertainly. I shook my head. It was like a cartoon, I thought. Heckyl and Jeckyll.

My catatonia these last few days was almost complete, though I did manage to work some in the studio, but even there I only managed to bungle some pieces. The bungling, I tried to tell myself, is positive. It is learning. I know now what to avoid. I tried telling myself this, but in the end, there was nothing to show.

I thought to get out, to go somewhere and talk to somebody with the idea of stealing stories, rhythms, images. It excited me for a moment. Then I thought, "How? How?" You cannot just go out to meet characters, can't simply roll up on someone, sit down and say, "Hey bud, tell me a story." It takes more time than that. And that is what was getting to me, the amount of time everything takes. There is sacrifice involved in all creative endeavors, and much, if not most of it, comes to nothing.

And so I sat and made up scenarios in my mind, sat watching them play out on the internal movie screen. Hours passed. Then days. I had barely moved.

Now the sun is rising in a grayish dawn without distinction. I have not done what I told myself I would do, and now I have deadlines and hours of chores to accomplish. It happens often this way now, especially holidays, those times alloted for relaxation and fun. I cannot celebrate by the calendar nor the clock. All that is special lies in the unexpected moments when everyone else is going about their usual routines, when time opens up, slows down, is swallowed by the experience of a moment, eternal and self-contained.

Routine won't help with that, so I've promised myself I will wander more. I will break with the routine that I have accepted, the one that squanders my life and spend more time in productive idling. If not, I'll be like that bird, I think, banging my head on the obvious.