The Joy of "Doing Nothing"

I have always had a problem with people who seem proud of the fact that "they can't sit still." Or, rather, I feel bad for them that they think it is a virtue to not be able to relax; to, as Whitman sort of put it, loaf and invite their souls. I can see how someone who "can't sit still" might accomplish more than me, in terms of material gain and the like. But, I can accomplish quite a bit, at least by my own standards, sitting still.

Sir Frederick Leighton, 1895

I have heard others talk about their fear of retiring. (A fear, I fear, I might never have to face.) They worry that they won't know what to do with themselves; that they will be bored. I am incapable of being bored, as long as there is a world to observe and a way to record those observations; as long as there is music to make and beauty to appreciate.

Just yesterday, my family went on an excursion without me.

In the morning, I read Margaret Atwood (whose stuff I need to read more of) and drank coffee. After awhile, I napped. After my nap, I worked on my next novel for an hour or two, then I took the dog for a two hour excursion in to the woods. After that excursion, I swam in the pond among the curious trout and the fickle turtles. After the pond, I showered and practiced my Carulli on the guitar. (Not at the same time. The shower is bad for a guitar.) After the guitar, I went out onto the pond in a kayak and watched the sun dropping behind the tree line. I came in and had dinner with my son (who had also stayed behind) and we went out into the back with our gloves and had a catch.

The Poor Man's Sting Speaks

It occurs to me that my life is full of miniature representations of dreams that I have had. It is as if I have taken the things I have always wished for and placed them around me, like knickknacks.

Not me.

First, I am a poor man's Sting. (Well, maybe a destitute man's Sting.) I don't say this to compare talent levels, but to show that where he is a former English teacher who worked in clubs as a musician and went on to become one of the most famous popular musicians of all time, I, too, am a bookish fellow who became a teacher of literature and who remaines a very active musician (of whom few have heard). A result of his having been one of my musical and lyrical heroes? Partly.

As a teenager, I wanted to be John Williams (the film/orchestral composer) but that hasn't happened; though, I did score a full-length independent film. So, I, you know, have done it, at least.

No word on an Oscar yet.

Listening Hard for Walt Whitman's Footfalls

We all, as we get older, tend to ask that cliched "where-does-the-time-go" question. I'll tell you where it goes; it goes past us while we toil over necessities and then try to fill our free time with "meaningful" activities. As I once said, paraphrasing Whitman: we fail to loaf and invite our souls.

Walt Whitman

A testament to this -- and one of whoppingly ironic proportions -- is the fact that I have lived within walking distance of Walt Whitman's summer home (the place where he reputedly wrote a good deal of Leaves of Grass) for more than a decade and have never, once, visited it. Granted, it is open by appointment, only, but -- you'd think a guy like me, who spent quite a few hours studying the man's work and who went to school in the city of Camden, New Jersey, where the poet spent a large portion of his life, would have made the effort.

Alas.

Well, today, I'm going -- not into the house, because it is Sunday, but, I will visit the outside of it and I will also venture into the nearby environs of Crystal Spring, where the poet once loafed, invited his soul and penned many of the pieces of his seminal collection of poems.

I'm off to loaf, and to invite Whitman's soul to pay me a visit. I'll be right back...with pictures.

Battle-Planning After Defeat

I'm not feeling deep today. At most, I'd love to just fall into the hole and watch things on the way down, but there's no energy to step on the shovel.

There's rain, lots of it, falling on the really old building that I work in; rain falling around the big trees and the red bricks and into the water-heavy, green grass. There are little waterfalls rumbling off of the roof like a rude crowd.

There's a space of two hours during which I will be here alone, until a meeting -- a meeting that keeps me that much longer from hugs from my sons and wife.

There's a day behind me during which, if you watched it in fast-rewind, you'd see me, head-down, typing and mouse-clicking, non-stop, piecing together next year's academic schedule. You'd see me, still, for the most part, but flinging my head back now and again to relieve my neck pain -- stopping here and there to skip a song I wasn't in the mood for on my iPhone.

You wouldn't see a lunch-break.

There's something sort of sickening hovering over me that I really can't place -- a feeling of too much of my time being stolen today; the feeling that this theft has taken away the desire to do even those things I enjoy. The day has been spaced just perfectly so that there is no time for the meaningful things in-between the meaningless, insistent responsibilities. Today, there will be work and there will be sleep. Today's face will wind up on the back of a milk-carton.

Chopper Boy and the Queen

With a little bit of shame, I admit to being judgemental of people I see walking along the road. Not if they have on exercise clothes, mind you. Clearly, people in exercise clothes are . . . you know . . . exercising. But when people are walking in normal clothes, I tend to have one of those "Why don't they have a car?" moments. I know. Not fair. But . . . why don't they have a car?

Anyway, with my writer's eye, I just tend to try to figure out the individuals I see plodding as I zip by in my status-symbol of a 1999 Saturn, with its manual tranny and custom, manual window-lowering mechanisms. (Yeah, my whip. That's how I roll.)

Today, I was taking my sons over to Grandmom and Grandpop's for sugary, salty afternoon of treats, cartoons and video game-filled joy, and I passed two folks on the side of the road. They didn't have a car, but they did have a tricked-out bike. (By the way -- did you know Melville used the phrase "tricked-out" in Moby Dick to describe a ship? Word.) The bike had a chopper wheel on the front -- you know, the long fork and handlebars so high up you have to reach for them like you are about to do a pull-up. It was pristine, with chrome everything and a big honker-horn on the front.