ON PRACTICING OUR PUBLIC VOICES, PONDERING WHY WE READ, AND MOVING INTO HIGH GEAR
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Dear Sarah,
I’m trying something different this week! Usually I write to you in the evening, often the day before we’re going to share our letters, so sometimes they have a subtle do-or-die feeling about them (hopefully more in my mind than on the page?) as I push myself to put words together for you in writing. There’s no shortage of words I have for you, but putting them into a letter that may-will be seen publicly makes it a slightly different beast.
(Note to us — shall we engage in a mini book club wherein we read famous (or not-so-famous) correspondence collections? I am fascinated by the pre-digital ongoing letter exchange, and by the tone of letters meant only for one other.) What is inevitably different here because we know-hope from the get-go that others (hi buds!) may be reading our words? I imagine at the least, we’re more composed, perhaps slightly less off-the-cuff, perhaps slightly more reserved about certain bits of information.
I love when an institution acquires a writer’s or thinker’s archive, love thinking about the collection of all their bits and bobs getting boxed up for librarians and researchers and the generally curious to pore over, to see slips of paper and say “Did this snippet send them down the road to X big idea that we can’t stop talking about today? Or X poem that echoes in our minds on X occasion? Or X discovery that is changing the way we think and live today?” And on and on.
Did you know that R. Buckminster Fuller documented his life incredibly thoroughly — honestly, now, re-reading the Wikipedia entries about him (thank you, Wikipedia writers and editors), he documented his life even more thoroughly than I recalled —
The Dymaxion Chronofile is Buckminster Fuller’s attempt to document his life as completely as possible. He created a very large scrapbook in which he documented his life every 15 minutes from 1920 to 1983. The scrapbook contains copies of all correspondence, bills, notes, sketches, and clippings from newspapers. The total collection is estimated to be 270 feet (80 m) worth of paper. This is said to be the most documented human life in history.
(I think the 270 feet of paper means 270 boxes — in archival practices linear feet are the dimensions of front shelf space that the box takes up... I digress into the details.) Can you imagine going through that collection? A lifetime, captured incompletely no matter how many linear feet are present. I hope there may be some interest in perusing my archive someday. Really, I’d like it perused sooner, because maybe someone else would see it all differently than I do, would “solve” it like a mystery, could show back to me what is there. It is so hard to see oneself! I love our letters because we can see each other and ourselves more clearly, bit by bit each week.
So! The difference, a difference, is that I’m writing today during the day, and fairly well in advance of our share based on my usual patterns. The day is bright and frigid. I haven’t gone outside yet, and the temperature now reads 13 degrees Fahrenheit. My head is in active daytime weekday mode, cylinders firing, shifting gears up and up. It’s different from the gears you spoke of last week, but I often think of the weekday “work” days as times when my brain is particularly tuned in — I think of it like driving a stick shift: you start in a low gear, and as you gain speed you shift into a higher gear in which the engine runs more efficiently, and then you just coast along at a high speed for however long, hours if you’re feeling it, less time if you have to pull off for a break or a snack (though in non-driving reality even breaks and snacks are fruitful times!). Anyway, when I start my day as a “work” day, exercising, eating, thinking, doing work, it’s like the machine is moving along at a high level of efficiency and that energy flows into all the things I’m thinking on. Hence this letter on a daytime break!
To bring it back to the top — I’ve been thinking about, and in many ways, relishing, the public nature of our letters. I feel like I show so little of myself publicly, or even hesitate to make or write a thing, because the thought of showing or sharing it is kind of painful, stressful. I think I worry “it” won’t be good enough. But why am I so worried about that? The world is littered with artifacts both good and bad, bad that seemed good, good that seemed bad. Why worry? I think I have some personal barriers to work through — a tendency to keep things close — and it is hard to make those muscles switch gears just because I say so. One version of my worry is something like a “is it good enough / is it as finished as possible?” demon that I am trying to banish from my life. The sense of “finished” is unreal, nothing is ever finished, no matter how firm and done it seems to be. There are always new threads to pull and pick up on, new windows into old works, new ways of thinking about existing texts and objects and ideas old and new. If, right now, I cast a block of concrete — solid, impervious, finished! — and if you come across my block of concrete, you’re going to do something different with it than I would. Maybe you’d use it to prop up the corner of your house, or maybe you’d make it the base of a planter. While maybe I’d sit on it with a cushion to warm the seat, or maybe I’d find other concrete blocks and put them together to build myself a shed or a studio or a tower or a path across a river. Even if it is solid, as solid as can be, it is never finished.
I am so glad every week to write these letters with you, and I’m glad for them to be public, to be seen by you and by anyone else. We’re building and learning together and in the process I’m growing a new wiry muscle I didn’t have before.
I’m thinking about your letter from last week and learning every week from the writing, exchanging, reading, re-reading. I think we both have a penchant for the learning aspect — with my move to Minneapolis I’ve been looking at all kinds of classes I could take to learn new things and meet new people in this new place — and I am especially taken with what is becoming our shared place of public thinking and learning. What happens when others can see us learn, and we can see each other learn? I think we’re shifting into a higher gear, stepping on the gas. Onward!
Until next week,
Your friend,
Eva
January 10, 2018
Dear Eva,
I have a lot on my mind, a lot I want to throw at you to see what you will toss back, what you will help me discover. I have found that the topic for the letter each week feels precious, like I must be careful to use the words on the right subject, lest I accidentally waste some of our limited time and energy on that which is not the most important. But it is all important though, isn’t it? I have started a running list of ideas I eventually want to explore with you. Each one is a little budding flower. Sometimes it needs more time before I should pick it and share with you.
This week I want to tell you about a moment with my uncle several weeks ago. We were sitting in his living room in Chicago talking about books, and he said wants to create a long list of books that he wants to read before he dies. He is in his late 70s, recently back home after a terrible accident that broke many bones and has required intense physical therapy to regain his ability to walk.
After he mentioned the book list, he paused and said, half to himself, “What a funny thing — making a list of books to read before you die. What is the point of reading when you are going to die?”
It was a rhetorical question but I answered anyway. “Well, we are all going to die, so I guess it is just like saying, ‘why read at all?’”
“Yes, but if you are 40, you have a good chance of using what you learn. When you are old, you are less likely to use it.”
We did not dwell more on the subject together, but it has been buzzing around in my mind ever since.
Why read when we are going to die?
There is so much to unpack there, so much to say about how no days are guaranteed, so much to ponder about how we would change our days if we knew they were fewer left than we expect. I despise the cliche to spend each day like it’s your last, but I do take some care to try not to spend too much of my life’s time on things I would not do if I knew my horizon was short. But since we typically do not know, we assume we will be one of the lucky ones with white hair someday. If I had certainty that I would not grow old, there are certainly things in my life I would change. Choosing to stop reading would not be one of them.
I am curious about this notion of reading being a means to an end. I read information and stories, process it, and then I “use” it? Sometimes, maybe. What if I stop after the processing? What does it mean to use knowledge? Is an idea only valuable if I share it with someone else in some way? Are we just vessels for the flow of information and ideas? Doesn’t my personal growth and understanding of this world and life have value to me even if I only get the benefit of it for a relatively small portion of my time alive? If it makes even one day on earth better, that feels like it is worth doing.
I imagine I might increase the amount of reading I do if I knew my time left was short. Though I am sure it would change my reading list. This makes me think again about my decision to go to business school, which I have been pondering anew during this short break at the halfway point of my program. I am not getting my MBA to climb the corporate ladder. There are some things we are learning that feel irrelevant, narrow, uninteresting. Some things that I would not choose to read if I knew I was going to die soon. But overall, I very much appreciate the chance to inhale a thin slice off the top of basic business and financial concepts. It feels like I am peering into the window of a world I feel like I sit outside of but, in reality, I am a very active participant in.
We all need money to live. This is the system we have inherited. Sometimes I get squeamish when I think about the prospect of being paid directly by a client or customer for my time someday. What is my time really worth in monetary terms? Getting paid a salary from an organization makes the transaction of time-for-money feel different somehow. It shields our eyes from the reality of the money that moves hands to subsidize our lives. I wonder sometimes if maybe it lets us off the hook a little too much. Gives us the chance to turn our noses down on those who are more directly selling something, asking for money to our faces. I wonder how different capitalism might look if we all really had to feel it, if we had to directly navigate the terrain of selling our time or wares, finding ways to remain a good non-transactional human while making the money we need to live our lives. I am fairly certain we would all find ways to live on less, which would be a good thing. In the process, maybe we would find ways of doing business in more human, ethical, just ways without the layers of corporate and organizational insulation covering our eyes.
And that, my friend, is why I am going to business school — reading business books along the way even though I am going to die someday.
With that, I am plucking this flower and tossing it to you to see what grows back next week.
Yours,
Sarah