ON ROAMING EYES, PASSING CHIT CHAT, AND TIME TAKING ITS TOLL
Thursday January 28 2021
Dear Sarah,
I accidentally typed this year as “3021” above, and then I laughed to think about how I definitely will not be here in 3021, and I couldn’t help wondering if anyone would be typing anything at all in 3021! Will there still be humans mucking about in 3021? Will we have ruined the earth well before then?
This week I found myself thinking about your tendency to start fresh, or to want to start fresh, to rush to the clean new version. I was working on a document that I was forced to edit (I suppose I should say I was obligated to edit it) (in other words, I couldn’t start from scratch!) — and I was reflecting on how editing and working with what is already there on the page is simply hard, and harder than it seems. I think it has to do with having one’s own writing voice or way in which one thinks about writing, and it is hard to set that process aside in order to look at existing writing and do something with it, or to mind-meld one’s own process with someone else’s writing or the goals of their writing. Editing can be like taking apart a machine, laying out all your parts, adding or removing or remaking parts, and then figuring out how to put it all back together in a way that makes sense, into a similar-ish machine that is ideally a little bit “better” than where you began, a machine that runs a bit more smoothly. I also find that it can be challenging to work with someone else’s words whether that someone else is actually another person entirely, or a prior version of oneself. If all possibilities are under your control, it is hard to decide when to work with what’s there and revise, versus when to start fresh.
On Wednesday of this week, I was tired from a long writing day on Tuesday, but had yet more to do. I could hardly make my brain focus. Somehow I stuffed my jitters and inability to sit still deep down inside for the couple of hours that were necessary to complete a project (ahem, challenging editing project referenced above, I’m looking at you). Two hours later, getting ready to step out for a well-below-freezing run, I was practically bouncing off the walls, all the pent-up jitters I’d packed down inside bubbling up and gushing out across every surface. Later, after the run, after a shower, after lunch, I was totally zonked, I needed to lie down and close my eyes, to doze, to skate on the possibility of sleep. When you toy with your balance, lift the pendulum high in one direction, the resulting swing in the other direction is strong; when you pull a rubber band too hard, it snaps back at you — hard!
Wednesday in general was a trying day of work, and I tried to apply the shape of the reasoning I posited in a previous letter — maybe instead of things being hard, they could be easy — wondering if, instead of sitting down at my computer to get things done, I could just sit down to do some work, as best as I can? I’m going to take a tip from my daily yoga lessons and try to give myself a pat on the back just for showing up. When it starts to feel like I have a million things I’m supposed to “get done” I am trying to remind myself that they generally have to be tackled in series, one after the other, rather than in parallel. I cannot write two paragraphs on two different topics at once, even with my two hands moving as fast as they can and my two eyes staring into the beaming light of my computer screen. I can only really focus on one project at a time, and while it wouldn’t seem like one would need such a reminder, there it is!
On that note, I have been particularly enjoying my cold winter runs these days, and I think part of it is the fact that running is a clear reminder of the concept that things just take the time they take. I am not a fast runner; I would kindly call myself diligent. Once I am out running, I’m on my loop, and the run is simply going to take as long as it takes. I couldn’t run much faster if I tried! I have a small range of speeds but even my fastest isn’t going to wrap the run significantly sooner than my more plodding pace. (And it’s also snowy and slippery out there these days… it’s just not fast-running weather. It’s me but it’s not only me!) But the reinforcement of the fact that it takes as long as it takes feels meaningful these days. It feels good to put myself purposefully into a situation where I just have to give the activity the time it takes. There aren’t any fast workarounds to staying healthy and in shape, even though The New York Times just came out with an even shorter scientific workout! (Funny that we all want to be healthier, in a way, but presumably want to do it in less and less time. It’s an exercise “snack” and I have not tried it!) I have also realized that getting out for my run feels good because it is a reminder that the world is bigger than the frame of my screen(s) — as in, my eyes literally need to feel that the world extends beyond an illuminated rectangle. It feels good to be outside and for the external surface of my eyes to meet the world, to be filled with the world, for the world beyond my peripheral vision to be present and yet still not fully seen. The eyes need to roam!
Thinking about your letter from last week: I can’t wait until we can block our calendars for a week and make a thing together! I think it would be great to do it in person. Maybe we spend some time at your place and some time at mine? I wonder what that would be like! We’ll cross that planning bridge when we come to it, and for now I will look forward to some future moment when we can delight in each other’s company and creativity in the same place and in the same moment!
Hand-in-hand with (if not slightly contrary to) that sentiment, I felt the oddest tingle of wistfulness when you described your feelings of hope around the end of the pandemic. Of course I want it to be over — I don’t want anyone to be sick or dying from a hopefully soon-to-be-preventable-illness, and I want to spend time with friends and family in person again, and I want to be traveling and seeing places I love and will come to love. But I think some small part of me might miss the quiet days without any or many external obligations, no rushing here or there. Am I enjoying the sense that we are being forced to live in a pre-technology world right now, even as technology lets us keep living our lives in a way that bears some resemblance to how it looked before? For those of us who are technologically well-connected with high-speed internet and computers, our eyes and our minds travel where our bodies cannot. I certainly am not obligated to start rushing around again once it’s possible, but I wonder if I will anyway. Lately I’ve been thinking about what I want to reintroduce into my post-pandemic life; I am looking forward to going out to breakfast, and I am looking forward to sitting in a coffee shop with a friend or with pencil and paper — just spending time in another space that isn’t my own home. I don’t particularly miss flying, though I do miss going to other places; I’ll start by visiting and revisiting places that are close to home.
You shared in last week’s letter Amanda Gorman’s potent inaugural poem and her inspiring presence. It seems impossible that the inauguration was just last week, and yet it was. It could have been a million years ago. Yesterday M and I were looking at photos of our 2016 trip to Berlin — it was your trip, too! — and I was struck by how I genuinely looked younger four years ago. Not surprising, but these four or five years have taken their toll! I suppose any handful of years at this age will do the same. Perhaps everybody’s mid-thirties is our most sparkly, fresh-faced time. I looked like an adult but a fresh one! We’ll see what I say about today, four or five years from now! In the meantime, wishing you a weekend that delivers you a fresh countenance for all that is yet to come!
Until soon!
Eva
January 29, 2021
Dear Eva,
I just wandered into my office to write this letter, only to find our dog Marlowe sitting upright on the cozy chair in the corner staring pensively out the window. When I walked in, he looked over, as if to silently say, What? I live here, too, in response to my surprise at finding him there. He used to sit in my office with me regularly, but ever since the rest of the family has been trapped at home during the pandemic, I have learned where I stand.
HA! As if to prove my point, in the course of writing that short paragraph, Marlowe spotted Bill out the window returning home from his run. He jumped up to his feet, whined while he watched him come up the driveway, and then raced to stand by the office door until I opened it so he could run downstairs to greet him. Sheesh, so much for a bit of dog companionship!
I have had my kind of Friday—a day off from my J-O-B, but with childcare. I spent the quiet hours on personal projects, walks, and in conversation with an old friend. One of my current personal projects is gathering and sifting through examples of the work I have done professionally over the years. I find this kind of thing remarkably taxing, certainly on the entire-career scale but even on the what-did-you-do-this-week scale. It has me wondering with genuine curiosity how other human beings store and sort these sorts of things in their minds, how they have at the ready a comprehensive list of anecdotes and examples. Maybe it is just that this kind of chronicling is a kind of work that I never really considered as work, instead thinking naively that a running list would just form and stick naturally in my mind without any effort. Spoiler alert: it didn’t/doesn’t happen without effort, at least not for me. Is this, too, an outgrowth of me always running to the new blank page, rather than looking back and reflecting on where I have already tread? How do these sorts of backward-looking processes work for you?
This topic clearly ties back to the everyday amnesia we have discussed, and then to your point last week about us being almost like different versions of ourselves each new day. This resonates, and then it has me wondering about the implications. So often, we think about adding more to the pot—consuming more news, learning new topics. But if tomorrow is a new version of me, I could read the same article and have a wholly different response, like a chemical reaction based on slightly different ingredients. This week I actually restarted a book I had started just a few weeks ago. It was an experiment. Would it feel repetitive and tedious, or am I like the character Dory in Disney’s Finding Nemo (that’s our movie night selection this week so please forgive the kid movie reference) where every interaction is a completely fresh slate? The result was somewhere in-between. The text felt familiar, but it seemed to soak in differently in my brain. I wonder how many times I could repeat that cycle until it felt stale? Or is the mark of good writing that it is rich enough to hold the attention of the different versions of ourselves?
Over the years living in Iowa, I have become acquainted with an older man who does a regular walking loop through the neighborhood every day mid-morning. He is the kind of person you develop a fondness for based solely on his demeanor during passing chit chat—bright and cheery, looks you right in the eye, often somehow managing to drop a bit of genuine and clear-eyed wisdom into his small talk. For years, he would walk his daughter’s jolly golden retriever on this loop every day. I have felt emotional recently about the way in which we are gradually watching him age before our eyes. His gait has gotten slower, his steps more deliberate. He had a stroke a few years ago, which I know because we didn’t see him for awhile, and I saw a different man walking the same golden retriever. I asked him about the older man, and he confirmed that it was his father-in-law and said that he would relay my good wishes to him in the hospital. A few weeks or maybe months later, the older man was back to his morning walk ritual with the golden retriever. This continued nearly every day for another year or two, until one Monday recently when we saw him walking alone. He told us the dog had died abruptly over the weekend. These days the man walks with his daughter, often holding her arm. He has gotten quieter when we pass by, his concentration focused on staying on his feet on the icy sidewalk. There is something poetic about this man and his daily walks, and there is something about him that speaks to this notion of changing selves, but in a different way. The different versions of him are visible, yet there is a steady sameness to the tiny excerpt of him that I glimpse every day. I wonder, does he feel like a new version of himself when he wakes up on a day when the muscles feel a bit more weary than the last? Or does he feel like the same old self, with the body doing the changing?
It is now stretching into the late(ish) Friday evening, and I see your letter waiting patiently in my inbox and the couch calling for me to plop down upon it to curl up for a bit of Netflix. I know you had a wild and wooly week, and I am hoping you are well on your way to a more leisurely vibe by now. I look forward to reading your words!
Your friend,
Sarah