On single stages and single pages, new-month milestones, and not-so-quiet time
May 1, 2020
Dear Eva,
Just before I fired up this brand new google doc to write this letter, I had the great satisfaction of ripping the April page from my large tear-off desk calendar, and the corresponding satisfaction of filling in the dates on the brand new blank page that will now mark the month of May. Good god, I am weird! And I have bequeathed this weirdness to at least one of my children. During our morning learning time one of these past few days, Jonah expressed excitement when he realized we only had a day or two left of April. I asked if there was something specific he was looking forward to in May, and his answer made it clear that no, he was just feeling that same little pang of achievement that I feel when I mark off another milestone, however arbitrary.
Last week, Austin Kleon’s newsletter made a reference to the fact that we all need arbitrary stupid goals to keep us going. We are conscious beings floating through time without a real purpose, so we find ways to anchor ourselves and make sense of things in a zillion tiny ways. Some train for marathons, others feel good when they finish off the last of the Frosted Mini-Wheats so they can throw away the box. To each her own! And anyway, literally every goal is arbitrary if you zoom out far enough to see us as the little ants we are. I think I will take this a step farther to say that just about everything in our personal realities is somewhat arbitrary, right down to the people/animals/objects/places who end up making it into our zone of caring. I was thinking about the randomness of what each of us decides to care for and about recently when the kids and I released the four painted lady butterflies we had tended to since they arrived as tiny caterpillars in a small plastic container from my mom. It felt imperative that they at least make it out of our yard alive; each of us—me very much included—felt a commitment to the wellbeing of these critters. When one of them came back and landed on Simon’s finger, it felt like an affirmation of some sort of mutual bond. So yes, what we care about is arbitrary, too. As you put it last week, our relationships with each other and with the world are all about stories.
It is an interesting experience to become fully aware of this aspect of the human experience—this notion that so much of what feels important to us as we move through our days and our years is essentially arbitrary. What to do with this knowledge? Breaking out of constructed frameworks is, in many ways, no easier than time travel. Which is to say, I am not sure it is possible if one is to stay tethered to society. But there must be small ways to fold this knowledge into my consciousness, to at least help shape my perspective on things around the edges. If nothing else, it is empowering to know how much we all mold our own and each others’ worlds. I guess it is proof yet again that who we surround ourselves with matters. In many ways, maybe it’s what matters most of all?
A few hours have passed since I started this letter. I am back at it now that the kids are having “Quiet Time” together, which is a misnomer if I ever heard it. But they are occupied in a closed space, so I will take it. Bill and I both took the day off from work today. I was inspired for a respite earlier in the week as I jogged under the gorgeous blooming crabapple trees one evening, observing families out in yard chairs playing live music and couples on walks and kids running in the grass. I am often a hoarder of vacation days, but why! Way back in week 14, you called on us to spread the good moments throughout the year, rather than chunking all the joy into a few days over holidays or vacations. Rest assured, I am listening! So today, we have had a few small adventures at a lazy pace—traipsing through the woods near a public park, biking through a hilly cemetery, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Club Blizzards with my parents. Tonight, we are watching ET for Movie Night after we gobble Bill’s homemade pizza. Like last week, it is an objectively pleasant close to the week. But unlike last week, it has subjectively felt pleasant (and frankly downright lovely!) the whole day through.
You used the phrase last week, the business of these days, to describe your efforts to tick a few things off the to-do list and tend to your health. I highlighted those words. There is something quite clarifying about our realities right now. Many of the arbitrary stupid goals slip away at times like these, leaving only the arbitrary meaningful goals and the necessities.
Do what I need to do to keep the income flowing.
Be a good mother and partner to the people in my home.
Do what I can to stay connected to the people I love who are not in my home.
Chip away at a creative project or two.
There may be more I could/should do, but for now, I am keeping it quite simple. I have even scrapped my arbitrary self-imposed reading goals from my list—another casualty of the pandemic, particularly as our correspondence lately about novels got me thinking about how much I still think of reading books like to-do lists. It’s as if the visible sign of progress as my bookmark inches its way through the pages is just a temptation I cannot resist! I reflexively start thinking I am on a quest to finish, rather than just letting reading be an experience in and of itself. So I’m experimenting with taking reading off the goal list. It makes me nervous—will my brain atrophy? But what about the pleasure I have as I watch my running reading list get longer as I finish new books? Ack! We’ll see how this goes. Arbitrary goal-setting habits can be hard to break.
It feels like Saturday, and I am hoping you are having as relaxing of a close to your week as I am. If not, I hope tomorrow brings it in force. We are planting our garden this weekend, and for the first time, I am planning to participate in this. Starting to garden was on my arbitrary yearly goal list. Ha! This is getting embarrassing.
Happy Friday, my friend! I can hear that Not-So Quiet Time is over anyway, so I will — just got interrupted with a question as I was typing that I was about to be interrupted. Like clockwork.
I look forward to reading your letter tonight!
Yours,
Sarah
Friday May 1 2020
Dear Sarah,
I’m having another leisurely letter-writing evening at the close of a week, at the close of a Friday. I like when it’s my turn to post and I can sit with it up until the very last moment! This week there is still some sun streaming in at my window but it is behind a cloud that is itself behind a tree, so the light is more distributed, not quite so grand as the last time when I waxed on dreamily about sunny Friday nights. You know what, in hindsight, I don’t even think I waxed on in my letter as much as that sunny evening deserved. I think I took the opportunity to text you about the sunshine and then later to talk with you on the phone about it! Not just that the sun was shining, but that it felt so nice, and was such a bright, quiet close to the week. Now I am sitting outside on a day when the temperature reached past 70 degrees, drinking wine, eating chocolate, celebrating the close of another week.
I have been ambiently thinking this week about your letter of last week and the feeling you had of sometimes needing to be alone to feel good. That is a familiar kind of feeling. This week I was processing that feeling in a way where I realized that I've been enjoying, in some ways, not seeing everyone I know, not going out and having commitments and doing things. The space of memory is rich, and the things I have done out in the world come back to me regularly. While the big-picture global situation we are living in is still as awful and worrisome as ever, I'm pretty comfortable at home in my rituals, getting back into reading, taking life at a comfortable pace. I suppose it's not good to need to be reminded by a global pandemic that I can do what I want, lounge around and read books and stare into the distance. Externally generated self-imposed obligations are at a minimum at the moment, and I am just fine with that.
I was also reminded of past exchanges in our letter exchange, about our letter exchange, in which we relayed acknowledgments from other people we know who basically said, Are these letters for me? There is something that is still interesting to me about us putting our letters to each other online, technically public to anyone who could find them, though they are essentially a private conversation. There is something delicious about using the web in this way. There’s no reason we can’t! Part of the purpose of the web is obviously that it is public, that the words that make it online can be seen by others. Perhaps what we are doing is like living in a glass house? Perhaps what we are doing is best understood as a pavilion for viewing the surrounding landscape? When you live in a glass house everyone can see you, but you can see everyone, too. Who is seeing whom?
I haven't yet listened to the Tracy K Smith podcast you mentioned last week about Pandemic Time. I have had a similar feeling, not about the single stage of home, but that of the screen — I find that it can be overwhelming (or is it underwhelming?) to try to have so many experiences on a computer screen: work typing, work reading, fun typing, fun reading, creative research, work research, art viewing, family photo viewing. Book reading. Anything reading. Looking, seeing, meeting. I've savored reading books on paper these days, more than ever (and that is saying something), holding them in my hands. I am sympathetic toward those people who haven't stacked up dozens of books to read in some unknown future moment, a moment like a global pandemic. I recently learned the Japanese word tsundoku, the act of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them. Yes, please. I have been committing tsundoku for years and now my books are presenting themselves to me like the tulips blooming in the backyard: fresh, unexpected, different. A mark of a new season. New book covers to turn back, pages waiting here for me all along. Somehow the single stage of home does not bother me as much as the single page of the screen. I don't know if perhaps this means that I am not so many different selves? I am generally one self whether I’m working or not working, I think. I'm certainly living on fewer stages these days than ever before, but when I do land on different ones I find I'm also more comfortable being my same self. I think this is a version of shedding unwanted coats, as you say.
Also on the topic of Pandemic Time, I’ve been interested to find that even in the relatively short span of a couple of fistfuls of weeks that we’ve been experiencing in a socially distanced fashion, I’ve moved through phases, started and finished ways of spending my days. I’m already taking a break from my rabid word puzzling of just a couple of weeks ago! The days are long enough that a stretch of dedicated attention on any one activity can feel robust enough to consider that activity tackled. My many books linger as portals into any number of different worlds, though!
An aside that I wanted to mention: Simon and Mary Ruefle share a birthday!
My letter feels a bit relaxed tonight as I myself relax at the end of this week, and I’m okay with that! The sun has set, there is a warm-and-cooling breeze coming in the window. It’s still Friday night. Sending you and yours warm wishes for a lovely warm weekend!
Until soon,
Your friend,
Eva