Not Going Anywhere
Sunday night, and another work week threatens. I know I'm not supposed to have that attitude. I'm supposed to believe that "it's all good." In fact, when co-workers greet me at the beginning of every Friday with "Happy Friday," I'm the kind of self-righteous person who gets silently annoyed (although I'm much too self-actualized, I tell myself, to display my annoyance). In the grand scheme of things, Friday is just another day on the calendar, no better or worse than any other. And if we're living our lives right, we appreciate each day for what it is: a gift from the universe and the creator, another chance to start over, to try to get it right while knowing and accepting that I'll always fall short. I'm supposed to greet each day as an opportunity to become a better person.
And part of me is doing that, breathing my way through the end of this day as I celebrate each minute of life and revel in the sensation of living itself.
Then there's the other part of me. It's the part that keeps looking at the clock down in the lower right hand corner of my computer screen, the part that watches each minute tick by, moving me one minute closer to bedtime, which moves me closer to waking up tomorrow morning, which moves me closer to the slow slog through a shower, something like a breakfast, and the 25-minute drive through morning traffic to work. I can picture myself passing through the doors, arriving at my desk, and trying to rouse the energy to make it through another day of tasks that, despite my best effort, hold absolutely no intrinsic value for me whatsoever.
This is not how a person seeking to renew his sense of himself is supposed to think. I'm not supposed to say to myself that if a 40-something has to do work that doesn't excite him, at least he should be making good money at it. A pilgrim's supposed to celebrate each step as one more act moving him toward his goal. Instead, I can't help but wonder sometimes if something went wrong in my 20-year plan.
I'm a sucker for transformation stories, for the whole idea of redemption. But today while my wife and I were watching "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly" (give it up for sweet-faced Bob Abernathy), they did a story on the revival of anti-semitism in Germany and quoted Faulkner who said, "The past is never dead; it's not even past." And if that's true, how's a guy supposed to change? I'm still dragging around the skinny, sickly, scared little kid with glasses, the devout teenager who thought he might want to be a priest (I know, the vows of chastity and obedience? who was I kidding?), the college dropout, the insecure husband, the deeply committed involved and terrified parent, the grad student, the therapy patient, the divorcee. All of those guys are rattling around in my head and body, which might help account for my somewhat rotund shape--about the only thing they're good for.
I can't help feeling sometimes that I need a mediator more than I need to go off (or in) in search of the sacred. I can't even tell if I know what that means: "the sacred."
But then, just when I'm about to give up, I look across my desk at the stack of papers and books on top of an old IBM Selectrix II typewriter I picked up at Goodwill a couple of years ago. It's heavy and metal and green--the typewriter I mean--and I had to chase all over town to find a typing element and ribbons for it. And I see this clean, white paper, 11x17, that I recycled from the trash at work. Beautiful, spotless paper. Unmarked. My eyes can almost feel the smoothness as they skim the surface of it. I can hear the sound that paper makes under your fingers, or the friction of it when you grasp a corner to turn the page. I see the glow of it, the lamplight bouncing off of it like the white-hot of a furnace.
Then I follow the grain of the wood on the surface of my desk, hear the rasp of my finger going over the whiskers on my unshaved face, feel the dull ache in my right knee sore from an evening run. You ever have those moments when you can see or hear or feel the outline of each object around you set off and separate in space and time?
I think when I say "the sacred," that must be what I'm talking about. At least I haven't found a better way to name it. But hell if I know where that fits into a pile of work on my desk at the office, a school potluck for one of my kids, enforcing a rule with another, laundry, cooking dinner, finishing some drywall repair in a bedroom, getting gas for the car and checking the tire pressure, and the ten thousand things that insinuate themselves into the space between one breath and the next, one thought and wild firing of synapses that gives birth to another.
I know tonight's done; I know tomorrow is Monday. We'll see what I manage to do with the next chance I have to get it right. Whatever traveling this pilgrim is going to do, it'll have to happen right here.
And part of me is doing that, breathing my way through the end of this day as I celebrate each minute of life and revel in the sensation of living itself.
Then there's the other part of me. It's the part that keeps looking at the clock down in the lower right hand corner of my computer screen, the part that watches each minute tick by, moving me one minute closer to bedtime, which moves me closer to waking up tomorrow morning, which moves me closer to the slow slog through a shower, something like a breakfast, and the 25-minute drive through morning traffic to work. I can picture myself passing through the doors, arriving at my desk, and trying to rouse the energy to make it through another day of tasks that, despite my best effort, hold absolutely no intrinsic value for me whatsoever.
This is not how a person seeking to renew his sense of himself is supposed to think. I'm not supposed to say to myself that if a 40-something has to do work that doesn't excite him, at least he should be making good money at it. A pilgrim's supposed to celebrate each step as one more act moving him toward his goal. Instead, I can't help but wonder sometimes if something went wrong in my 20-year plan.
I'm a sucker for transformation stories, for the whole idea of redemption. But today while my wife and I were watching "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly" (give it up for sweet-faced Bob Abernathy), they did a story on the revival of anti-semitism in Germany and quoted Faulkner who said, "The past is never dead; it's not even past." And if that's true, how's a guy supposed to change? I'm still dragging around the skinny, sickly, scared little kid with glasses, the devout teenager who thought he might want to be a priest (I know, the vows of chastity and obedience? who was I kidding?), the college dropout, the insecure husband, the deeply committed involved and terrified parent, the grad student, the therapy patient, the divorcee. All of those guys are rattling around in my head and body, which might help account for my somewhat rotund shape--about the only thing they're good for.
I can't help feeling sometimes that I need a mediator more than I need to go off (or in) in search of the sacred. I can't even tell if I know what that means: "the sacred."
But then, just when I'm about to give up, I look across my desk at the stack of papers and books on top of an old IBM Selectrix II typewriter I picked up at Goodwill a couple of years ago. It's heavy and metal and green--the typewriter I mean--and I had to chase all over town to find a typing element and ribbons for it. And I see this clean, white paper, 11x17, that I recycled from the trash at work. Beautiful, spotless paper. Unmarked. My eyes can almost feel the smoothness as they skim the surface of it. I can hear the sound that paper makes under your fingers, or the friction of it when you grasp a corner to turn the page. I see the glow of it, the lamplight bouncing off of it like the white-hot of a furnace.
Then I follow the grain of the wood on the surface of my desk, hear the rasp of my finger going over the whiskers on my unshaved face, feel the dull ache in my right knee sore from an evening run. You ever have those moments when you can see or hear or feel the outline of each object around you set off and separate in space and time?
I think when I say "the sacred," that must be what I'm talking about. At least I haven't found a better way to name it. But hell if I know where that fits into a pile of work on my desk at the office, a school potluck for one of my kids, enforcing a rule with another, laundry, cooking dinner, finishing some drywall repair in a bedroom, getting gas for the car and checking the tire pressure, and the ten thousand things that insinuate themselves into the space between one breath and the next, one thought and wild firing of synapses that gives birth to another.
I know tonight's done; I know tomorrow is Monday. We'll see what I manage to do with the next chance I have to get it right. Whatever traveling this pilgrim is going to do, it'll have to happen right here.
posted by A Pilgrim at 9:38 PM
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