Wednesday, May 12: mischievous maverick

“What is the moment? We are only here, in the moment, if we share space with what we observe.”

I’m taking the day off. I just need to be done for a little while—a few hours even. Yesterday was the whimpering end of my classes for the semester, and I am settling into the lingering silence of no students before the riot of grading starts up tomorrow.

I am incapable of doing nothing, though. I admire people who nap or binge watch TV or sit on the couch and just relax. It’s not that I think it is a waste of time, I just don’t have the energy for it. I have to try to do nothing. I have to make arrangements to do nothing. The low buzz of something has momentum—there is always something—but nothing, well, that takes effort to make happen.

Perhaps the advice I need is in today’s epigraph: I need to “share space with what I observe.” Not change it or reorganize it or label it—just ride alongside my piles of grading, messy house, overflowing desk, unbrushed teeth, and unanswered emails. Observe, acknowledge, and move along.

All those things will be here tomorrow. I will be here tomorrow. But today will be gone tomorrow. So today and I are going to hang out for a while, perhaps sit on the couch, definitely drink some coffee. And those socks on the floor over there next to the empty cup beside the unopened mail? I’m enjoying the composition.