Has anyone seen my ass? I am suddenly so busy I can’t find it with both hands. I was just telling someone how slackalicious my life is; that must have jinxed it.
I’m busy at work. I’m behind with my other work. I have until today to finish this composition Gamma and I are working on. I have a draft of a children’s story to finish editing. I have a bunch of other manuscripts in first or second draft. I have a bunch of other administrative crap to do, like renew Gamma’s American passport. Technology in various manifestations is conspiring against me.
Yesterday I thought, I would like a simple life. Where the only tools I need are a broom, a hammer, and a saw. Today I think, I would probably need an axe too, to split wood.
Tomorrow I will think, a knife for cooking, and clippers as well, to prune things in the garden, and there we have it: moving parts. Scissors, perhaps. And although the idea of “no vehicles – if I need dto go somewhere, walk,” is nice, I would someday wish for a bicycle. And a week after that, I would be booting up a computer “just to check my email”. Shortly after that, I would be reading the directions on the power washer that I otherwise can’t assemble, to squirt something off something else.
It’s an arms race.
Dude!! I soooo understand!! I thought, as one grew older, life sort of adjusted to a slower rhythm. HA! Not bloody likely. For some strange, inexplicable reason, it just seems to go faster and faster…and I need more and more technology just to keep up. *sigh*
My father could get into this. A cabin in the woods by a lake. A canoe. A window to watch the birds at his bird feeder as he eats breakfast. He doesn’t care about TV or the internet, but he’d be lost without The New York Times every day; so there’d have to be a store he could canoe to that carried it. If not, he’d need a bicycle; oh, and scissors to cut articles out of the The New York Times…seems like there’s no escaping it…we’re back to things with moving parts.
well,i would have my cello, and a notebook and a nice fountain pen in my simple life…
plus andras schiff and steven isserlis playing bach on an ipod..
plus all the books i haven’t read because i have been blogging…
there are days like this. they do exist, when julian paints and i practice and write and the washing up stays undone.
i am reminded of annie dillard HAVE YOU READ ANNIE DILLARD, MAN? who says that the way we spend our days is the wat we spend our lives; that a day spent reading is not necessarily a good day, but a LIFe spent reading…
(do the math)
a day spent composing a piece of music with your daughter is a good day.
Hey, I dreamed last night that you made bug shirts available, and they were awesome. Make my dreams come true, please.
wroking on it.
Twice, I’ve surrendered to the temptation of living light.
Buying all that stuff again is expensive! If it’s even available!