Myself As Another

My friend Caroline with a cautionary tale about personal trainers:

Easily, my best friend in the world is Amy. Years ago, when we were roommates in Boulder, I had this recurring impulse (which I’m pretty sure she found both annoying and endearing) to throw out all of the furniture in our apartment and have everyone sit on cushions in the living room. Of course that was ridiculous. Sort of. I would have liked it, but it wouldn’t have been the most practical thing in the world.

I just wanted to make life more simple.

I still have that impulse. And lately, she’s been going through some tough times. No, you don’t get the details. Sorry. Just tough times, same as everyone else goes through tough times. Those details are not important, so don’t get started thinking about them. No, really, stop. Back to my story. So tough times. For me, too. Sort of like the mean reds at the bottom of the ocean. Ugh.

And then there’s all this clutter in my life. So many “things” in my house. Things that I care about. But caring, for me, I guess, is a sort of action. A habit. So I care about the things around me. And with so many things around me two things happen. The first is that this relationship to my surroundings becomes an atmosphere. No, “becomes and atmosphere” isn’t right at all. At first it seemed right, but no, “becomes,” is wrong. “Atmosphere” is right, though. But there’s always an atmosphere to any living space. Sort of like weather. Clear skies can be great, but they can also foster an abundance of intensity or lack of texture. Clouds offer objects for our imagination, but often harbor rain. And fog can be dangerous to ships and planes, but no atmosphere wraps you in its quieting blanket like fog. So every living space has a weather, an atmosphere. And mine has been an abundance of investment, I think, for too long. I sense that it’s become an oppression.

And maybe I’ve started to feel that way about most of the rest of my life. My dedication to my dissertation. My incessant preoccupation with one woman, then another. My tendency to watch every episode of every season of a television show once I decide to invest in it. Each of these things is important to me. I could add cooking, bicycling, carpentry, digital production, movies, an endless book of poems I’ve been working on for years. And so life is cluttered, much like my house. And I long for simplicity. For less.

I consider any one of the things I care about, and wish that I could cut other things from my life to make more room to concentrate on it. And then I walk into another room–on my way to the bathroom, or another cup of coffee, or out the front door–and I’m confronted with another “something” about which I care deeply. What to do? Tough.

And I think lately, I’ve been trying to avoid making decisions about what’s going to be “in” my life, and what’s going to be (gulp) “out.”

What I know for sure is that Amy will be “in,” and that some things need to be tossed to make more room for here in my heart. Maybe that’s what it is. My heart is cluttered. Maybe it’s not my mind at all.

So, I’ll have to get started tossing things out. No, not the couch. But something. And then something else. To change the room. To clear the air.

And I suppose this means saying goodbye to some things about which I thought I really cared. Any probably did. But can’t anymore.

Like one of my favorite blogs, Zen Habits, suggests, I’ll have to start with a blank slate. Start exploring the ways I understand my priorities.

The Plan

Start with a blank sheet of paper. Record one priority. Then another. In no particular order, a list.

One commitment competing with another for space on the same page. The page will likely be cluttered. Likely crowded.

And then, like I wanted to with that old couch in that Boulder apartment, I’ll toss something out.

And something remaining will get more room. And I’ll toss something else. And the air will clear a bit more.

Until the page looks like something I can live with.

And then I’ll start figuring out how carve this new life out of the old.

Slow. Patient. Determined. Confident. Breathing. Deeply.

Maybe productive. Maybe focused again.

Maybe at peace.

Here’s a text that I did for my friend Daniel and his family. He’s an amazing writer, and he’s chronicled some very, very difficult times he’s gone through with his family. His blog is titled: Followed Lingling as She Gave Lymphoma a Beatdown. It’s just about the most beautiful, tragic, and hopeful thing I’ve ever read. It will change your life. Really, it will.

I wrote this story quite a while before he started his blog. He and his wife were pregnant with their daughter, Lydia, and he asked a bunch of his friends to record something for his daughter for when she was older. He asked relatives to write something to his daughter, and then record it when they came out to visit him. I took the opportunity to make a digital story for a good friend. Here’s that story.

For other digital texts I’ve produced, please visit the Digital Media Texts page here on this blog.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, or want to link to something (especially of your own) that you see as relevant or related, please do leave a comment or link here. I’ll do my best to respond to everything as quickly as I can. Thanks. T.