I love James Lileks’ mellow Bleat today – especially the part where he describes one of his hobbies as: “Sitting at the kitchen table with no radio or music playing, quietly photoshopping scans of old soft-drink ads.”
But its true. It makes me calm. I enjoy it because it doesnt matter. The bane of any life is a lack of things that matter, but the other bane of modern life is an excess of things that matter too much.
God! Yes! Exactly! I do not want a life filled with stuff that doesn’t matter – that’s when everything looks cold and grey, and you wonder “what the hell is the POINT??” – but to ONLY have a life filled with stuff that matters? In a ponderous life-changing challenging way? Sheesh. No thanks.
I have a friend who never gives herself leisure time. It never occurs to her to just do something randomly because she loves to do it. She never ever just sits around, doing nothing, or “quietly photoshopping scans of old soft-drink ads” – or whatever meaningless thing it is that floats her boat. She would never “waste” an hour like that. She is always worried she is not doing enough to further her career, to become physically fit, etc. etc. She’s always revising her cover letters, reading the classifieds, going for a run … She never does nothing. She’s a great friend, and we’ve talked about this a lot. Her hard-task-master attitude gives a certain grim humorlessness to her work, it doesn’t look like she’s having all that much FUN. Her eye is TOO on the ball, if that makes sense.
My first boyfriend was like that, too. Always working on stuff, building stuff, racing around … our vacations were frenetic nightmares. I just want to read, and go for swims, and drink ice coffee and get pedicures … He couldn’t really get that. Which is fine – no need for him to change to MY way … I think all of that constant-activity was, for him, the equivalent of Lileks’ photoshopping old soda-pop ads. It was calming for him. But it drove me absolutely insane. We should have taken separate vacations.
I have a lot of stuff in my life that matters, that I feel I have to pay attention to. There are big questions to ask, big issues to consider …
But there’s also nothing like a grey and rainy afternoon, sitting around my dimly lit apartment, doing things that might not really matter, but that fill me with great joy and yes, like Lileks says, help me stay “calm”.
I remember when I first moved into my apartment, the one I live in now, I had these reveling moments of weird freedom – I had just come from living with someone for 8 years. Now she was a great friend, and we gave each other mucho space … never any problems … but there were certain things I probably would have held back from doing, in her presence … because … well. It is a little bit crazy. Like watching Bringing Up Baby all the way through, then rewinding it, and watching it all the way through again. With printed-out reviews of the film, and essays about the film and about the screwball-comedy-genre spread about the couch. That kind of stuff.
I really realized that I was living ALONE when I found myself, at 1:30 in the morning one night, sitting in a chair, watching Some Like It Hot, remote-control in hand, with Cameron Crowe’s book Conversations with Billy Wilder open on my lap … reading about the filming of all the scenes in the movie – then watching each scene … rewinding to notice certain things Wilder had pointed out … sometimes rewinding the scene 4 times …
I probably would keep a lid on that stuff if I lived with someone.
Who knows. Perhaps true intimacy is letting somebody in to your crazy little world where you do stuff like that.
Writing extensive essays here about Cary Grant makes me feel so damn CALM, you have No. Idea. Because it doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters about it is that I love to do it. And sometimes that’s enough.
“Perhaps true intimacy is letting somebody in to your crazy little world where you do stuff like that.”
I think you nailed it, Sheila. Love is acceptance and shamelessness, regarding our idiosyncracies especially. That’s trust, too … funny, I never found these three things so completely synonymous and interchangeable until reading you now.
Figuring this out in no way guarantees success, “love shows that God has a sense of humor” as Joe Jackson says.
“Because it doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters about it is that I love to do it. And sometimes that’s enough.”
Right on, Red!
(But change “sometimes” to “most of the time”)
“Who knows. Perhaps true intimacy is letting somebody in to your crazy little world where you do stuff like that.”
Like Dano said, that’s exactly it. And one of the great joys of a beginning relationship is to share one of your weird little personality quirks, and have the other person respond favorably. And one of the sad things is when you hold out one of those odd little things about you and just get a blank stare in return.
And you know, maybe that’s my (and a lot of other Embittered Single People’s) problem: we’re too afraid to start sharing those weird interests and likes, because we’ve had too many blank stares in the past.
As for doing things that “don’t matter” – that’s very important. I’m a college professor and a researcher and I’m constantly getting evaluated on my performance at work, being told what to keep doing and what to change. It’s a real relief to come home on the weekend and play with fabric or knit or write silly stories that I never have to show anyone, and to know that it’s something all mine, and no one can ever tell me it sucks or that they don’t get it, because it doesn’t matter. It’s like a secret part of me.
I’d say it has more to do with one’s personality type than much else. Some people are just naturally driven to do as much as they possibly can with their lives. Sitting around doing mindless stuff just doesn’t happen for them as they need to be doing something grand whenever possible.
I’m a lot like that myself. Sure, I could sit around on the weekend and collect stamps or build model airplanes, but racing cars is much more fulfilling to me.
Actually, I wrote something on this a while ago, where some people have a personality that is content with a gradual line of excitement and fulfillment, where every “big thing” is taken as a treat and savored, while others live life in a sort of sine wave of bigger and better, where the next “big thing” is only a stepping stone to something even bigger, interrupted occasionally by the lows when something doesn’t work out.
Different strokes, I guess.
Mr. Lion – You wrote “just naturally driven to do as much as they possibly can with their lives” …
Of course. I’m not saying I sit around like a lump and don’t want to “do as much as I possibly can” with my life. I’m saying I enjoy watching Cary Grant movies twice in a row, just because I want to, and it gives me pleasure. Like I described in the post – I have a friend who never does anything JUST for pleasure. She feels that that is time wasted. Racing cars is what floats your boat. I love that. Cary Grant film-fests float mine.
Oh, I know. I’m not saying one is better than the other, just that people tend to perceive fulfillment differently.
Ah. Yes. That’s the struggle first boyfriend and I had. He wanted me to find different things fulfilling.
I just love the image of Lileks having his Zen moments photo-shopping old soda pop ads. Heh!!
So what’s so weird about watching a movie, rewinding and watching it again?? I ask you…