Nothing worth reading
I have a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon on a bulletin board over my desk, one of many cartoons my mother is in the habit of sending along with miscellaneous mail and packages. It's from the Sunday paper and the entire space (quite large, since it used to be at the stop of the front page) is one large cel showing the two erstwhile friends careening down a hillside in what looks like a Radio Flyer. Hobbes says to Calvin, looking rather morose, "Well, summer is almost over. It sure went quick didn't it?" To which Calvin wisely answers, "Yep. There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want."
I was trying to think of what to write tonight, and failing in inspiration utterly. I am filled with a dull and pointless panic about my future which unfortunately wastes my time in blind agitation and prevents me from having any sort of creative, constructive thoughts. These first two paragraphs have probably taken me as much time to write as most of my last post (granted, it wasn't long, but I think the point is evident). Panic gives you time to do lots of nothing, and yet it's not a satisfying kind of nothing. I find the afternoons when I stare out the window and watch the planes land, one every minute it seems, pass much more easily and quickly than five minutes spent with a deer-in-the-headlights brain, watching my email inbox in hopes of getting a new message from someone that I can respond to, and ignore my present plight. How do we qualify nothingness? For it is true that someone spending an afternoon doing nothing can either be quite pleased with this occurrence or be quite upset that their time has been wasted. I can spend two consecutive Saturdays this way and feel differently about each of them. I remember my sister writing a five page paper on nothing in King Lear (about Cordelia's speech when King Lear asks the daughters to tell him how much they love him) although I never read it and can't comment on the details. Clearly there is a lot to be said about nothing, and I won't manage to do the topic justice here.
I have been wondering recently how many people are actually doing nothing when they say that they are. Calvin is, after all, wagoning down the hillside with his tiger, and I would consider my nighttime sledding excursion to be something similarly. I read an article about how people are happier and have less stress when they take some time for things like meditation - perhaps the truest form of doing nothing. The article praised the value of time spent without constant sensory input or metal activity. Hence if you listen to music while you walk to class or do a crossword puzzle while you eat lunch you have just lost the nothingness of that time and added value to it. Does staring out the window at my planes count? I do watch them as far as I can, and often count the time between planes. They seem to land and take off in batches, appropriate for the ease of air traffic control, I suppose. The fact that I have learned from this, or at least made a supposition, suggests that I have been doing something, however nothinglike it seems.
My third year of college contained a class on Storytelling which I had a lot of fun with. At one point we read a short story by Hemingway, called The Killers in which, as we all protested in class, "nothing happens!" We meant by this that there was no real character development or even a normal plot line. The action of a man getting killed in no way changes the exterior world, and hardly changes the interior world either. The man is still sitting in the armchair in his apartment only instead of sitting rigid in fear of his death, I suppose he sits in the rigor mortis of the death he feared so much. We had mutually agreed in class that a story per se, and not just a work of fiction, needed at the very least a beginning, middle, and end, which were more than just a progression of plot. We needed progression of attitude, of feeling, of spirit. The end needed to indicate a different situation from the beginning. Under this criterion I suppose Samuel Beckett's play Endgame would fall under the same non-story heading. Nothing happens. I wonder what I am writing at this moment would fall in the Hemingway/Beckett category of fiction (or nonfiction) or if it could possibly fall with the range of acceptable storytelling. I suppose to earn that moniker my current writerly self-awareness is not sufficient but I shall have to show some kind of change or new understanding to take back with me. I think the chances are slim to none, but perhaps, being within the world I create, I can't truly judge for myself. And yet I suppose I understand this world, to the extent anyone can, the best out of us all. Funny how life works like that.
I will certainly proclaim at this point that I have written a whole lot of nothing. Pointless drivel again, although this time compelled not by exhaustion but by a lack of inspiration. Interesting to note that panic has various forms also. I do quite well with the panic of a paper being due the next day, and usually manage to turn out a credible piece of writing. And yet here, when my panic is contrary to my goal (or at least not aligned) I find myself stuck, trapped in the mire of a seething mind. Like trying to pull a mastodon out of tar.
I am tempted to delete this entire page and start entirely over, but I fear I would only have the courage to write about my failure. But keeping this, and publishing it, I feel a certain sense of shame. Where is the wordplay? Where is my childlike excitement at the first flakes of snow? Where is the rich comfort of recollection? Why instead must I resort to rhetorical questions, which I have been taught means the writer is so unsure of their point that it cannot be committed to a sentence? Can one be uncertain about nothing?
I was trying to think of what to write tonight, and failing in inspiration utterly. I am filled with a dull and pointless panic about my future which unfortunately wastes my time in blind agitation and prevents me from having any sort of creative, constructive thoughts. These first two paragraphs have probably taken me as much time to write as most of my last post (granted, it wasn't long, but I think the point is evident). Panic gives you time to do lots of nothing, and yet it's not a satisfying kind of nothing. I find the afternoons when I stare out the window and watch the planes land, one every minute it seems, pass much more easily and quickly than five minutes spent with a deer-in-the-headlights brain, watching my email inbox in hopes of getting a new message from someone that I can respond to, and ignore my present plight. How do we qualify nothingness? For it is true that someone spending an afternoon doing nothing can either be quite pleased with this occurrence or be quite upset that their time has been wasted. I can spend two consecutive Saturdays this way and feel differently about each of them. I remember my sister writing a five page paper on nothing in King Lear (about Cordelia's speech when King Lear asks the daughters to tell him how much they love him) although I never read it and can't comment on the details. Clearly there is a lot to be said about nothing, and I won't manage to do the topic justice here.
I have been wondering recently how many people are actually doing nothing when they say that they are. Calvin is, after all, wagoning down the hillside with his tiger, and I would consider my nighttime sledding excursion to be something similarly. I read an article about how people are happier and have less stress when they take some time for things like meditation - perhaps the truest form of doing nothing. The article praised the value of time spent without constant sensory input or metal activity. Hence if you listen to music while you walk to class or do a crossword puzzle while you eat lunch you have just lost the nothingness of that time and added value to it. Does staring out the window at my planes count? I do watch them as far as I can, and often count the time between planes. They seem to land and take off in batches, appropriate for the ease of air traffic control, I suppose. The fact that I have learned from this, or at least made a supposition, suggests that I have been doing something, however nothinglike it seems.
My third year of college contained a class on Storytelling which I had a lot of fun with. At one point we read a short story by Hemingway, called The Killers in which, as we all protested in class, "nothing happens!" We meant by this that there was no real character development or even a normal plot line. The action of a man getting killed in no way changes the exterior world, and hardly changes the interior world either. The man is still sitting in the armchair in his apartment only instead of sitting rigid in fear of his death, I suppose he sits in the rigor mortis of the death he feared so much. We had mutually agreed in class that a story per se, and not just a work of fiction, needed at the very least a beginning, middle, and end, which were more than just a progression of plot. We needed progression of attitude, of feeling, of spirit. The end needed to indicate a different situation from the beginning. Under this criterion I suppose Samuel Beckett's play Endgame would fall under the same non-story heading. Nothing happens. I wonder what I am writing at this moment would fall in the Hemingway/Beckett category of fiction (or nonfiction) or if it could possibly fall with the range of acceptable storytelling. I suppose to earn that moniker my current writerly self-awareness is not sufficient but I shall have to show some kind of change or new understanding to take back with me. I think the chances are slim to none, but perhaps, being within the world I create, I can't truly judge for myself. And yet I suppose I understand this world, to the extent anyone can, the best out of us all. Funny how life works like that.
I will certainly proclaim at this point that I have written a whole lot of nothing. Pointless drivel again, although this time compelled not by exhaustion but by a lack of inspiration. Interesting to note that panic has various forms also. I do quite well with the panic of a paper being due the next day, and usually manage to turn out a credible piece of writing. And yet here, when my panic is contrary to my goal (or at least not aligned) I find myself stuck, trapped in the mire of a seething mind. Like trying to pull a mastodon out of tar.
I am tempted to delete this entire page and start entirely over, but I fear I would only have the courage to write about my failure. But keeping this, and publishing it, I feel a certain sense of shame. Where is the wordplay? Where is my childlike excitement at the first flakes of snow? Where is the rich comfort of recollection? Why instead must I resort to rhetorical questions, which I have been taught means the writer is so unsure of their point that it cannot be committed to a sentence? Can one be uncertain about nothing?
posted by trophywife at 8:13 PM
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