Small Matters
On most days, energy squeezes from my hip sockets and my shoulder blades push me through. I’m gregarious, straightforward, my hail-fellow-well-met veneer mostly sticking onto my timid base layer. When that timid base starts to swell, “reflective” swings over to “uncertain.” Doubt repeats on me like Aunt Mae’s stuffed bell peppers. I might be pulsing along, in my new found skin when it catches me. “Why do you sit at home, writing this shit? Why aren’t you going to street fairs or raising dahlias or riding a mountain bike to the top of the world, around the lake and home again? That’s fun. This? This is nothing. You know, you never did learn French.”
True, we all need a push sometimes, but not doubt, thank you. Most times, I’m comfortable here at home, with and without my friends. I do whatever seems to be most important to me, even the laundry. Shit—that’s pathetic—but I’m getting used to it.
You see, I’m no longer young enough to try everything, but I’m old enough to try anything. I’m probably allergic to knitting, mysteries, gardening and organized fun. I’m too old and too young for some things anymore: too old to pretend I like those things I really don’t; too young to stop trying new things, even if they might not work for me.
It’s a devilment of opposites. I long for structure and I love spontaneity. I’ve no need to be boxed in, but I build boxes faster than I know what to do with them. Anything and nothing goes—me, them, it, elsewhere and likewise. It’s art versus laundry—sure that’s an old and easy battle. But now it’s also art in laundry, and hell, just laundry. It’s my joy, my fantasy, my passion. And when the worm unwinds, it’s my loneliness.
The fretful details—the small steps that build all the Romes—send me running, fearful of cog-dom and futility, threatened by brittleness and loneliness. The details might want hours, days even. They might seize control and swallow up all my time and creative bandwidth. “Tidy up, pay the bills, read the mail.” Some do these things well, with graceful routines that leave time for brandy and laughter. Some avoid them altogether. I desire both and do neither. When I finally turn to the ledger and account them their due, that’s when I notice false, brittle orderliness. Then that corner slips away to avalanche.
Of course it’s all perspective. The very grandest matters are just a series of small tasks that take attention, routine, method. Great thoughts and dreams require accounting and attention to detail. But when this starts to feel like a cog-in-the-works process, I sigh out precursor-despair. Tasks may be delicious, with their well-crossed lists. They may offer a place to hide. But whether I’ve embraced them as a hiding place or as tasks well-done, the insularity of small matters whimpers with interstitial loneliness. “Can’t he kiss away the fearsome details?” Instead, the powder cloud swirls around me and I’m lost in it.
Someday they’ll find me out, those people who never knew to wonder, but suddenly do because they saw the feature expose. They had been busy grilling wienies and tossing softballs, riding their mountain bikes and digging their dahlias. They kayaked, spoke French and made love—or thought they did. They sang “Jesus, Hallelujah” and crocheted potholders, never giving me a thought, I know. But now, they’re a little curious. “Who does that?” they wonder, in that distract-able moment of our collective ADD.
They didn’t understand why I sat at home, quietly minding my own business or why I looked wildly for my own business, again and again, in the comfort and newness of my middle-ages. They didn’t need to ponder why I had dressers with someone else’s crap still in them.
Who will reveal me? The hungry writer, hunting down one of those delicious stories of the weird—I mean everyman–crawling brilliantly through the wormhole of obscurity? Or is it the archeologist coming to rescue me from the avalanche of loneliness in small matters.
And who will cover my ass? Frazzle, you little devil. Finding, minding, listing, insisting. I love you; now why can’t we just get along?
You and your obsessions, compulsions and fears—you keep me working and reworking it to death sometimes, chaining me to the computer screen just so you’ll know I’m hard at it. You’ve got me grinding away, afraid I’ll lose my nerve, my reserve, you fearful, frantic Frazzle.
You think I might just get lost in a sea of chocolate, red wine and New Yorker articles, a lazy day in bed, a gad about town. I bet you worry I’ll polish up my passport and forget to come home. You’re so jealous of all the things I might decide to do, sometimes you won’t even let me put away the dishes. Do you think I’ll be seduced by the dishwasher just to avoid writing? But that’s how it is with you, Frazzle. You control freak.
I know you mean well. You get the bills paid and help me find the desk beneath the rubble. You sort and stack little pots of this and that, all fluffed and alphabetized: get well; happy birthday; be on-time; connect the dots. You’ve got my backseat ready for anything that could arise today and then the next. Sometimes, my calendar jumps a whole week, I’m so damn prepared.
Thanks for your order-from-chaos, the full plate of work, a comprehensible accounting system. I do need you; I am thankful for the tasks you push me through.
And now Frazzle, having accorded you something of your due and thinking kindly on you, could I ask your favor in return? Please, lighten up. Let me slow, slip, tumble and squeak along the normal pleasures of the day, breathing a bit of air. Yes, I will respect you—dare I say expect you—in the morning. You’ll be waiting for me at four a.m.—the anxiety hour. But just now, let’s have us another glass of wine, why don’t we.
