I hate routine.
I used to pray that if I was consistent enough with any part of my day that somehow it would become natural. Prayer didn’t cut it.
For me, there’s nothing close to natural about waking up at the same time, or blocking out my writing, or brushing my teeth at the same time.
I thought that perhaps being away from other people, responsibilities, work, would leave me craving an armature for my blending days.
But it didn’t. I wasn’t uneasy. I didn’t feel the usual guilt that comes with self-perceived “unproductivity.” I thought back to Jenny Odell’s Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock.
“Maybe "the point" isn't to live more, in the literal sense of a longer or more productive life, but rather, to be more alive in any given moment—a movement outward and across, rather than shooting forward on a narrow, lonely track.”
Maybe my lack of routine was chasing that feeling of being alive, of serendipitous moments, of chance. Even still, I fought myself. I tried to rebrand routine into ritual, ritual into rhythm. But I didn’t seem to buy that either.
I resorted to studying routines, reading page after page of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. I learned that:
“Patricia Highsmith’s favorite technique to ease herself into the right frame of mind for work was to sit on her bed surrounded by cigarettes, ashtray, matches, a mug of coffee, a doughnut and an accompanying saucer of sugar. She had to avoid any sense of discipline and make the act of writing as pleasurable as possible.”
And
Maya Angelou has never been able to write at home. “I try to keep home very pretty,” she said, “and I can’t work in a pretty surrounding. It throws me.” As a result, she has always worked in hotel or motel rooms, the more anonymous the better.
And
Phillip Roth read till all hours if he wanted to. “If I get up at five and I can’t sleep and I want to work, I go out and I go to work. So I work, I’m on call. I’m like a doctor and it’s an emergency room. And I’m the emergency.”
But no other artist's quirks seemed to fit the glove. I gave in. I didn’t map my time.
In those unstructured hours I found a feeling that I thought would be harder to restore—that inexplicable wave of desire to create. Maybe, that was it. That feeling of aliveness that Odell nods to. It came over me day after day. Calling me to the page. I started reading Annie Dillard's “The Writing Life”:
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days…A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.
I found myself in a pattern of sorts. One that felt positively untethered to productivity. Perhaps that's what birthed the calling.
Some days I’d ignore it—opting to go on a walk, or down to the town.
Some days I’d give in.
I’ve since returned to New York. And although I’ve managed to hold on to that feeling, yet the quiet internal nagging that tells me that life would be better structured has returned.
I gave in to the opposing team. I’ve decided to try it out. To build an armature. One that is flexible – one that can be iterative. I took the season into account, the late afternoon slumps of a premature sunset. Something to help hold time, not speed time along. I want to hold onto that novelty of chance that keeps me not compressing each day into an expedited time soup.
This design I have built is forgiving, and maybe even gentle—
I write this to you on the morning of election day. The first morning of my new rhythm. It’s held me thus far. I have no words of wisdom for tonight, or tomorrow or the next day. But what’s kept me tethered through the anxiety of the past few months is John Stewart’s words from his return monologue to the Daily Show:
“the work of making this world resemble one that you prefer to live in is a lunch pail fucking job, day in and day out…November 5th is an important day but November 6th is nothing to sneeze at.”
Which is to say that building a better future takes the action of all of us, every day, together, willed, faked, and so brought into being with hopefully a gentle rhythm to guide us through.
Things I’m reveling in this week—
reading: it's the perfect time to read or in my case reread Katherine May’s Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times. I’ve kept close to my heart AND maybe even been subconsciously inspired by May.
[Ants] are a projection of how we so often think we ought to live, but also a model for a life we’ve collectively failed to achieve, over and over again, across the entire history of humanity. The ants are not real, not on a mass scale; they are an if only. If only everyone could be the ants. If only we were all so forward thinking and responsible. If only the grasshoppers of this world could be so simply dispatched. I will give you an alternative if only. If only life were so stable, happy, and predictable as to produce ants instead of grasshoppers, year in, year out. The truth is that we all have ant years and grasshopper years – years in which we are able to prepare and save and years where we need a little extra help. Our true flaw lies not in failing to store up enough resources to cope with the grasshopper years, but in believing that each grasshopper is an anomaly, visited only on us, due to our unique human failings.
watching: Anora - go watch it in theaters folks~
visiting: hands down the best museum in Florence is the Museo Marino Marini. It was so beautiful and so peaceful.
remembering: Frank O’hara reciting having a coke with you, where I first became aware of Marino Marini. Extra Credit: a great read on Frank.
eating: exploring a new mushroom in this ovuli crudo, also known as caesar’s mushroom.
listening: Seed Catalog, a new podcast by friend and mentor Kit Nicholls, is for every kind of teacher and student, with stories and ideas about how we build knowledge and how we can learn to make a future we want to live in. Give it a listen!
harvesting: olives!
returning: to friendly and familiar friends at the Union Square Greenmarket.
missing: if you are in los angeles do yourself a favor and make your way over to venice for a breath & sound class at Open. I wish I could go every. single. day. —I’ve been trying to find a New York comp but haven’t succeeded yet! —(they also have a phenomenal app if that’s your thing).