Irrelevant and Happy
I want to feel again the length of days.
I would rush to the screened window to see which relative was coming down the dirt road, but I knew from the sound of the vehicle. Their passing was a break from the boredom I sometimes felt growing up, as the sight of my family meant that something was going on and I might get to go. So, I’d press my face against the mesh, that metallic smell mingling with the natural air, and wave from my darkened window. Maybe they’d see me and wave back. Maybe there would be a phone call probing what everyone was doing and seeing if we all wanted to get together.
My eyes would follow as long as they could and then I would get around the counter and through the sliding glass doors onto the grey, concrete porch, smooth top, deaf to the ever-present drone of cicadas, and wave some more. Just in case.
If the windows were up, it could have been spring or summer or it could have been fall. Regardless, I was always listening for my family from the green and yellow patterned linoleum of the kitchen or the long, brown carpet of the living room, well worn.
The breaks between school sessions used to feel like they went on forever. I loved them. The days seemed so long in the summer when we would stay outside from morning until dark. Parents had no way of checking in, so, they didn’t. No matter if I was at the creek, at the ponds, or walking up the road, I was fine. Everything was fine. Everything was good.
If there was nothing going on and I had to stay at home, I’d be called outside by the mystery of Dusk.
Dusk in the country is bliss.
Cicadas are joined by crickets and lightning bugs and bats join birds in the air, their dark shapes arcing and sweeping.
I’d go out the back door and pick up the dented and busted grey aluminum bat and take a few steps up to the old road behind the house that led to the schoolhouse where my dad went as a child - an un-romantic, block building, now filled with the mean neighbor’s junk.
When I’d get to that disappearing driveway, I’d pick up a suitable rock, toss it in the air, and swing to hit it. I must have been a good pitcher. Every now and then, I'd hear that “tink” and I’d see the rock for an instant before it went over the fence into the nice neighbor’s unkept back acreage.
I had a lot of time to recall and roll over the things I’d heard that day or earlier that week - what I’d heard on Sunday (two services) and Wednesday (one service), the way an uncle laughed at a story, the way the aunts always cleaned up after the Sunday dinner (lunch) at my grandmother’s, the way a cousin said or did something they shouldn’t have, the things my parents were fighting over, the way I loved everyone. We prayed in church, but I prayed most under the once-purple-now-inky-blue sky studded and sparkling, ball bat aside, cross-legged in the gravel and grass, looking at the stars, a stone in hand like David, pondering the heart’s trajectories, small, but in the hands of God.
As the seasons turned, these scenes would repeat, adding only a coat, the earthy smell of long-fallen leaves, black walnuts, and woodsmoke - all key characters on the stage.
All of this to say, I have, of late, wanted to again feel the length of days.
Why should that be so hard? What is keeping me from it? What has pushed me from that uncomplicated, happy state?
I knew of only one way to get back to that place within and that was to be less busy - simpler.
To that end, I stopped painting after I met my deadlines for the Coors show (coorswesternart.com) and took my two days a week devoted to painting and -
did nothing.
Well, I did start playing chess again.
No writing, no painting, no self-imposed task-based penance for failing thus far in life.
If I wanted to read, I read. If I wanted to spend all day looking at used clothes, I did that. If I wanted to bid on a vintage chess set and dream of a day when I have a little room with a window, a bookcase, a leather chair, and a little table with a chess set on it - I did that.
I did not obsess over the next deadline or over whether or not I should write something or post something.
The notifications number on the Substack icon kept getting larger as everyone did what they wanted to do (felt like they needed to?) and the app reminded me of all I was missing.
Instagram did not miss me. Substack did not miss me. Nothing missed me,
and I was happy.
Irrelevant and happy.
I heard again the sound of my mind’s voice. It was tired and a little sad, but doggedly holding out hope not only for the future but for the present. It is the spindly tree that grew beneath the giant oak that finds itself able to bend with the weather and not creak.
The paints and panels are still there. I have a new chess habit that is a welcome relief somehow.
Just when I thought that all thoughts of me had quietly dissolved like fog over the creek, a good friend who married a cousin (cousin-in-law?) called me to have lunch and the very next day my best and oldest friend saw me pass on the road, turned around, and came to talk. Just talk. Just because he saw me.
Isn’t that something? Just humans standing in front of one another, laughing and sharing ideas, talking about non-digital things? Funny how we can just pick up after long pauses in seeing each other.
I’m not sure Substack or Instagram can do that.
No app can, and I don’t want them to try.
Everything cannot be relevant all the time, and it was worth remembering that life isn’t something just happening to me - that I have a say in the way it goes. With this break from painting and deadlines and writing urges, I have reclaimed a bit of what I’d lost - a little freedom from the tyranny of production as well as the strength of being simple.
The first week of January is the opening of the big show I linked above, and my wife and I will be spending almost a week in Golden and Denver, Colorado as we attend the opening events and meet new people. It is an honor to be in this show, and it is important to show up if possible, so I spend the money and show up.
Nothing happens if you don’t show up.
However, “Nothing” happening can be really, really good for us.
The little boy smiled when he recognized me. He sat down on the grassy gravel cross-legged, as I swung at stones in the dark, woodsmoke drifting in.
Well said, Seth. Thank you for the reminder to be present in our real lives.