Easy on that pedal
formlessness
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For some time, I’ve been interested in the writing one does when not writing, writes Kate Zambreno in the first few pages of Drifts.
I’m not writing. What have I been doing? I moved half a mile across my neighborhood. I’ve been sick, not seriously, but on and off. Enough to slow my mind and my will. I’ve been pursuing romance, talking about it constantly. I’ve seen friends, filled my world with their laughter and forgotten to press record. Life is what happens when you aren’t writing.
The days begin to add up. My therapist asks me to reflect: how long could you go without writing before it would become a serious problem? We end the session. I lie down on my bed. Believe me when I tell you I do the math until I fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon. I’ve never been very good at math.
Generally, I don’t think of problems as “serious” or “not serious.” How many times as children are we reminded that “some people have real problems?” I always disliked this reminder. All problems are real and serious, albeit there are gradients of severity within. Anyways, my problems are interesting, if not thrilling, and rarely debilitating. Though I know on the latter front I am lucky.
I go on walks in hopes of sparking something. Mostly, I use these walks to distract myself. By their nature, they become yearning walks. I don’t know what this says about me—that I must find a way to exhaust my body in order to shake my mind awake. I return to my new apartment, covered in cold, and find six to seven things to do other than write (sleep, eat ice cream in the middle of the day, call a friend, stare at the yet-to-be decorated walls).
Someone tells me I’m a good hedonist. It took years of being very bad at relaxing to be good at it. I like the accolade. I want to spend my hours in a hedonistic daze. Seeking pleasure is all part of “the work,” I claim. I have to move through the city in a certain way in order to write about it. I have to take my yearning walks, I have to be entangled with other people. I have to gather my materials which are the simple facts of living. My therapist asks if I want to set productivity goals. I say I want to be against production. She also seems to be tired of my theorizing.
(I’m trying to untie my idea of writing from achievement. A student of a thousand private failures.)
Gaby and I also talk about setting small goals. Writing is so moody, she says. Her aim is to be less hard on herself when she doesn’t meet her goals. For writing to be dependent on something other than her moods. Madeline suggests Murakami’s What I Talk about When I Talk about Running. Essentially, Murakami takes five A.M. runs then immediately sits down to work. Ritualistic rather than waiting for inspiration. What I do: run from the work.
At a party, I talk to a person who was recently broken up with. I tell her to be vicious with her time. Or maybe, be vicious with her heart. Another person chimes in: your time is your heart. I disagree, but for once, I say nothing. Instead I put bread in my mouth to not speak.
It’s true. I can’t quantify the way others can. I can’t set goals after feeling something (i.e. my heart is broken, I will not date for x number of months). Feeling begets more feeling. I can only follow my heart. Of course this has led me astray. But I can’t change my approach even if I tried. I don’t know why I advised the person to be vicious with her time. I’m certainly not, and would prefer not to be anyways.
So instead of writing, I’ve been trying to figure out what it means to spend a day well. In my journal, I catalog my days. The narratives are winding. I realize there is no linear way to tell my own stories. The record of formlessness is demonstrative of my general approach to living. And spending a day well means it was formless.
Formlessness has been the true mark of any great relationship I’ve had. You can’t make plans—not in the short or long term—and have to trust each other in that formlessness. Both in the little hours and longer stretches of time. Can we come up with a loose agreement on a time and place to meet, then go from there? And choose that again? If we begin the day together, can we see it to its end too? It feels generative to be with another person in this way. The shared creative act of creating a beautiful day together, based on feeling alone.
I’ve found myself without plans. And when you don’t have plans, you have to wait. I spend entire days savoring the waiting. Like the days when I’m going to see a crush. Those days move so much slower. Waiting: for a sign, a return, a call. I pace the apartment. I try to busy myself, but it’s impossible. On normal days, the hours slip by without me noticing. Seeing a crush is a way to make a day precious: the seconds elongated, the minutes stretch as you imagine the very minute the doorbell will ring. How that will feel to finally hear the noise that sends you slowly down the stairs, savoring the moment before the door opens.
Then the opposite cliche is also true: time moves too fast when creating time together. The clock is a constant source of disbelief. How is it already this late? I wake up and am met with the truth of a soon-to-be absence. Returning to the still warm bed, wishing for both the hours to reverse to the last time and fast forward to the next time.
We choose each other in the way we choose to spend a day. In every sidelong glance. Morning’s slowness mirrored in the deliberate length of a long breakfast. The small ways we decide to stay side by side. Conversations that never seem to be finished, a way to extend ourselves into a future. Romantic because we have all the time in the world, or at least the promise of it.
Biking through the neighborhood fast as if we really have anywhere to be. An afternoon movie we won’t be late for. When we emerge, it’s dark again. I worry this signals the last of our choices—until there’s another choice and another that leads into the night, turning slowly into the next day.
Lately, the only thing I’ve been making is time.
I’m holding onto hours. Hours that make up the stories that were meant to happen. I’m drifting between moments we spend articulating to each other what it means to be this close. The only thing better than romance is writing about it. I’m not capturing it right now. But I will eventually. For the first time in a long time, I’m not kicking myself for being a bad historian. I wouldn’t be able to write it as beautifully as I feel it, anyway.
