Wednesday, October 27, 2004
(2:04 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Peace
I just finished an article in Harper's entitled "Quitting the Paint Factory" by Mark Slouka. I admired the idea of an article written "in praise of idleness," but Mr. Slouka's final illustration struck me. He asked us to picture George W. Bush sitting, idly, on a bench in a far-off corner of the woods, simply contemplating. It was for him a "visual oxymoron," but my laughter was tempered: witnessing Adam Kotsko in such a situation would be a visual oxymoron as well."How did you get such drive?" Monica used to ask me. I got it from my father -- much to my deep disappointment. I remember him as working twelve hours a day and commuting an hour each way as well, and I remember thinking from the very beginning that it was a sad, stupid waste of a life. My dad drives a truck for a living and largely enjoys it, and he has finally carved out a space for him to pursue the musical ambitions that he put on hold so many years ago. But still, the image of my father leaving the house before 7:00 every day, getting to work late every day (just like I do now), getting home after 11:00 -- so that, until I got old enough to feel like I didn't need so much sleep after all, I could only see him on summer evenings or weekends, or during his rushed morning routine -- fills me with dread, and with pity.
Those weekends were not relaxing. Far from it! My mom had a list of chores for him to do Saturdays, and so he was out until late evening, mowing the lawn, raking, washing the cars, doing various painting projects; and of course Sundays were a nightmare, with only a couple-hour window between dinner after morning church and our pre-night-church commitments. (To this day, I hate Sundays, even now that I have no structured activities to attend. When I became Catholic, I made it a point to go to the Saturday evening mass, even though there aren't as many pretty girls at that one, just as a token gesture toward making up for all those lost Sundays, the least restful day out of a "busy" week.)
He is a hard worker. I should admire him for that. My grandpa, too -- silently working his days away, out mowing his vast estate or doing the carpentry for which he had such a gift. My grandma would be cleaning house every weekend when I came to visit in elementary school, and when I got too old to visit, there was plenty of work to be done in my house -- so that eventually, I would rebel, claim that my mom was being selfish with the family's time, claim that there was no way that a thorough cleaning every week was necessary. I still remember those terrible guilt-trips -- conscious or unconscious -- the punishment of being allowed to do exactly what I wanted to do. And what I wanted to do was -- work. I wanted to read. I had Crime and Punishment to get through. We had a public library within walking distance, and I was going to take full advantage of it. I wanted to be closed in my room, Smashing Pumpkins playing, writing dozens of pages a day in my journal. Even the video games that I have since given up are work in their own way -- too much work for me.
I rebelled against my part-time high school job at the grocery store, refusing to come in when they called me at the last minute, at one point even claiming, improbably, that I could afford to quit my job and make the same amount by teaching piano lessons. (I had two students at that point, a brother and sister who cancelled their lessons half the time.) I rebelled against the grueling schedule of marching band, blaming it for the infamous C that I got on the leaf project -- a Calvin-style morning-of rush job that was much more characteristic of me than one would think. I cried. I'm not ashamed to say that I would get in the car to go to work and cry all the way there, or that I would change my clothes violently, resentfully, when I had to go straight from marching band to work.
I had shit to do! My senior year I had AP Lit, and I had to read every damn book on that recommended reading list. Mr. Ricketts had filled our heads with horribly unrealistic ideas, such as our having to have key passages memorized, etc. He told us that we could write as many or as few papers as we wanted to, for practice. I wanted to fill every single minute of my life with that class. I wanted to have written the best paper every time. I wanted to have read the most books. I wanted to know.
I used to think that my family's Republicanism stemmed from a certain gullibility, that my dad's love for Rush Limbaugh derives from his being the only thing on the radio. I don't think it's that anymore. If there's anything the Republican rhetoric dwells on, it's hard work. My dad is a hard worker, and hearing the stories, day in and day out, of how certain politicians were trying to help out those who work hard and how others were trying to give more hand-outs to the lazy free-loaders -- how could he not be won over? How could he not think that these were his people? Having sacrificed so much -- his music, his painting, his intellectual life -- to evangelical Christianity and the family that followed quickly in its wake, what option was left? What defenses did he have left against such rhetoric? And who am I to judge at this point? How do I know that I wouldn't have made the exact same decision in his shoes?
My grandma in particular always asks how such a "liberal" (using it according to its current meaning, i.e., anyone who dissents from a particular Republican orthodoxy) could have come out of such a Republican family. I don't know. In fact, I wonder if I might not be more "Republican" than I let on -- more devoted to work, of a certain kind, than even my parents and grandparents are at this point. My dad now works fewer hours and has started a prog-rock band. My grandpa has retired and spends less time in the workshop. The housecleaning has been reduced to a more managable level, both in terms of frequency and in terms of the size of the house. Yet for me, every moment is a potential moment for reading, for writing, for coming up with more and better bizarre juxtapositions of disparate thinkers -- Foucault with St. Iranaeus! -- to the point where the pressure sometimes keeps me from starting a "real" task. As though if I start, this will take me the rest of my life -- as though once I start, I could never rest again.
My work branches out to keeping up with the blogs, to an instant-response e-mail ethic, to parsing out my exact feelings about particular women over IM. No moment is left idle, but there is sometimes a strange emptiness to the whole affair -- as though for all my feverish typing and pacing back and forth through the house, nothing is happening, and nothing has happened in years. The only room for real, planned idleness in my life may well be a liturgy -- wasting my time, literally squandering it, in the stand-sit-kneel routine of the mass or the page-flipping ordeal of the Daily Office. After so many years as a Republican Christian, I still don't know how to slow down and let the liturgy happen -- it's an act of supreme concentration to sit back and wait, to let things happen as they happen, not to think, "Oh thank God we're already to the Agnus Dei -- this is almost over."
Either that, or laying in bed, with a woman I love, or I've convinced myself I love, in my arms -- neither asleep nor awake, not on the way to sex or instead in the aftermath of it (even sex, in our oppressively promiscuous society, can be a chore), knowing, for a fact, that no use will come out of this time, no sleep, no orgasm, no conflict resolution. Just rest, just a divine idleness: peace.
