Dear Diary:
Rad
The net-net of my planned day of radical housekeeping was, in fact, radical: I decided to throw away the Times every day. No more holding on to yesterday’s paper in case somebody tips me off to an interesting story.
With no small irony, it has dawned on me that I spend a great deal of time in these latter days trying to unlearn patterns carefully developed long ago, under different conditions and with very different objectives. It has been months since I last clipped an article from the Times. If anyone tipped me off to an interesting story, I’d head straight for the newspaper’s digital edition. I was holding on to the print edition out of unthinking habit. Unlearning an unthinking habit ought to be easier than it is.
I did get a lot of stuff done, but nowhere near as much as I’d breezily imagined. No blame! — as the I Ching counsels. Life at the intersection of two opposed curves requires a habit of resignation. On the one hand, I’m getting older, and everything just takes longer. (Quite aside from the mortal fact of physical deterioration, there is the brute fact that “everything,” for someone sixtyish, is vast in comparison to a twentysomething’s universe. There’s simply so much more stuff!)
On the other hand — the opposing curve — I’ve never been nearly as engaged with the world as I am now. However ragged the Daily Office offerings might be, assembling them requires a discipline that’s altogether new to me, and the side effects are almost as jarring as those of adolescence. They may be intellectual rather than carnal, but they leave me with the same sublime smirk that ripples across Michael Berg’s face when, seated with his family at dinner, he can’t believe that his body isn’t broadcasting news of his erotic afternoon with Hanna Schmitz. (The Reader.) My brain believes that it’s eighteen, and acing all the AP tests.
About time, you might say.