An obsession with understanding life as it unfolds dogs me. It’s like trying to explain history in real time, something plenty of journalists make themselves look silly doing for a living. But it’s a silliness that sells advertising and gets clicks, and I’m generally a subscriber. How else would I find myself writing this thing, this book of sorts, if I weren’t super into having clever, self-aware, and self-“transcending” commentary ready to go on every aspect of my existence?
I don’t think I’m alone in this desire to articulate what’s going on and why at every moment, on request. LinkedIn demands an articulation that can last for most of the length of a job, between modifications. Twitter requests oracular and passionate witticisms that represent where one is at. Most social interactions include a request to say “who are you right now and why?”. Every decision, situation, and action has to fit on the tapestry, with complementary colors and narrative cohesion. I often feel, however, more like a wing of an art museum. Sure, there might be some thematic similarities, but the painter/photographer isn’t even the same throughout the wing. I do experiment with bricolage when it’s requested; tearing up all the pieces and placing them on a single canvas, with a single title and artist. So attractive: I willed this into being and it makes sense. This is how one gets a job in an interview. Hopefully my future interviewers don’t read anything I’ve written. It’s not that the whole story is bad, it’s that the whole story can’t be told, both in the sense that I don’t know it and in the sense that it doesn’t hang together as a story. Camus talks about the difference between the study of history and the study of the mind in some of his early essays. One attempts to draw a straight line between events, to create legibility for an action framework. The other constantly seeks the edge and is blurry, a series of overlapping drafts that don’t seem to have been written by the same hand, or even in the same language. Of course a student of history would talk about the complexity of the issues, emphasizing that explanations are not total and that history doesn’t really repeat itself in a way that can be acted upon.
So as I sit here with a sandwich and brownie/cookie muffin milling around in my stomach, supported by a small cup of coffee, I’m trying to let go of the historical lens. Plants help, and there’s a tree lounging only a few inches above my head, in addition to aquamarine flower pots and wooden raised beds. These things are not trying to make something of themselves or explain themselves to the bees that are making eating and grasping motions upon their flowers-tips. They’re just turning sun into energy and fulfilling their purposes, “naturally”. I stammer when I try to articulate what kind of bees I’m looking to attract, what I’m doing with the sunshine that filters through this tree onto my skin, and what the purpose of the sandwich and muffin and coffee I’ve consumed are. It’s an indication that articulation is a stammering errand, one that I probably won’t avoid, but also one that I don’t expect to become any less stammery at.
Roman Ryan 