Sunday, August 5, 2018

Boredom Medicine

Tonight, I'm allowing something that too often I avoid: being bored. I thought about a movie. I scrolled on Facebook. I started glancing at my bookshelf for titles I hadn't yet read. Then it hit me: I'm bored.

And I smiled.

This doesn't generally happen.

I don't generally allow this to happen.

I'm as adept as anyone at packing my minutes with tasks. My attention is consistently spoken for. When I remember boredom, remember it's space and promise, everything changes. When I allow my eyes to dart, looking for their next point of focus, my mind to soften, my fingers to drum... I remember. I remember aimless nights as a teenager when I discovered the pack of JD Salinger novels. Or the Rolling Stones catalog. Or made endless mix tapes. And then wrote some stories. I remember zines. I remember the trouble I get into when I don't schedule what I'm going to get into.

Tonight, I got into my bookshelf.

Next week, Kevin and I are hitting the road. To me, this feels like a big trip. It's domestic, to places new-to-me, and significant to my lineage. More on that later.

A trip means books. Kevin and I travel well together because we know one of the greatest treats of a vacation is ample reading. A week generally means at least 4 books each. I prefer books set in our destination, or somewhat related. It keeps with the mood, sometimes inspires a side trip, or at least an otherwise unlikely plant identification or meal choice.

We're headed south, deep south, which means great literature. Somehow, my shelves aren't teeming with the southern classics at the moment but there's enough. I have a Ron Rash novel I've been meaning to get to. This should be good timing. I haven't picked up Flannery O'Connor since I was a teenager, and she meant a great deal to me. She's in the stack.

And then there's the medicine book. I don't know how else to describe it but it's the book I take that I know won't be the page-turner, it won't be my first pick, and if anything, I may only glance at it. It's the medicine. If I find myself with a new perspective I'm struggling to integrate or I feel I'm finally in a place to hear the message, I pick it up. In Crestone, Colorado, it was Women Who Run With Wolves. In the Catskills, it was Yoko Ono's Grapefruit. In Portugal, Leonard Cohen's poetry. Sometimes it's a mystic or a poet. I take a voice who I often long to hear. In reality, it usually feels like a voice whispers to me from the shelf, and says you'll be able to hear. You will be ready.

I'll be in some cabins. I'll have some time. Nights accompanied by crickets stretch the longest. I tend to pass them wandering in and out of books. Bored. Waiting. Magic.

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