WATERMARK

NO-READING week is over as of 10:00 pm tonight. And I will be glad to have it behind me.

I
learned that not-reading does not, for me, free up vast amounts of
energy, though it does free up time — that commodity others covet, and
of which I have plenty. I wrote a bit more. I watched the birds and
squirrels in the garden. My camera broke, so I did not take lots of
photos. The pets got more attention, which they are always happy to
receive.

I drew every day, but only a little. I did not learn to use iTunes, nor
did I learn to use the Wacom Tablet — but the book I have for that is
lots of words, so i decided to postpone it on that basis. I found that
I wasn’t very interested in television, even though I had some
recordings ready to go. I listened to music, and the radio. I remembered why I used to listen to Praire Home Companion every week.

I did feel a bit more "in my body" — not always a good thing.

I stuck very closely to the rules I laid out for myself; that is, no reading except personal and blog-related email, and Danny Gregory’s Creative License, for drawing exercises. I did do some sidebar updates — though that task is far from
finished — and did a somewhat complicated Friday Cat Blogging post. I
also did a Daypix album for Watermark
(yesterday’s post.) From these I learned that, in terms of behavioral
tranquilizers, computering does the trick, whether or not one is
actually reading.

The biggest lesson is in what I didn’t miss. I wasn’t frantic for
news (though that’s pretty much all the television I watched.) I didn’t
wonder what people were talking about, except for those I most value;
those whose thoughts and images and meditations and poems stir my own.
I realized how rarely I actually read books anymore. I realized that I
don’t need to be on the computer all the time in order to get the most
out of it. So for me, this no-reading week turned out to be mostly a
no-computer, no-internet week, and I ended it resolved to read more books and fewer blogs.

There
were a few other revelations this week. Damned if I didn’t find myself
clearing out my closet, just like Cameron said I would. Anything torn,
tattered, stained, shapeless, pilled —
out it went. This leaves me with no blue jeans — two pair on order —
and no hot-weather clothes at all, which I will deal with when the time
comes. I hadn’t really thought of these as low self-esteem clothes, but, though I wore them every day, I didn’t go out in them. Which brings me to the next revelation.

It takes a certain kind of masochism to do an artist date at Barnes & Noble
during no-reading week. I had an excuse: it was time for my every- two-
months PetSmart trip. Often, friends do this for me, as it’s an
exhausting effort. But I had thought of doing the bookstore as an
artist date, and it’s right next door to PetSmart, so I went for it.

The
car started right up — which is amazing, as I don’t think I’ve driven
it in six weeks. I used my handicap sticker. I asked for help, so I was
in and out of the pet store fairly quickly. Then I went to B&N;
wandered about; bought myself a sketchbook and a little $5 bargain
called How to draw a cup of coffee & other fun ideas; and then went to the Starbuck’s cafe and ordered a cappuccino and a sandwich. All this, by the way, in my good outfit — which for me is a pair of black jeans and a rarely-worn, thus holeless, turtleneck, carefully tucked away so it’s there when needed.

This seems ordinary enough, doesn’t it?

It
has been so long since I’ve done this — gone somewhere, by myself, in
public, for something other than necessary errands — that I cannot
remember when it was. Years. Truly.

As I sat there, writing in my sketchbook, not reading, I caught myself thinking: what if I get caught not being sick?

Shame. Enlightenment.

Not
that this is a new insight — I’ve noticed it in myself before. There
was never any doubt for me about whether I deserved my paychecks; I
worked hard. I liked working hard. But how does one earn disability
income? Why, by suffering.
And I’d better suffer a lot, too. All the time, in fact. Deeply. If I
can’t work, why should I be allowed to play? I’m not being paid to
play.

So I sat there, enjoying myself, managing to evade even the fat people shouldn’t eat in public
message, and observing with some detachment these deadly shaming
messages with which I erode my own life. Shame is so versatile; it will
attach itself to anything, and I have a lot up for offer: Poet??? Ill. Fat. Useless. Old. Believe me, this can get scathing.

So,
a bit more work to do there. But also, a practical lesson, that may
seem obvious to you, but is new to me: if I include, at the end of a
tiring errand, 30-45 minutes of pleasant sitting, I have more energy
for the drive home. I’m not totally exhausted when I stumble through
the door. I actually feel just ordinarily tired, and even pleased.
Treated. Yes.

Well, that’s a lot. Just one more observation —
that I don’t attach to anything in particular, but perhaps is related
to this whole process — in the past weeks I’ve written about two
subjects that have haunted me for years; that I’ve made some effort to
write about before, but with little success: my brother’s dying and my green world vision. It also seems to me that my work (my poems) is going a bit deeper.

And I dreamed of dragons. I’ll tell you about that later.