The other day I was reclining on the sofa, daydreaming up my Oscar speech (oh please, we've all done it) when I saw a furry streak of brown and white zip by the window. I vaulted over the sofa to the large panes and crouched down, squinting with curiosity, eager to see what peculiar little creature had chosen my ground floor apartment's perfunctory balcony for its capers. The most exquisite kitten, all shiny, sleek and self-possessed, was poised on a low ledge jutting out of the wall. Striking a patrician stance, haloed by mischief and daintily licking its tiny, delicate glove-like paws, it stayed there for a bit, stretching itself out sensuously, lolling about and smoothing its whiskers - I was captivated. Here was a feline prima donna, a queen, Felix Regina or something cool in Latin like that.
And then something else hit me - the cat was up to nothing. And so was I.
I literally was not doing anything. By 'doing' I mean the utilitarian shade of function assigned to activity. The need for usefulness to validate tasks; the necessity of result; the whole scheme of life oriented towards input, output and product. It is, in a word, disgusting. It is detrimental to the very spirit of life, a prosthetic for purpose. Or rather the Anglo-Saxon definition of purpose....the French have something romantic in lieu: the mysterious joie de vivre which perhaps the 'Angloid' world will never truly understand. Zooming in, you'll find that the Hindi word for life is a biological, pragmatic 'jeevan' derived from a somewhat austere Sanskritic world whereas the Urdu 'zindagi' combines the zest of medieval West Asian hedonism with the concept of life. But that's a discussion of another sort.
What I am perhaps most outraged by is the mechanisation of being. It is somehow blasphemous to wish for time to just be. In her wonderful book, The Art of Doing Nothing, Veronique Vienne bemoans this phenomenon of azoicity in vivid detail...I didn't perhaps recognise my own dissatisfaction with the state of things until she articulated them.
Maybe it has something to do with the slow, steady ravages of post-industrial organisation. With the advent of machines, society was whipped up into a frenzy of cogs and chains and whirrs, reordering our spaces (factories, deforestation, urbanisation etc.), our systems (hierarchy, transaction, institution etc.) and of course, the most important casualty, our time (historic and personal). While historic time is not something we directly control, personal time is our own. And the foundation of modern life, in all the ways that matter. It is this time that we must reclaim from the wards of modernity. An assembly line temporal procedure makes us little more than zombies. Timetables and to-do lists and Filofaxes are all very well. But what about afternoons spent gambolling in the garden? What about reading old letters from friends we haven't seen in years? What about poring over picture books with a cup of tea? What about doodling in bed?
Just the idea of being idle terrifies most of us. It's taboo to even mention the desire to not be busy. Busy doing what? I think the irony is that most attempts to be busy arise from a notion that somehow, if we could just get so-and-so task out of the way, we'd be free. Must freedom to loaf be some sort of reward for having worked the rest of the time? Does ticking off 'Laundry', 'Homework' and 'Grocery' entitle us to laze? If so, I confess surprise at such premium being placed on doing nothing, when in fact it is considered sacrilege, a downright violation of the principle of cyber-age ethic, to even contemplate it. It's like some kind of Mobius strip of collective consciousness, conditioned by an eerily WASP-ish enculturation. It is perhaps not too far-fetched to examine the excessive influence of the USA's Caucasian/Puritan influence in the mix of all this newly discovered 21st century 'global civilisation'. Of course, I don't advocate that everyone put in for an allowance from the government (and in our case I believe that's still a Directive Principle, so suck it up) but there has to be some kind of balance in quality of lifestyle. Otherwise, it's just a sham to go through these motions, without any sense of revelry, which is what the experience of life should be.
Things of beauty are indeed a joy forever. The kitten I observed for almost an hour is a perfect example. Or look at art, which compels us to relinquish our strict ritual of inventorying 'the point'. And then there are lovely, strappy shoes and gift shop windows and cricket memorabilia and in my case, stationery (and stationeries). To feast on frivolity is forbidden. To linger is a privilege one must fight for. And yet, man and woman's love affair with the useless is legend. And there is the attendant need to indulge in the useless - stretches and corridors of vacant moments, just waiting to be occupied with silliness and facetious fun. By gosh, there are whole industries built around the human need to be unemployed!
Forget pretty objects, just the knowledge of one's ability to do nothing suffices. How many of us have experienced the sudden, soda-pop thrill of completing an assignment and then realising that we have nothing else to keep us from stretching out on the porch. Even despite Facebook, TV, SMS and home entertainment, there are so many times when all one wants to do is be a cat: traipse around, alight anywhere, think about the zaniest things, maybe snarl at people who won't let us do this. Licking oneself is not something everyone does, I'm sure, but hey - whatever rocks your boat man.
So, the next time you have a many-foot long list of errands you need to run, sabotage yourself. Make sure you don't do a few things on that post-it. It could be the really insignificant things, the ones it probably wouldn't hurt to put off for a couple of days. In the Gen Y craze to not let it pile up, don't let yourself become Stepford. The dishes in the sink can wait a few hours, go enjoy the balmy summer evening outside with your lover. Even if you do the dishes, something else will come up as soon as you're done, so go now. Create opportunities to be surprised by 'nothing moments', allow them to occur and sneak up on you and then exploit them. Admire the Manolos you can't afford, smell crisp handmade paper it's probably not worth your pocket money to buy, watch cats, hatch plans, feel grass, heal yourself.
Do nothing. And let nothing do you in.
- Kamayani Sharma
And then something else hit me - the cat was up to nothing. And so was I.
I literally was not doing anything. By 'doing' I mean the utilitarian shade of function assigned to activity. The need for usefulness to validate tasks; the necessity of result; the whole scheme of life oriented towards input, output and product. It is, in a word, disgusting. It is detrimental to the very spirit of life, a prosthetic for purpose. Or rather the Anglo-Saxon definition of purpose....the French have something romantic in lieu: the mysterious joie de vivre which perhaps the 'Angloid' world will never truly understand. Zooming in, you'll find that the Hindi word for life is a biological, pragmatic 'jeevan' derived from a somewhat austere Sanskritic world whereas the Urdu 'zindagi' combines the zest of medieval West Asian hedonism with the concept of life. But that's a discussion of another sort.
What I am perhaps most outraged by is the mechanisation of being. It is somehow blasphemous to wish for time to just be. In her wonderful book, The Art of Doing Nothing, Veronique Vienne bemoans this phenomenon of azoicity in vivid detail...I didn't perhaps recognise my own dissatisfaction with the state of things until she articulated them.
Maybe it has something to do with the slow, steady ravages of post-industrial organisation. With the advent of machines, society was whipped up into a frenzy of cogs and chains and whirrs, reordering our spaces (factories, deforestation, urbanisation etc.), our systems (hierarchy, transaction, institution etc.) and of course, the most important casualty, our time (historic and personal). While historic time is not something we directly control, personal time is our own. And the foundation of modern life, in all the ways that matter. It is this time that we must reclaim from the wards of modernity. An assembly line temporal procedure makes us little more than zombies. Timetables and to-do lists and Filofaxes are all very well. But what about afternoons spent gambolling in the garden? What about reading old letters from friends we haven't seen in years? What about poring over picture books with a cup of tea? What about doodling in bed?
Just the idea of being idle terrifies most of us. It's taboo to even mention the desire to not be busy. Busy doing what? I think the irony is that most attempts to be busy arise from a notion that somehow, if we could just get so-and-so task out of the way, we'd be free. Must freedom to loaf be some sort of reward for having worked the rest of the time? Does ticking off 'Laundry', 'Homework' and 'Grocery' entitle us to laze? If so, I confess surprise at such premium being placed on doing nothing, when in fact it is considered sacrilege, a downright violation of the principle of cyber-age ethic, to even contemplate it. It's like some kind of Mobius strip of collective consciousness, conditioned by an eerily WASP-ish enculturation. It is perhaps not too far-fetched to examine the excessive influence of the USA's Caucasian/Puritan influence in the mix of all this newly discovered 21st century 'global civilisation'. Of course, I don't advocate that everyone put in for an allowance from the government (and in our case I believe that's still a Directive Principle, so suck it up) but there has to be some kind of balance in quality of lifestyle. Otherwise, it's just a sham to go through these motions, without any sense of revelry, which is what the experience of life should be.
Things of beauty are indeed a joy forever. The kitten I observed for almost an hour is a perfect example. Or look at art, which compels us to relinquish our strict ritual of inventorying 'the point'. And then there are lovely, strappy shoes and gift shop windows and cricket memorabilia and in my case, stationery (and stationeries). To feast on frivolity is forbidden. To linger is a privilege one must fight for. And yet, man and woman's love affair with the useless is legend. And there is the attendant need to indulge in the useless - stretches and corridors of vacant moments, just waiting to be occupied with silliness and facetious fun. By gosh, there are whole industries built around the human need to be unemployed!
Forget pretty objects, just the knowledge of one's ability to do nothing suffices. How many of us have experienced the sudden, soda-pop thrill of completing an assignment and then realising that we have nothing else to keep us from stretching out on the porch. Even despite Facebook, TV, SMS and home entertainment, there are so many times when all one wants to do is be a cat: traipse around, alight anywhere, think about the zaniest things, maybe snarl at people who won't let us do this. Licking oneself is not something everyone does, I'm sure, but hey - whatever rocks your boat man.
So, the next time you have a many-foot long list of errands you need to run, sabotage yourself. Make sure you don't do a few things on that post-it. It could be the really insignificant things, the ones it probably wouldn't hurt to put off for a couple of days. In the Gen Y craze to not let it pile up, don't let yourself become Stepford. The dishes in the sink can wait a few hours, go enjoy the balmy summer evening outside with your lover. Even if you do the dishes, something else will come up as soon as you're done, so go now. Create opportunities to be surprised by 'nothing moments', allow them to occur and sneak up on you and then exploit them. Admire the Manolos you can't afford, smell crisp handmade paper it's probably not worth your pocket money to buy, watch cats, hatch plans, feel grass, heal yourself.
Do nothing. And let nothing do you in.
- Kamayani Sharma
Posts
Verbose. But thankfully not prosaic. Pleasure to read. Will come back.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Genius as a reaction option? When did humility go out of style?