in praise of laziness

sunday evening edition
notes from maggie's farm

It is a lovely life, doing nothing. God never intended for me to work hard. I can see that now. My true calling is to live unencumbered and follow the fleeting impulses of my heart and take a nap around 2 p.m. whether I want to or not. 

Sunday, dusk, is my favorite time of the week.  It's quiet.  Everyone quietly getting on with the business of preparing for a busy week ahead.  Around 5, give or take a bit depending upon your local station, the soothing dulcet tones of my favorite humorist, Garrison Keillor, lulls one into the quiet domesticity of real life.  I never hear the last sentence,

That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average

without a smile tugging the corners of my mouth, feeling as if I've experienced the jewel of the week just from sharing a moment in Lake Wobegon.  
 
I'm going to be, what they call it down here in Texas, 'laid up' for a few days.  Luckily, its not because of open-heart surgery, like Mr. Keillor, below, but it is, like these things often do, stealing a little bit of my stealth. And I bet I'm not the only one around that's going to experience a little health-related pause this fall and winter.  Perhaps we might be able to endure, and even enjoy the indolent pause of recovery if we embrace......laziness.

From the Desk of Garrison Keillor
In Praise of LazinessFrom Time Magazine

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September 10, 2001

I don't opine on matters beyond my personal experience because when I do I am wrong approximately two-thirds of the time, a poor average, worse than the President's, but now, after five weeks of doing nothing, I am an authority on the subject of indolence and glad to share my views with you.

First of all, the way to get five weeks of vacation is to have open-heart surgery. It is the perfect cover. Bipolar depression is a downer and TB makes your friends nervous and a hip replacement is terribly inconvenient, but cardiac surgery poses few risks, is mostly painless, and has a grandeur about it that erases all obligations, social and professional. It is the Get Out Of Work card. All you do is put a hand to your chest and people hold the door open for you and help you into a rocker.

So here I sit on my sunny terrace. There's a soda water fountain and the buzzing of the bees in the cigarette trees, just like in the song. I sit in my pajamas and work the Times crossword and sip peppermint tea and, it being Labor Day, I sit and think about work. And then I write a limerick.

Of all the useless things a person can do, limerick writing is right up there with golf and fishing. There was a young lady of D.C ./ Who was liberal and tasteful and p.c. / Except now and then / She enjoyed redneck men / Who didn't know A.D. from B.C. / "When it comes to the masculine specie,"/ She said, "I like vulgar and greasy. / Sensitive guys / Tend to theologize / And I am not St. Clare of Assisi." It takes half an hour to write this. It is useless work. But I'm quite happy, about rhyming greasy with Assisi. Happiness is in the details. An indolent man awakes in the morning and thinks, "Wow. A shower with shampoo with aloe in it. Then orange juice not made from concentrate. Seven-grain toast with butter. Jamaican coffee. One Across: A waitress (slang)." and he gets all giddy and happy.

Back when I was a kid, I spent a summer picking potatoes at a neighbor's farm. Slouched up and down the rows, stooped over, dragging a burlap bag full of spuds, dust in my nostrils, body all achin an' racked wid pain, and it seems to me that I have been picking potatoes in one form or another ever since.. The boss man, Mister Marse, kept telling me that potato picking is a great challenge and a boon to civilization and the manly thing to do and that if I quit working, my life would lose purpose and meaning and I would be unable to bear the shame.

You be wrong about that, Mr. Marse.

It is a lovely life, doing nothing. God never intended for me to work hard. I can see that now. My true calling is to live unencumbered and follow the fleeting impulses of my heart and take a nap around 2 p.m. whether I want to or not. I worked hard for years out of plain fear and ignorance and also to impress women and have the funds to take them to restaurants that serve poached salmon with a light saffron sauce on a bed of roses and then bring them home to Tara and when they say, "Wow! What a big house you have!" to say, "Come in and let me show you my art."

Work is what sets us apart. You are what you do. People ask, "What line of work did you say you're in?" and if you say, "I am a brain surgeon" to someone who washes dishes professionally, he backs up, bowing. But a man who spends five weeks lounging in his pajamas is a plain old bum like the ones at the bus depot. There are not varieties of bumhood, some more creative or distinguished than others. Indolence is, like all religious experiences, totally self-effacing.

You efface the self you've worked hard to assemble over the years and you feel a new you emerge, a nicer you, calmer, cooler, easier-going. The you you really are and not the guy you constructed at the U and from Gary Cooper movies and tailored to the needs of Hubbard, Buttrick, Bickford & Barnes and re-tuned in therapy with Dr. Koren. Now you become the you you were afraid the world would find out about. Goombah, homeboy, cowpoke, or hobo, or, in my case, a limericist, but the sun shines on me still and like any other poet I am gathering rosebuds while I may for the glory of flowers too soon is past and summer hath too short a lease and here it is, already gone, alas, alas.