For the Love of Loitering

I.

Who shall I be today?  Poet or scholar?  Please, not the administrator.  While I prize my executive functioning, it’s also exhausting.

Ross Gay writes a meditation on the relationship between productivity and consumption in an “essayette” (his word), titled “Loitering” from The Book of Delights:

The Webster’s definition of loitering reads thus: ‘to stand or wait around idly without apparent purpose,’ and ‘to travel indolently with frequent pauses.’ Among the synonyms for this behavior are linger, loaf, laze, lounge, lollygag, dawdle, amble, saunter, meander, putter, dillydally, and mosey…All of these words to me imply having a nice day.  They imply having the best day.  They also imply being unproductive.  Which leads to being, even if only temporarily, nonconsumptive, and this is a crime in America…(p. 230, italics in original). 

One of Henry David Thoreau’s most famous quotes is “It is a great art to saunter.”  I have always been jealous of how he spent his days.  He worked all morning, ate lunch, and then went exploring in the afternoon.  He didn’t walk with purpose, looking straight ahead and trying to burn a certain number of calories, go a certain number of miles, or take a certain number of steps.  Instead, he ambled, perhaps even loitered, over plants, insects, rocks, gullies.  He observed, he took notes, he sat down and watched the light change perspective as the sun moved across the sky.  He didn’t worry about productivity or accountability, but instead let his curiosity lead him.  In today’s world, some take what Tiffany Schlain calls a tech Shabbat.  But I want more than a break.  I want to be drawn to something.

II.

Out of exhaustion, or stubbornness, or just plain resistance, I decided to be gloriously unproductive last Friday afternoon.  I poured myself a fizzy water, grabbed my book, and headed outside to read.  A Pure Heart by Rajia Hassib is about two Egyptian sisters, Rose and Gameela, who defy convention in different ways.  When Gameela is killed in a terrorist attack by someone she knows, Rose tries to find out why and how this happened.  Interestingly, we, the readers, hear from the terrorist and Gameela, so we know more about their motivations and perspectives than Rose, even at the end.  As a reader, I felt entrusted with important information even as it was difficult to watch Rose struggle to come to terms with her sister’s death. 

After finishing the book and making bars that are more like cookies because I substitute chocolate chips for cranberries, I headed out to walk in our nearby cemetery.  As a runner, it feels wrong to be walking when I could be running, so I usually stride briskly.  This time, though, I took a hint from Ross Gay, ambling through the grass and taking time to read headstones.  I found bizarre inconsistencies of stone and sentiment even within the same family plot.  Why did Julia have a column when the rest of the family had square headstones with full names and dates?  Why did some of the benches have script on the top and others on the sides?  What does the giant pink piece of quartz resting on a cement pedestal signify?  And who put the bowing, prostrate monk figurine there?  And isn’t it lucky that no one has taken it, smashed it, moved it? 

III.

The headstones contain narratives, not so much of the dead, but of how their descendants wish the dead to be remembered.  I wondered, then, about Rose in A Pure Heart.  Like many of us, she saw people and events through her specific lens, inventing stories to make sense of tragedy, to make it tolerable.  Knowing the thinking of killer and victim is key to the reader’s understanding of what happened, yet Rose did not have that access.  It’s a reminder about accepting our lack of omniscience.  We simply don't know why people do what they do, instead inscribing our own motivations or wishes onto theirs.

IV.

Cemeteries brim with possible stories, so they are ideal for loitering.  Would it be more or less interesting if I knew the stories behind Julia’s headstone, the monk, or the giant pink quartz?  I am happy that in some aspects of my life, I can bask in my poet-self instead of my scholar-self or administrator-self.  Gloriously unproductive, I wander around, lost in my imagination, delighting in “the best day.”