BETWEEN MORDECAI AND MY SOCKS

I knew I would pay recompense for last night’s disregard, for lightly dismissing concern for the sake of tea and bed. Today I feel doubly compelled to attain, to achieve something grand, but do not know exactly where to turn. My fingers feel fumbley, while the words themselves are tangled and muddled far before they find my fingertips. Today I am Mordecai:

with that mingling of inconsequence which belongs to us all, and not unhappily, since it saves us from many effects of mistake, Mordecai's confidence in the friend to come did not suffice to make him passive, and he tried expedients, pathetically humble, such as happened to be within his reach, for communicating something of himself. [see Daniel Deronda]

The words, as they race across the pathways feel like nothing more than expedients urging on possibilities, while, in fact, there is little to do but wait. I know this to be not true – or at least not quite so – but today the words, and the thoughts they perhaps correspond to, just do not come.

I suppose that is what I get for terminating last night’s line of thought, for rejecting the work offered for simpler – and more pleasurable --- delights. Now, those thoughts are gone and no new topics spring to mind, or fingertips. You might suggest that, despite my complaint, I am still here typing and, hence, have indeed found a topic. Heck, I am even quoting from George Eliot, but alas I fear I must insist otherwise. I am only stalling, filling time and space until I figure out what to write, looking from the bridge to the sunset for the figure it might bring.

Perhaps I am looking in the wrong direction, or for the wrong figure silhouetted against the sky. I have been thinking quite a bit about starting over, or at least looking in another direction. At the same time I sense how deeply engrained within me the belief that once one starts out on a path, one must see it through really is. Though, today I do not want to write a confessional – I don’t know if I ever do. I do not feel compelled to share the reasons for these feelings or beliefs, just as I doubt you would feel it necessary to read of them. Again, I am stalling, wading through the opacity of words tied up somewhere around my elbows.

Today I want a topic that matters, something grand and important. I pace the room interrogating the piles of accumulation strewn here and there looking for a theme to dislodge itself. Unfortunately the new words I find only reach the bottleneck of outgoing ideas already gathering in the environs of my elbows. They – the elbows that is – are actually feeling a might sore today, perhaps that is why I am fixating upon them.

Anyway. The new idea still is not coming. I could always pilfer from the latest New Yorker, or some unsuspecting blog. God knows I have pilfered inspiration before. I wouldn’t quite say I have gone all the way to plagiarism, but today I think I need to go it alone – whatever the hell that might mean. Today I am going to prove something to myself, even if it takes all day – and yes, again, the contradiction of struggling to do so publicly is not lost on me. If you haven’t noticed yet, I do not fear contradicting myself.

And still I stall. As you can clearly see, I am not procrastinating here. I am literally willing my fingers to form these words, pushing aside masses of clutter interfering with each coherent sentence. I am trying, folks, but still I cannot seem to lay claim to anything particularly worth saying. I suppose I could describe something or another, but I can’t imagine you really wanting to hear about the paperclip on the floor by my desk, the one I have been intermittently staring at without being able to bring myself to pick it up, the one next to the spare printer that is still sitting on the floor blocking the door from properly closing. It is a perfectly good paper clip, but I doubt you would want to hear about that.

It is not so much that I expect to write something that changes the world today, though I wouldn’t mind of course. But today, I feel that pressure for achievement, to say or do something of value, or at least something smart – whatever that might mean…

It is now hours later than when I typed the preceding ellipsis. I have done some work on other things, and I have taken a nap with the wife; I have even picked up the previously mentioned paperclip. I did a bit of work on some other projects and may have achieved something – though I cannot yet tell if what I have achieved counts as achievement. I am still a might tangled between those two elusive words.

I do not know for sure if the anxiety has abated now that I have done something, but I can tell you that the world is certainly intruding itself upon my consciousness this evening, that the recent blend of self-pity and self-loathing has little room to stretch its wings. I no longer feel myself as Mordecai – the need to clean the apartment overwhelms metaphysical considerations tonight. And now that the sun has set, there seems little likelihood of finding a future rowing toward Blackfriars Bridge. Perhaps today was not a day for grand things after all. Perhaps today is the day I tidy up the little things to make room for a grand new purchase. Perhaps tomorrow I shall do something large, while today is the day I put away the socks.