Well here we are. North Carolina peak summer. 4th of July. High nineties Fahrenheit. No walking today. I’m confronting that creeping kind of boredom that inhabits the circuitry of July. But I am staring at this dog day by doubling down on leisure. At least that’s what I hope happens. Can I calm down my caffeine fueled restlessness today?
My boredom survival kit happens to be a well timed payload of checked out library books which includes Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life and Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News. A lot of Ann’ing apparently. Reading craft books and novels like these, I’m enticed to develop the practices around the writing itself. This is an increasingly important goal of mine because the style of narrative non-fiction writing which I am cultivating depends on exploration and immersion into the spaces I inhabit, have inhabited, or travel through. To capture these immersive experiences with more care and depth requires much more than what I had been leaning on: memory and reflection. I need more tools in the tool kit for my, let’s call them “immersions”, which I am gradually building out as I walk, write, and practice this evolution in my own work:
Phone transcription on walks
Moleskine/sketch pad
Field guides
Camera
What else may I need? I’ve been taking this kind of inventory of possible tools on recent walks and have begun transcribing already. Transcribing allows me to hook directly into stream of conscious flows and real time narration rather than trying to reconstruct all of it after the fact.
But there’s more work to do. How can I capture more experience and rebuild the worlds I’ve seen that will help electrify and amplify my narratives? This is the core quest for me right now. It’s the developing thesis of what my craft should be. And the day prior when I’m scooping up the set of books from the library I make an accidental discovery which aids me in this pursuit. I realize as you soon shall see, I’m missing one of the most fundamental, widely acknowledged tools. Maybe you’ve already noticed the gap.
The day before, I was poking around in the adult non-fiction section at said library and notice a sign that reads Kellenberger Room. Here, through a glass paned wood door I spot a white bearded man at the helm of a ginormous desk. The room is dedicated to genealogy and local history. This curious fellow, I imagine, is like the air traffic controller of obscure civil war and coastal ship lore and I do not enter so as to not disrupt his noble operations.
Instead of actually going into the room, I instead stand outside the door awkwardly and have a simple thought: research. I realize I have been missing out on immersive in person research. Sure, it’s old school. Sure, it might slow down my pace. Sure, it’s not as immediate or far reaching as the rest of the digital horde. But, who cares? And the more I think about it, the sexier the idea of running around and doing research on foot in the world becomes: like an over zealous journalist in a movie on a frenzy to get the scoop. And so I take a mental note of this majestic little nook. I commit to returning here when the mission is more clear.
When I scoop up my payload and check out I commit a pretentious act of insisting I do my book transactions with a human being. As if I can single-handedly save the library system from some inevitable demise. As if the automated checkout machine somehow embodies the downfall of western literacy. The librarian does not share my sentiments and pitches the automated machine to me. I think I’ve taken my immersion frenzy too far today.
At home cracking into this library slush pile, I select Ann Lamott’s craft book Bird by Bird off the stack and start reading the intro. And gnawing at my attention while I read is this vague gravity I tend to feel on the fourth; an obligation to feel some flavor of patriotic, as a prerequisite to solidify the holiday. Side one of the coin. And I resist the other side of the coin in equal measure: to play armchair philosopher and lament about American Society; though it would be fitting because I have my ass parked in the sofa like a Buick.
And I don’t get very far into this book when a phrase hits me: The United States of Advertising, first coined by writer activist Paul Krassner, and that phrase wipes clean the patriotic dissonance i am swimming in. This phrase makes me chuckle a little bit. I needed that hearty little guffaw.
This phrase opens the pressure valve a bit in my psyche. All the doomer beats and vibes surrounding all of us these days aren’t going anywhere and they don’t need to be part of today’s itinerary. Did you ever have that experience with reading where a passage just cleanses you? Wipes away all the chalk-white anxiety calculus on the board we’re all writing in our minds these days?
Today, I decide, I would rather laugh than lament. Today I would rather just read than solve the Sudoku puzzle that is the US. I can practically feel Uncle Sam’s star spangled hat poking me before he angrily leaves the chat.