What do you do all day?
It’s maybe the most common thing people ask me. What do you do all day? It takes me by surprise every time. What do I do? I don’t know, what do you do? Do I do anything? What have I ever done?
I reassure myself that I do, in fact, do lots of different things. But the first answer that pops into my head is the same one. What do I do all day? I read.
And read.
And read some more. Books, papers, screens, scribbles, whatever. For all that I’m more connected with nature than ever here on Krangket island, I am also extremely buried in text. I read with my morning tea (local PNG leaves spiced with some moringa I bought at the market and dried out on a table in the ever-burning sun). If I stay on the island, then I read throughout the day, in my living room, or lying on the grass, or perched on the shore above the coral jetty. It doesn’t matter much where I sit; it’s always hot and I can always see the ocean. The sun arcs above it, sparkling against the waves. As it gets darker, I read by candlelight and before I go to sleep, I swallow several last sentences in bed.
There are some other answers I could come up with too. Writing, for example. That’s a big one. I am writing my dissertation, hacking at it bit by bit, slimming it, shaping it, trying to lend it elegance without shaving away all its weight. I have also started writing a novel. That’s not in any kind of form yet, just a lot of soap bubbles and shadows.
But both the thesis and the novel are actually, in large part, just different reasons to read. For my dissertation, obviously, I’m reading a bunch of philosophy and a few choice bits of cognitive psychology. For the novel I am doing research too, on mining and witchcraft and local myths. And just as importantly, I am reading fiction. Yes the fiction is partly pure indulgence thank God, but as I start this new project, it feels like research too. How do you tell a story? How do you enchant a character onto a page? And also, why? Why do I read? What do I want out of it? How can I give that to others?
The last book I finished was a collection of Alice Munro short stories, The Love of a Good Woman.
Aside from being delightful qua indulgence (yes that word leaked in from my thesis, but can we make qua not just an academic word? It’s so pretty. If I had a band I think qua is the name I’d choose for it…) they were also a great help in answering the why question. Munro writes with this lovely, quiet sense of distance. She might visit a character in a moment of drama and turmoil, but then she skips forward forty years and checks in on the same woman. The stories sum up entire lives.
There is a poignant tragedy to that, but there’s relief too. When I look around at my own life, after having read these stories, I feel less inclined to scratch at it in some pointless, anxious digging for meaning. What am I doing? What am I doing all day? Where am I and why and should I be somewhere else???
Here I am, I have learned to say with that holy, distant calm, and there I am going. I feel the finality of my role in the universe and it’s a wonderful relief. So that’s part of why I keep obsessively reading.
But I swear, I do other things too. For example, volleyball!
This game is right next door to my house, and it turns out, volleyball is one of the precious few sports I am not horrible at!
I now get exercise beyond trudging through the heat to and from the boat-stop and up and down the market lanes. Hooray for team sports!
Also, I’m flying to Brisbane on Monday! To get a new visa for my new job! Oh all the things I am doing. I will try to keep up a better schedule of posting here to keep all you my beloved ones up to date on them.
Big hugs from the Friendship Library.
