March 23, 2004
Pretzel sticks


Sometimes at work I feel like a professional deep sea diver, or a miner. Descending into alien depths for days at a time. When I finally break on the surface of Real Life, I hardly know which end is up, which environment is real. This afternoon, spent, I pushed my chair away from my desk and stepped out to the street for a long walk in the sun.

It was the best kind of weather for walking — bright and clear, but with a snap in the air. (Good thing the Coat was willing to come out of early retirement this week.)

I walked and walked and walked. Sometimes walking is a good thing to do when you aren't sure what else to do. I feel like walking a lot lately.

I headed north up to Peachtree Street, passing the Winecoff Hotel and the Ritz-Carlton. I wove my way through the downtown skyscrapers, past the Marriott Marquis, past the sculptures that mark its entrance: stylized headless lions with bodies composed of soft bronze curves. Then I turned and walked east for a few blocks, and back toward the south, toward CNN Center and Centennial Olympic Park, which you can see from one of the windows at my office. Then finally back to my desk in the Fairlie-Poplar district where I returned to the depths for a few more hours underwater.

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Tom has a new job. At the moment he's out of town on a business trip. He'll be traveling every few weeks now. When he told me that he would be traveling in his new job, I was quietly excited. I knew I would miss him, but I'm the sort of person who thrives on down time, time to myself, and I figured that his occasional absence would give me plenty of that.

I had grand plans for myself during his trip. I was going to write a long letter to an old friend. I was going to dig into some good reading that I've been putting off for too long. I was going to write in my paper journal — things I've been mulling over for weeks but haven't actually sat down to work on — things I need to work on.

Needless to say, I haven't done any of those things. What have I been doing? Lying on the couch eating pretzel sticks and reading the newspaper.

It's not like lying on the couch reading the paper is some incredibly rewarding, relaxing activity that I've been looking forward to. But I'm still doing it. I can't be bothered to stop.

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If I had made a list for myself of chores to accomplish, I could've done that. I could have cleaned the shower and organized the kitchen cabinets. I would not have minded filling in my new address book or paying this month's bills. But the things I had lined up for my time alone are things that require me to be present. To be quiet and to listen. And that is why they are not getting done.

And I can only wonder, why is that so hard?

Our home is not a distracting place. We still don't have a TV, and the phone isn't ringing off the hook. It's easy enough to be "quiet" here.

But the quiet I'm talking about is challenging. It's a painful, productive silence that calls out to me and pushes me away. I want to avoid it — I want to avoid myself. And so I do.

Tom gets back tomorrow, and I have a half-empty bag of pretzel sticks to show for all my time alone. And I don't even like pretzel sticks!