Endless Summer

The whine no parent wants to hear, two books about enduring this thing called life, and soccer is getting on my last nerve.

What did your parents tell you when school was out for summer and the days seemed too long to fill and you just couldn't bear the tedium, so eventually you whined I'mmmmm borrrrred and they looked at you like you were either crazy or incredibly inconvenient?

I'll tell you what my mother told me. She told me: "You're too smart to be bored. Go figure out something to do." I told my relatively bored kid this story a couple of days ago, and that relatively bored kid gave me a relatively perturbed look that screamed "Of course Mahmoo said that." So then I made the mistake of asking my kid something my mother never would have asked, and that is, "well, if you're so bored, what would you like to do?" And the kid didn't know, didn't want to draw me a beautiful peacock (will you?), wasn't in the mood to do (insert idea here) now, and so on. So I sighed and texted my sister, who reminded me that our mother also told us to go read, because that is specific, and prevents a youngster from saying something like "how can I possibly figure out what to do when I am bored out of my skull?"

Touché.

Back in the day when cable television was in its infancy, and you had to see movies in theaters, and malls weren't dying so you could walk to them with a friend, I usually found my way towards something that would prevent me from fighting with my sister over whether I was hanging up the phone soon or she needed to wait her turn to call someone.

Narrator voice: Paige never hung up the phone soon, even if she said she was, and especially during the summer. Katherine would get fed up and punch her blabbermouth sister in the gut, and then both of them would be grounded anyway, because their mother never cared who started it. They would both go to their rooms. Anyway...

This was back in the K-12 years, when we'd kill time at the local swimming pool and wait for our mom to get home so we could go to an Orioles game together. I would write letters to friends who lived within a ten minute walk of my house, and eagerly await their reply. I would spend all day watching MTV and dreaming about being Simon Le Bon's wife. I would write short stories, or read, or go find a pickup game of softball to play with other neighborhood kids. I would draw a lot of horses because I used to want one really bad, and would daydream about riding my pony, caring for it, and kissing it on the white blaze that streaked down its nose. I would ride my bike until dinnertime, and later fall asleep after thinking about how I had a good day after all.

"A little bit of boredom is good for you," Mom used to say. It used to make me so damned mad when she did, but now I know she's right. When I used to let my mind wander, I would come up with all these ideas about what I could do creatively, or what I wanted for myself personally, or how what I really needed was not something to do, but a little time to unwind. I have a distinct memory of climbing a sturdy tree in the woods behind our house so I could read, surrounded by nothing but leaves and birdsong. It wasn't until I closed the book and came inside that I realized how badly I needed that.

As I got into my college years and adulthood, I am pretty sure that I was boredom-free, or at least without enough boredom to note. I think it's because of the way my mother always told me to go figure out something to do, so I did. It's also probably because I work in this field that always has some engrossing thing to write about, so I'm always meeting someone new, learning something new, seeing something new and it is hard to be bored when you realize how rich existence is and can be.

Here's hoping you are soldiering through summer and finding a bit of good in your world. Hit reply and let me know what that good is if you get the chance.

Writing prompt: Think about your relationship to boredom. Is it hard or easy for you to bear? What do you do to snap out of it? And what good has come from wrestling with it?

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer

Endnotes

What I've been reading

All The Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley. It's a lovely memoir about how after Bringley's brother died, he quit his job at The New Yorker and became a guard at the Met Museum for a decade. He thought he'd be able to lose himself in the beauty that surrounded him every day. Instead he finds his people, introduces the reader to all the professionals that make great museums like this one tick, and learns how lucky he is to work at a place that represents the best aspects of humankind. If you haven't read this one yet, read it. It's very moving, very well-done.

Before that, I finally finished Ocean Vuong's The Emperor of Gladness, which was kind of interesting to read before All the Beauty in the World. I mentioned in a previous letter that it was about chosen families – the protagonist's chosen family is an elderly woman with dementia who needs someone to care for her, and his colleagues at a restaurant that doesn't strike me as a place I'd want to eat. But like Beauty it's also about the ways we cope with painful moments and uncertainty. Do we gorge ourselves on beautiful sunsets and oil paintings, do we numb ourselves, do we lie to ourselves and others, or do we face the awful truth? Another good one for your TBR pile. By the way, hit reply if you're so inclined and let me know what's in your TBR pile. Just curious.

What I've been writing

As I mentioned before, I am excited for two friends who have started newspapers. I was carrying on about last week's Beyoncé concert to one of them, and he asked me for 300 words that will run in this week's edition. Do you know what's hard to do? Write 300 words about a concert that blew your mind in a way that demonstrates why it was so mind-blowing.

What I've been watching

Atlanta United soccer. They're not losing right now. But they're not winning either. On Saturday night, it's going to be hell to go back into a building where I recently witnessed excellence – Beyoncé – only to see hot boiled garbage in its place. I'm probably going to cry.

Where I hope you'll donate this week

This week Congress approved a $1 billion cut in funding to public broadcasting, so please consider a gift to your local NPR and PBS affiliates.