Through a green Gaelic glass

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

– From Dylan Thomas

One of Dylan’s more accessible passages.

Butterflies like my phlox

Took this photo just the other day before the front porch.  It seems a fitting photo after finishing How to be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson.  I recommend it highly.  See my previous post.  The book was unexpectedly inspiring given how funny it was.  Reading it was a wonderful use of time, as wonderful as taking time out to take a photo of a butterfly.  Hodgkinson helped remind me just how absolutely important it is to make time for me and my bliss, which involves reading, writing, and photography.  Unfortunately, I am a working stiff, and the company (actually a college but more like a company every year), seeks new ways to steal my time for its own nefarious purposes.  It wants us to multitask like our students, the “millennial” generation, multitask.  I hate multitasking as much as I hate simplistic labels for entire groups of students who are as diverse as ever.  I’m not one for doing more than one thing at a time.  I have a hard enough time doing anything at a time, especially when that anything is something that’s preventing me from doing some one thing that I enjoy.  Sometimes, like Bartleby (which Hodgkinson cites), I prefer doing nothing.  Sometimes nothing is really something special and good for the soul.  Be happy!

I’m halfway through Tom Hodgkinson’s How to be Idle, a delightful and persuasive call to kick back and savor the simple things of life, especially when at work.  He’s a writer from the UK where he edits and publishes The Idler website where you can learn more about the book and be introduced to a thriving and lazy community of idlers on the constant search for new ways to rebel against the Protestant Work Ethic.  

My “drudgery postponed” post title above is borrowed from Hodgkinson, a phrase I particularly liked because it carries the same meter as the wording of the title, Paradise Regained, John Milton’s less interesting sequel to his Paradise Lost.  Drudgery was postponed, Hodgkinson explains in his chapter, “The Death of Lunch,” in an earlier era when lunch was a more leisurely affair than it is now in this age of fast food.  It might easily last longer than an hour and might involve “a stroll around town, a taxi-ride, a trip to the gallery.”  It might even lead on into the evening, “and leave behind it a delightful trail of cancelled appointments and drudgery postponed” (p. 58).  

So I’ve resolved to be more idle at work.  The new semester is fast approaching with student advising starting next week.  It will be a duty and a pleasure to find new ways to slack off, to savor the moment, and to enjoy my time on campus with a minimum of anxiety.

It’s quite the coincidence, really, that I’m reading this book now after having already resolved last year to enjoy my time at work more.  For example, instead of usually eating my sack lunch in my office where I might be tempted to continue working, I’ve begun a new routine: I carry my office chair down an easy two flights of metal steps to the ground level where the concrete meets a grassy slope.  Here at the rear of the building, I can enjoy the birds singing in the trees and look around at the blue skies and forested mountains that surround me.  A bite of sandwich, a sip of tea, and a good read in the great outdoors make for such a more satisfying lunch than staying cloistered in my office surrounded by post-it notes reminding me of chores still to do.

Utah natural ice sculpture

So I’ve accomplished my number one goal this summer: finish my screenplay.  And I’m well on my way to finishing my second goal: not teach summer school.  Hurray for me!  The college where I work has just gone through an extensive reorganization over the summer in response to drastic budget cuts, and our president (also known as the CEO to reflect the ongoing process of transforming colleges into corporate entities) has emailed us all a long, and I mean really long, rationale for the reorganization.  The missive is a model of public relations hyperbole in which the president explains how devastating cuts in the budget and layoffs of personnel present exciting opportunities for growth and innovation.  He even refers to the “silver lining” at the core of the state’s budget slashing.  He uses the tired metaphor of turning lemons into lemonade.  The letter would be truly inspiring if it wasn’t so full of bullshit. 

And now, as retirement looms closer, I find that the best thing that I can say about teaching in a community college is, “At least I have a job.”  Yes, teaching is better than being unemployed!  The second best thing I can say is, “I get my summers off” which allows me the freedom to rant and rave in my blog.

I have the power!

The view from my porch.

Jealous?  You should be.  Born and raised in Los Angeles, I love these blue skies where I now live in the boondocks.  Why anyone would want to put up with bumper to bumper traffic, smog, crowds, and miles and miles of concrete and asphalt is beyond me.  I was going to write more, but I have a life to live.

All right!  I inserted a photo into my post.  I don’t have these flowers in my flower bed anymore.  Bummer!  Maybe tomorrow I can write my first full-fledged post.  My brother forwarded me an email that says Obama is a Muslim.  Can you believe how stupid some Americans are?  Stupid enough to vote for Bush twice, that’s how stupid.  I’m going to move to Canada if things don’t start improving around here.

This is getting better.  You can actually read the text now.  You wouldn’t believe how much time I wasted doing this.  Or maybe you can.  Maybe tomorrow I can actually write something of substance, but I wouldn’t count on it.  

Like I said, this is a fucking test.