Standing There Thinking

I was standing by the electric kettle waiting for my water to heat up. The air conditioner in the kitchen hummed cool air. Just three days ago we were in our Airbnb in Castelldefelds, a beachside municipality of Barcelona in Catalonia, enduring an historic heat wave with just one electric fan to cool down the whole room. I was out on most afternoons, exploring. But when I stayed in, these afternoons were deadly. Even if we closed all the windows and the door to prevent the heat from entering, the bathroom vent would let it seep in, making the room an unbearable enclosed space.

During most of our stay in Castelldefelds, Erik was down with COVID –an unfortunate fact given the career goals he looked forward to meet in the conference for which he was there. While I tended to him much of the time with a wet kerchief around my neck, his immune system had a hold on his body’s temperature that left him completely oblivious to the heat that consumed us.

As I often do, when I am within a certain range of acceptable physiological-mental-emotional state of being that I try to cultivate, I was thinking about what to write. One generally walks through the chaotic forces of the world, dealing them as they come, one by one. To know and assess the situation requires a removal of oneself from it. Whenever I engage in that intentional act of self-presentation through some creative action –writing a blog post being a clearly defined such action—I go through this process.

There is a general pattern of questions that I ask myself in this process. The first question is what moves me? The answer always lies in too many different things, so then I must narrow the question down. What moves me right now? There is still much, but it’s better. Except now as I see the general forms of the ideas, just their silhouettes, the feeling of them become too much, dragging me back and holding me down. Generally speaking (because all “musts” can always be broken), the process must be fluid and light. Dragging back or holding down are not conducive towards movement. So, to maintain fluidity I swiftly move on to my second question.

What is not too much right now? What is not too intense, too recent, too now and in the thick of it, too not-yet-resolved-enough? I am loosened up to move again. At first, when I would be overwhelmed with the first question and eager to move on to the second question, I would have a very hard time thinking of an answer. Now, I can think of many things, and what bogs me down is that there are too many disparate directions that answering this second question takes me. I feel myself splitting up, and that’s no good, either. Splitting myself has been too costly; I need to remain intact in the process. I choose one, because I must keep moving. This prompts me to the third question.

Does what I am thinking of have a defined scope? Can I at least loosely grasp its edges? Oftentimes I cannot conceive the edges, exactly. The scope is imagined merely by feeling. And sometimes, to not know the edges this way is not only enough, but for the best, to allow for the writing process to take care of the rest. There must be room for chance (though, yes, this “must” can also be broken).

(I used to always begin with a different first question: what is most meaningful to write about? I burned with this question. In fact, it is a question that still bugs me all throughout the process, nagging at me with a little voice, before and after each of the other three questions, bugging me always. But this one is very tricky. Being obsessive about it has led me to ugly and destructive ends.* So, I let it remain in the back, like a vicious monster that must be tamed in a cage, with a dark and heavy cloth over it. I cannot get rid of it, because I admit I cannot live without it. But its vanity cannot be fed and it must be controlled.)

I was standing there, waiting for my water, when there was wafting the distinct scent of detergent from the cotton shirt-dress that I had on. I mulled over the thought of this scent for a while. Then, I knew what I would write about.

* One imagines ugly and destructive ends as losing oneself to substances, to lasciviousness, to mortal sin –things of the old world that managed to carry themselves intact into the new as little else. But I think it is that same rigidly structured and organized modus vivendi of my forebears that links thought to action, Korean Neo-Confucianism, and has been the bane of at least my creative existence that pulls me away from turning to such things. That, or the Catholic guilt that forever remains. Nonetheless, what I refer to here is something much more common and decidedly less sexy: general lack of motivation, dread, bitterness, egotism, complacency, inaction.