Journal of a Sabbatical

living in the breakdown lane

February 11, 1998

Previous Entry Journal Index	x	x	n	I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep suck out all the marrow of life , to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. -- Walden, Henry David Thoreau Oh gee, 3 years ago yesterday I quit my highly paid high-tech job - leaving the fast lane for the slow lane. Now here I am living in the breakdown lane. It's one thing to be driving slowly taking in the scenery with the fast lane passing you, but a whole 'nother thing to be stopped in the breakdown lane trying to change a tire with the whole of society whizzing past you. So, mean or sublime? I don't know yet. Have I driven life into a corner? If I have, it's the wrong corner. To spend three years peeling off the corporate armor only to discover underneath it exactly the same cut bleeding soul I was 30 years ago, is astonishing in its simplicity and obviousness and terrifying in its blatant revelation that the abyss is always there whether you're looking at it or not. Thoreau sums up the question I've been asking myself for three years, what does it mean to have a life? How can I tell if I've lived? When I was deeply involved in work, I believed that was life. Then I began to believe that life was something totally outside work. Now I have no clue what a life is. I finished Ullman's book last night and was pretty well convinced that sex and money and fast cars and a challenging new programming contract do not by themselves constitute a life. She's right on about that lack of certainties: And I'll have to muddle through without certainties. Without my father's belief that the machinery of capital , if you worked hard and long, was benign in the long run, so benign you could even own a piece of it. Without my generation's macho leftism, which made us think we could smash the machine and build a better one. Without Brian's cocksureness that he was smart enough to know all the machine's little secrets, and so control it. -- Close to the Machine, Ellen Ullman My friend Ned once pointed out to me that communism and capitalism are both about the production and distribution of goods and as such both are doomed to failure because the real question isn't about the production and distribution of goods. It's about the human spirit: that darn cut and bleeding soul. So where does that leave me after three years of washing litterboxes and struggling with writers' block and taking a few trips? Stuck in the dailiness of life, that's where. After my web research on socially responsible investing, I went to Borders and bought The Complete Idiot's Guide to Mutual Funds. It's sitting on my desk waiting for me to use its simple tools to analyze how I should have gone about planning my finances before I ever took this sabbatical. Meanwhile, I washed dishes and cleaned litterboxes at the cat shelter until after 1:00 PM. Little Cat had diarrhea that stunk up the whole place. Slinky's in the sick room. The adorable tabby kittens who came in last week have already been adopted. Somebody let Kitty, one of the compulsive eaters, into the food room where she started tearing open bags of food. We got 250 lbs of kitty litter delivered. The laundry continues to pile up. I spent a long time playing with Strawberry and Wendy, getting them to chase a length of pink rope. I stayed with it long enough that I got all 5 of the Riley Ave colony cats to come out of their cage, however briefly, to follow the goings on. Some days we don't get any time to actually play with the cats, which they really need, so I was happy to stay late and keep playing. Tonight I ran into QI at Wild Harvest. He was supposed to be on sabbatical in Japan but it's been postponed a semester so he's back in town. He sold his Andover house and moved to Maine last summer so he's not around a lot - he comes down from Maine during the week to teach his classes but spends most of his time up there. Therefore, I hadn't seen him in awhile. We updated each other on Japan trips and plans, then he said "I got some sad news this morning." I asked, "What?" "Yesterday was the first time I voted in Maine" he replied. I nodded and said I didn't think the outcome reflected on the whole state - it was a very low turnout - and that I really hoped people wouldn't view Maine as another Colorado. We bought our separate groceries and went off on our separate paths shaking our heads over a sad day for Maine.
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