Bibliographic 2.3: On Languishing
I set up so many rules for myself at the beginning of 2021, which is very “pandemic life” in retrospect: rules keep us safe and creating my own rules would do the same. Even the idea for this newsletter was structured: an essay, 2000 wordsish, on the first of the month for twelve months, not meandering, purely focused. But I’m not feeling up to it this month, and why should I? It’s the end of August and this is not a time for rules. The end of summer is for doing nothing, for languishing.
Each season gets its own version of a languish, and summer is my favourite. In the winter that kind of introspection requires cocooning, blankets as padding for the sharp edges of the icy outside world. It’s an act of protection. A summer languish, though, is just giving up.
I might have otherwise fought against it, but I’ve been forced into a state of doing nothingness after a run-in at a farm stand in Prince Edward County. I can’t resist end-of-summer farm stand bounty, the pints of veggies and pyramids of silky corn, the metal box that you drop your cash into on the honour system. We were leaving after a lovely weekend trip and I wanted a souvenir, so we stopped for eggs. Only $4 for a beautiful eggshell ombré in the carton, a bit of dirt still clinging to some eggs (I’ll call it dirt instead of chicken shit). I grabbed my dozen, tucked them into the car, shut the trunk, took a step to the side and spectacularly windmilled down a tiny ditch, most of the fall localized on my right ankle.
“It’s not bad, right?” I asked Andrew when he got out of the car a few minutes later and found me sitting on the side of the road. He and Clara had no idea what happened—one minute I was in the rearview mirror, the next gone. Maybe I’d walked back for more eggs? No, I was just winded and injured. We both looked at my ankle. A round bump the size of an egg had ballooned out the side. Even if it wasn’t bad, it was in no way good. (Reader: it was bad.)
A week later the egg has mostly subsided but my right foot is still swollen and bruised and operates at a very slow, limping pace. I wanted my summer nothing to involve meandering walks at dusk, more swims in the lake. There are 21 days left so maybe it will, but right now it looks more like laying in bed while Clara sits next to me using her tablet and occasionally looking up and saying “I’m bored.” I forgot to mention that we also all have colds.
I remember being in Athens during the most obligation-free period of my adult, or at least almost adult life, between jobs and school, completely alone in Greece. I don’t quite remember why I was there solo— I guess I just had the time. There was a heatwave and I structured a day, maybe a few days, around a trip to the air conditioned English language bookstore in Syntagma Square for something to read and then the grocery store for a carton of ice cream. I laid down on the single bed in the unairconditioned apartment and read Tender is the Night and ate ice cream for the rest of the day. I had no WiFi—did WiFi exist then?— and concentrated only on the book, the ice cream. Now with my ankle and cold, I badly want to channel this perfect languid energy, when it’s so hot that all your edges are blurred and melted, when anything can happen, sure, but mostly, crucially, nothing can happen.
Of course, it’s different now. I have WiFi and a little phone I stare at too much. A summer cold is not just a summer cold, and requires standing in that heat on crutches for a COVID test at the hospital. If I’m laying around all day, then the six year old is too, which isn’t as acceptably indulgent. Also a heatwave is now not just a heatwave. The frequency and magnitude of heatwaves are more dire, more indicative of something big and terrible. My parents are in Greece this summer and the heatwave they got was hotter than anything I ever sweated through, Athens smoky from the nearby forest fires.
Now nothing happening is a privilege, not an end of summer default. What if when I say the end of summer is for doing nothing what I really mean is that it’s a time to stop thinking about the future because it’s coming at you anyway, whether you like it or not? No rules, no future. Does that sound foreboding? How can it not be?
It can be other things too, though. We can try. Towards the end of this month Clara learned how to do a starfish in the water. Technically she could do it before, but she only just started trusting herself to float on her back without anyone holding her up. When she unlocked this achievement she spent a good thirty minutes in a hotel pool with her long skinny limbs spread out, her hair a halo, her ears submerged, singing and listening to the strange distortion of your voice when you’re partially underwater. Her serenity in the water is something to envy, admire, learn from.
Floating is a good way to do nothing. Not so much giving up as it is being aware of your surroundings and then surrendering to them. Even if you start off in the middle of the pool, eventually you’ll knock up against the sides.
I’ll see you when we get there.
xoxo Teri