On Idling

“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.”
—Winnie the Pooh

It’s easy for me to find time to be idle all year but summer is especially conducive to this practice—longer days, more unscheduled time, the laziness of the heat and humidity which turn my usual hyperactive days into a sluggish slow motion reel. I love to sit in an outdoor cafe in the city and watch the world go by, or take out a set of color pencils and sketch without a goal other than to allow for play, or stare out my living room window and think about what I should or could be doing. In the latter example, I can actually feel a rumble of excitement or inspiration, but it’s in the mind only, whereas the body stays on the sofa. Body and mind are somewhat out of sync, and that’s what lends the experience an ambiguous pleasure.

There are definite pros and cons about idling. It can be concerning that if you idle too much, it could lead to dissatisfaction and may even develop into a depression. However, too little of it, and finding yourself facing too much work, could lead to mental imbalance and have adverse effects on your health.

The Indian commentator Om Prakash Parida, informs us that research in general has been shown to be in favor of idling. That idling creates more blood flow to the brain which in turn may consolidate memory and maintain and improve sensitivity of the brain overall. All this is good news for those inclined to hang out on the front porch and drink ones newly concocted recipe for rhubarb-lemonade on the front porch for hours while greeting all the dog walkers that pass by. Parida also speaks of meditation and the power that emptying our thoughts for a designated duration has on our ability to refresh and rejuvenate our thinking. Like in meditation, idling can decrease stress and allow for mental clarity. both which refresh our fatigued Souls and spirits.

There are of course many ways of easing your way into idling. One is finding it organically or spontaneously. All of a sudden, there you are, doing nothing and not knowing what to do. Grab a coffee or a beer and accept it—hold on to it before it escapes and you begin thinking about all the calls you have to make, the laundry you have to fold, the bills you need to take care of. The other way, is to to plan idleness into you calendar. Today is the day I, or often we these days, will go somewhere with no real destination other than a cafe or perhaps a museum or bookstore and see what happens. No need to return at a particular time…

What happened yesterday, was this poem. So here it is in case you’ve got an idle moment. Don’t forget to grab an iced tea!

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On Idling

We settle
into the outdoor cafe
pulling two tables together
so we can sit side by side—
look out facing the people action
our foamy warm lattes between us.

At first it is the truck—
the driver descending
unloading boxes from the back—
with at least eight crates to be delivered.
He idles the truck for the duration,
fumes spewing outwards,
worse than the earlier marijuana fumes.

We are trying to block it out,
but the spewing and sputtering
are difficult to ignore.
it’s over half an hour so far
and the driver is still not back
and instead of watching people
our eyes scan the sidewalk
searching for one particular truck driver.

Meanwhile my foamy latte
is lacking coffee.
Perhaps they forgot to add some?
—and I run in and request a shot or two
for which she requests an additional $5.75,
but after my reaction, tells me it’s free.
Cup in hand, I return to my chair
to sip our coffees, hold hands and
read our prospective phone and books
hopeful that the the driver returns soon.
For now, life couldn’t be sweeter.

Until our bliss is disrupted by
this woman appearing around the corner
dragging two tables together for herself
slurping an ice cold drink with a plastic straw
and tossing a makeup bag onto the table.
Black stringy hair, the palest of skin,
her eyes fixed to the mirror,
she manages in the next half hour
with all of her magic potions—
powders, creams, mascara, eye shadows
a tube of black glossy lip gunk
to transition from Snow White 
into the nasty Goth-like step mother in the same tale.

When she’s done, which she never apparently is—
a touch more of this or that
(Whatever happened to the quick retouch of a lipstick,
with just the suggestion of a glance in a pocket mirror?)
her boyfriend, one of the waiters, steps out from the cafe—
a cheerful optimistic natural looking guy
short frame, thick curly brown hair, big smile
obviously from his look, deeply infatuated—
and she informs him, that when his shift is over
they must run to Sephora
to purchase the missing false eyelashes.

He nods cheerfully
curls spilling out of a white scarf tied on his head
to keep his hair out of the pastries
and returns to complete his shift.

The entire time that we are sipping
we are directing our chairs in such a way
to block this woman out of our vision,
and wish we had earplugs now
to drown out the idling truck
whose owner eventually returns 
to move the damn vehicle back onto the road
after he takes more time to check out his GPS
and smoke a quick cigarette or two.

Our lattes long gone
we’re ready to get moving
trying to maintain positivity and gratefulness—
is it not that which keeps you living longer?

And as we head out for our next adventure
I’m thinking that of the two different idlings
(not including our own),
the truck and the makeup artist
the truck was probably the easier to take of the two.

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