Practicing Domesticity: Sometimes Productivity is Overrated

Friday, April 15, 2011

Sometimes Productivity is Overrated

Let me show you a picture of some people I like:

Now, do these people look like they're being very productive?

What if I told you they had all been working on resumes and/or presentations for approximately 3 hours, 3 hours before this picture was taken?

What if I told you one of these people was at work, one of these people was working on a scientific poster, and two were touring a house 8-13 hours before this picture was taken?

What if I told you two of these people turned in the largest piece of academic work of their undergraduate career 16 and 12 hours before this picture was taken?

What if I told you two of these people were up editing said academic work 22 and 24 hours before this picture was taken?

What if I told you two of these people listened to these academic works for two hours in their pre-edit state 28 hours before this picture was taken?

Ok, so sometimes we are productive.

But last night was the final straw. At 10:30 I was ready to go to bed. Walking to the sink to clean some dishes, I turned and jokingly asked what had happened to our April 15 party (for those of you who do not live in our house, April 15 represents the day when Michelle, Brad and I turned in our major honors projects - Michelle's an overachiever, or at least her committee thinks she is, so she turned hers in last Friday - and as such, it represented a day of celebrating).

Well, that was the end of our quiet evening of productivity.

Michelle immediately jumped up and said we were going out. Where? Didn't matter, we just had to go. Which explains why we found ourselves half an hour later standing in Peabody's. And why we were still there two hours later when one of the employees walked by and seeing the chair we had set up on the other table in order to take a self-timed picture of ourselves, offered to take a picture for us.

Long conversations about majors, stereotypes, classifying people, understanding others, and life filled the air (ok, only from our table. I'm pretty sure the people next to us were not discussing the philosophical merit of argumentation).

This is one of the many reasons I love these people. And college. And unproductive nights.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What I Learned From My Mother

by Julia Kasdorf

I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewing even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor, I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

Source: Sleeping Preacher (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992)

Alone

by Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

The Silence

by Wendell Berry

Though the air is full of singing
my head is loud
with the labor of words.

Though the season is rich
with fruit, my tongue
hungers for the sweet of speech.

Though the beech is golden
I cannot stand beside it
mute, but must say

"It is golden," while the leaves
stir and fall with a sound
that is not a name.

It is in the silence
that my hope is, and my aim.
A song whose lines

I cannot make or sing
sounds men's silence
like a root. Let me say

and not mourn: the world
lives in the death of speech
and sings there.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Sometimes Productivity is Overrated

No comments:

Post a Comment

Other Blogs