Fertile Indolence

I. My folks visited this week and stayed with me and the lady. The week before that, I had myself a nice long weekend with two very good friends in DC. So, lately, it's been cities, museums, brewpubs, breakfasts, farmers markets, hikes, drives, guided tours. Making paczki and packing sauerkraut. Playing cards.

And too much not-writing.

II. One of the best things an MFA can do is to help you discover you have a disease. If you find you do not have this disease, and want it, the MFA can attempt to infect you.

There is one steady symptom of this disease: if a day goes by and you have not written, you feel very, very bad. Sometimes like you're sinking into yourself. Sometimes like the inside of your head is itchy, bloated, or gassy. And sometimes like you want to step in front of a semi, off a bridge, or into the christening/continuation of bad habits.

(Arguably, there are many symptoms of this disease; arguably, there are different if not unique strains. But the symptom mentioned above is the only symptom that matters.)

For many, this symptom can be temporarily relieved by reading deeply.

III. In Polish Writers on Writing, edited by Adam Zagajewski-- a killer craft book in a killer series called "The Writer's World" by Trinity Press-- Jozef Czapski, a writer/painter, addresses something he calls "FERTILE INDOLENCE," which is perhaps the best defense for the periods when an artist pours an entire day (or week) into not-arting.

After coming out of a period of extremely hard work-- whether productive or not-- Czapski argues we're often

capable of greater attention, higher temperatures, with deeper
sensibility. At this time observation ceases to be merely an act of will
or the muscles and so a constraint, and it gradually becomes a reflex, later
almost second nature; only then can one speak of fertile indolence...and one
returns to work after one's inactive day enriched, with recharged batteries.

Have you ever felt this way? It makes sense to me. Craft has been worked into our bones so thoroughly that taking a breather is not really taking a breather. It's just shifting the register from "active" to "passive." Or "direct" to "indirect."

This state of fertile indolence is a kind of "passive contemplation," an

inaction [that] is a dream with open eyes, a state only seemingly restful:
the creative instinct is more awake than at any other time, the "faculties en
eveil," the alert faculties, rolled into a ball, are awake, waiting to throw
themselves on the first catch, to leap forward at full speed but also with a
full, cold, calculating consciousness.

Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

But. As we all know, it can be hard to get a stopped train moving again. Czapski cautions us to be "constantly, subconsciously, instinctively vigilant in order not to allow fertile indolence to transform itself into wasteful indolence, which weakens and annuls any project instead of enriching it."

He says it best here, I think: "a person capable of such indolence is threatened by a kind of fall, a peril: an urge to prolong the state, because it is a happy state."

IV. Today I rearranged the study. I added a table, stacked books in piles, and sat (am sitting) at a clean desk. Tomorrow I return to long writing hours. Here's to hoping for the leap from one happy state to another.