So earnest, so self-centered, so annoying. Who knew 365 days would feel so long? The years go fast, but the blog entries are interminable. Is that what you're thinking? I am, at least some of the time. Obviously I've been off the specific projects, in favor of existential whine sessions. Come on, admit it. You've had it with me, too.
I'm going to force myself to switch gears, even it hurts, which it will, because I'm feeling blank. Blankness can be good, in the sense of being open to inspiration, but the inspiration seems to be taking its own sweet time. So I will turn back to specific projects or assignments or give myself concrete exercises, unless I catch a whiff of inspiration, in which case I will let her in.
So for tonight, I give you: Some Things Most People Don't Know About Me
I am an ace at most non-sport "sports." What this means in actual English is that I can hit a ping-pong ball with uncanny precision, am a bit of a pool shark, regularly hit holes in one on the mini-golf course and kick ass at croquet. These are, needless to say, some of the most useless skills known to humankind, most of whom find these "sports" the gaming equivalent of Broadway musicals. That is to say: unbearable. Now I also happen to enjoy Broadway musicals, so I am the wrong person to ask, but if you ask me, a ping-pong table and a game opponent are two of the happiest sights on earth. Along with a private karaoke room, which I love like some people love chocolate, or diamonds, both of which I can take or leave. Probably leave.
There isn't really that much to say about my gifts in the non-sports sports arena except that I have excellent hand-eye coordination, and that my highly developed fine motor skills might have made me a superior surgeon, had I decided there was a way I could avoid chemistry, and I mean the high school kind, not the organic kind, the mere notion of which makes me feel vaguely sick to my stomach. One aspect of being good at these kinds of non-sport sports is caring to be good at them, of course. When one's competitive nature comes up against one's small stature and lack of natural ability on the playing fields and courts of actual sports, one seeks other outlets. Thus, as a pre-teenager, I spent hours in my grandmother's basement chalking cues and making increasingly ludicrous bets with my equally competitive (if more athletic) cousin Andy and our younger siblings, none of whom burned with the fire to emerge victorious or beat one of us.
Non-sports sports are parlor tricks, in a way, like making a coin appear in someone's ear. Giftedness in them is always a little unexpected in another person, welcome when found in a like-minded soul. There is no larger point here. I am not about to bring this around to how mini-golf is like life, or how I learned to serve and found my inner confidence. I'm not in the mood, and besides, there is no point; these examples are nonsensical. I have excellent hand-eye coordination and highly developed fine motor skills; I am competitive, and I have no fear of peer ridicule, never really have.
I feel bad now that I was so mean to myself at the beginning of this entry. I don't need you to tell me that recent entries haven't been all bad, although there have been some self-indulgent snoozefests interspersed throughout. Now, thinking of how I once dazzled a crowd at a bar almost twenty years ago by knocking in three angle shots in a row, or--even earlier--the Round Robin ping-pong tournaments of Martha's Vineyard circa 1982, I am feeling like myself again. Take that, life. I have mad useless skills. And my version of Blondie's "The Tide is High" doesn't sound totally unlike Blondie, when belted out late-night in a private karaoke room.
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3 comments:
I know you don't need or even want reassurance, and this isn't. It is just a statement of fact: at the end of my day (and this one was longer than life itself), I allow myself the time to read your blog, and it sustains me as I head in to my sleeping family (ah, the wondrous, torturous family bed, which I never would have considered for a second before my children were born) and the rest of the night and the next day. Tonight, I got to read the balance entry, too. (Sometimes I get one off and am reading a day behind.) It made me breathe, which I needed to, having skipped breathing today in order to fit everything else in. Many thanks for your honesty and your genius!
Interesting that your last two blogs focused on “useless” tasks and “useless” skills…
Sorting clothes, washing dishes, making bread pudding, sautéing zucchini…mundane, as you say, well maybe, but useless, not a bit. In fact I actually envied you the savory bread pudding and the zucchini, (and chuckled while picturing a room filled to capacity with non-sorted clothes—sort of like that commercial on TV where an enormous ball of unwashed laundry rolls over everything in front of it.) Even the mundane tasks, the purging the clothes, the feeding the family, are useful and in fact necessary—perhaps not challenging, but then again, lack of challenge on occasion can be restful, which I think is what you were alluding to.
Now, the “useless” skills--hmmm. Nope, ping pong isn’t necessary in life, but entertaining. Try telling the Olympic gold medal ping pong champion that her skill is useless and it’s likely you would get some disagreement. Ask the guy who goes to the corner bar each night to win at pool, what he thinks about his talent. My guess is that each of them would say that they enjoy, perhaps even love their “sport.” Maybe sometimes, that which gives us pleasure can be just as important as things that are deemed more “worthy?” I guess what I am trying to say is that if you happen to be less inspired by your writing right now it doesn’t make the other things that you accomplish in life less important. Am I completely off the mark?
By the way Elizabeth, your comment is simply beautiful.
Karoake? Nowm that IS surprising. Not like all this other stuff you've been boring us with!
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