Eat. Sleep. Read.

Pictured is my neighbor’s cat, who fervently follows the first two commands of the slogan on the bag. “Eat Sleep Read” is pretty much what I’m doing today, though not necessarily in that order. I’m thinking of making Eat Sleep Read my goals list for 2013. Doable, right? Like breathing…

What’s Your New Year’s Resolution?

If you’re short on goals for 2012, here’s one to add to your list:

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.”
—Christopher Morley

[Blue Penguins after surviving an oil spill last year, now enjoying their new volunteer-made sweaters. Photo by Toby Zerna/Newspix via Rex USA file.]

First Step Toward New Goals

poet I met here in Horseyland called me one day in January. She wanted to let me know about a workshop that was starting up and encourage me to join in order to meet some like-minded folks.

I did. The workshop is a kind of Weight Watchers for artists—only instead of losing weight, we’re working on achieving our goals (or dreams, as the brochure copy described it).

Didn’t matter to me. I couldn’t tell one from the other at that point and figured that by going to the meetings, I might actually GET a goal or two to work toward.

(I hesitate to write about this on Lull because, as if it weren’t bad enough to commit to my goals in front of a bunch of writers at a roundtable in the Bluegrass, I’m now committing to my goals on a global level. Mind you, I’m taking this V E R Y S L O W L Y. Be patient.)

One of the baby steps toward my larger goals was to submit a bit of writing to a Web site. I chose the Animal Rescue Site (you know, the one you click through to from the purple paw at right to donate food to animal shelters). I wrote a tiny animal rescue tale—the story of how I adopted my first cat in fewer than 300 words—and posted it. You can see it on the site by selecting the tab “Animal Rescue Stories” and scrolling down to “The Lie I Took Home With Me.”

Though there was space for it, I omitted my cat’s theme song. We used to sing it to her—to the tune of Flipper’s theme song—to calm her (you have to read her story to understand this):

They call her Precious, Precious
Whiter than snowflakes
Sweeter than honey
Looks like a bunny

They call her Precious, Precious
Afraid of bubbles
Knows all your troubles
She’s the empathy cat.

At any rate, this tiny step feels big to me. And though it hasn’t built much momentum, it has nudged me to take control and continue the cause. For as Robert A. Heinlein wrote:

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”

Watching Someone Fade from Life

“While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning a tune on the flute. ‘What good will it do you,’ they asked, ‘to know this tune before you die?’”
—Emil Cioran, quoted by Italo Calvino in “Why Read the Classics?”

Yesterday was another milestone for my father. In August, his doctor told him he might not make it into September; in October, the doctor and his staff said their farewells to him. As November gained ground, the hospice staff intimated that my father might not live to see Thanksgiving.

But here we are, the day after, and my father hangs on—to his humor, his will, his memories—even as his physical health rapidly declines. He’s an unusual cancer patient in that he suffers little pain. Yet he suffers all the same.

In the last week or so, I’ve watched him grow thinner and less muscular. What little blood he has remaining won’t circulate at the velocity necessary to reach above his heart, so even sitting up has become a challenge. He is bedridden. And his hours of sleep now surpass his hours awake.

As caregiver and daughter, I am not an objective observer. Every change and every step toward Death affects me. But none has affected me more than my father’s wish to remain computer-free, book-free, magazine-free, and television-free. The one thing I always admired about him was his thirst for knowledge and interest in learning. Today, as dying has robbed him of his mobility and independence, he himself prohibits his mind from exploration and expansion.

The hospice folks asked him if it was too taxing to engage with these media, and he said Yes. But I’m not convinced.

I think his engagement stems from his perspective. My father has always been goal-oriented. He’s a compulsive list-maker whose to-do list has at last dwindled to one task: dying. He’s focusing all his efforts on that and, unlike Socrates, learning something new would distract him from the goal.

This mindset has been the most difficult change to observe and accept. It is a far greater loss than the physical losses of blood, weight, muscle, appetite, mobility, and digestive functions. It reveals a surrendering cloaked as a goal and distinctly separates the man he was from the man he’s becoming.

On the other hand, maybe it’s the ultimate freedom. Maybe learning and thinking are merely baggage when you’re traveling with Death. Maybe everything is as it should be.

[Woodblock by Gustave Baumann.]

Start Your Week with this Goal in Mind

"If we act so that our actions are beautiful, then we act rightly. We should act so as to add to the sum of beauty in the world."
—Grandfather Horseman, paraphrased in Alan Drengson's "Being with Animals"


[painting by Franz Marc]