Lately I've been enjoying the time at my cutting board more than my time at the keyboard, or with a book in hand. And I'm not even cutting up freshly caught brook trout in some wilderness camp. Just things like greens, chicken, onions. I've been enjoying my time picking and restaking tomatoes, stir frying fresh kale, experimenting with mixtures for a new favorite consumable, the protein shake. And the simple pleasures I've been savoring extend past food. Started lifting weights two weeks ago, and have liked feeling the simple operation of muscle, though mine are still mostly where they started. So much of our bodies we take for granted. Mowing the lawn, fixing a corroded drain fixture last weekend were quite satisfying, as was sorting out duck decoys and stacking them in new storage bins. After I finished these I felt satisfied--affirmed, even--as I rarely do with my job. Which didn't go well last week.
Some of the most tiresome parts of my job take place at the keyboard, so my recent preference for these simple acts may be no wonder. But the more interesting ones do as well--writing (not always pleasant but a top shelf pleasure when it works), taking notes on reading, even simply reading articles or e-books. Chatting with students (honestly, I think I my one-on-one conferences go better online than face to face). These things are expected of me not just because of my job description but because the kind of person I am. Intellectual, verbal, analytical. That's how people saw me for long before I started assembling letters after my name and that mark me now among people who know me (though "outdoorsy" usually comes to their minds too). So really, smart guy stuff ought to be a passion, and even before that a reflex. Menial labors (and gardening and cooking qualify as such, though they are often labors of love as well) should be necessary chores to be quickly dispatched before getting back to the real work, or at least to cerebral pleasures.
Now, I think that handwork gets short shrift in a culture that ranks white collar occupations above blue, and digital products over material ones. I have great respect for craftspeople, farmers, mechanics, everyone who can do things with things. That goes for people whose avocations result in fine things--trout flies, quilts, charcuterie, furniture, for example. The results of the manual tasks I've immersed myself in lately aren't that admirable. My cooking is rather slapdash, as is my lawncare. There are actually some important home maintainence tasks I've been letting go, and need to take care of before the frost comes. All the same, those I do work at are what makes me happiest at the moment.
I suppose my greatest pleasures--the outdoor sports, or simply spending time outdoors--are handworks, or at least pleasures of the senses, no matter how much reflection and strategizing they include. There was a time though when these things entered into the life of my mind. I taught courses on environmental literature. I devised writing courses where students explored watersheds, food, neighborhoods (which provide another avenue for my attraction to terrain). At the moment I don't have the option to teach those, which doesn't bother me so much as that the teaching I am doing seems uninspired and rote.
It has seemed less so, regardless of what I was teaching, when I held close and lived daily with ideas and evocations of those hand--and eye, ear, nose, and footfall--pleasures that give so much of my life its shape. Reading Thoreau or Rick Bass and their rest of their literary crew. Reading what others have said and disputed about them. Writing about nature literature and philosophy, or writing about my own outdoor excursions. Writing in Find the River. In doing those thing, hand and head join, and the rest of my work receives a charge from it.
Through busyness or laziness, I've let them slip apart, and it shows in disparate parts of my life. My question now is, how can I join head and hands again?
Maybe I've already answered that. Maybe I'm starting to do it. At least the question has formed, and even that is giving me a lift.
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