End of Summer Ramblings on Rigor and Laziness

Summer heats up even as it winds down in days and sunshining minutes. If I get out early enough to the balcony, I can sit and taste the flavors of the day before the sweat starts to drip and drives me inside to dry off and cool down. Drives me inside to thoughts of the future and in-the-moment actions that I need to do. Drives me inside to think through those long questions of What do I want for myself? What do I want my future to look like? Who do I want to be? How can I be the best me today and a better me tomorrow?

It always comes to this. Eventually. These thoughts. Even after I’ve written the draft of a book in two months. A month ahead of the schedule I’d set for myself. Good job. Well done. Now what?

I try to give myself permission to use my last, now free month for nothing. Take a vacation or rather a Stay-cation in my perfect summer haven. Watch the thin strips of grass turn golden-dry under the August sun. Sit in this temporary luxury of my own place. Feel the impermanence of all things. Go for a walk near the Trinity River where the turtles live in abundance. But how do I reward myself for a goal achieved?

There’s always reading. Reading is always a reward. So, I read with great gulping breaths, pulling words in, pulling stories in. Closing one book and moving ravenously on to the next one. Chew your food. Chew your books. Don’t swallow those words whole. Reading as if to save my life. Staying up too late into the night. Sprawling, book in hand over the couch, sweating in my place on the balcony, lying in bed, dangling over the comfy chair like a sloth. Is this restful in its frenzy? Yes and no. Of course. And yet, I can’t just do that. I can’t just read a month away. And I can’t because I’m me.

I heard a story once about an Irish Olympic runner who was asked how he rewarded himself. He thought a long time about it and then said that he rewarded himself with more discipline.

I get that, I’d thought. I get that completely.

Set a goal. Make a list. Do the thing. Accomplish it. Do the next thing. And I do. And while I do, sometimes I also rest. Within the discipline sometimes I find the discipline to open my hands and let go, to filter the air through my lungs, slowly slowly, to sit and think. To think, only think. To relax. To be. To read calmly, rolling each word inside my mouth like the red and white hard candies my great-grandmother used to keep in glass dishes around her house.

Other days are not so simply lived. Other days are ruled by my lists and my expectations. Other days are ruled by the thought that I’m still not working quite hard enough. I can always do a little more. I can always be a little better.

Within the spin of the yin and yang pinned to the lapel of my heart, I take an afternoon and go to the Modern Art Museum and stare at the dried paint that marks canvas after canvas in drips and swathes and matted blotches of color to make up David Park’s work. I stand with my face up as close to the paintings as I dare still with half an eye on the museum guards to let them know I won’t touch, I won’t get too, too close. Then I stand back and see the paintings as a whole. All the mess of color makes a picture. All that jumbled abstraction up close makes something from a distance. All the mess of my life, all the crossed off items, all the achievements, all the time of rest, all the things I’ve still left to do make up the picture of me. For now. This picture. This me.

On another day, a friend texts me about a free concert within walking distance of where I live. LeAnn Rimes. It’s a name I know. So, for the that and the freeness and nearness of it, I put aside my books and wander the streets until I get to Sundance Square. There I sit among the hats and boots. Sit alone in the crowd and remember that I too am from this place. In fact, LeAnn got her start in Garland and I was born there. For whatever that means. A summer of coming home for the both of us before going onward again. I tap my foot and sing along with some of the songs. After the encore, a countrified cover of Elton John’s Rocket Man, I walk myself back home through the gleaming bulbs of Downtown Fort Worth. Back to the comfort of my solitude.  

Day changes into rushing day. The summer melts away. For a moment, a thunderstorm revitalizes the dying grass.

At dusk, westward over the old hospital building, a swarm of swallows circles and weaves. Chittering in the gathering darkness. Swirling as one, as many in maddening wheels and then diving beak first into the chimney, one, two, three, four. Until they’ve all circled and plunged into their roost for the night. They’re my friends, those birds. Like the dragonflies that keep the mosquito population down in my general vicinity. Like the man who works in the Masonic Temple who waves at me every morning when he comes to sit on the bench outside of the building, smoking his cigarette before going inside, whom I wave to every morning when I come out to greet the day. I’m not ready to say goodbye to my friends. Me, who usually has one foot out of the door wherever I am.

I don’t want my summer to end. Not this perfect, glorious summer. A summer used to its fullest. Did I use it to its fullest? An unexpected and very productive summer. How quickly seasons fly by. Anticipating, waiting, I sit like the old hospital building in the dusk with a chimney pointed up toward the sky ready to catch the falling birds of opportunity as they drop, one, two, three, four. What will come next?

As I wait, in my rest and in my work, I think of one of the characters in one of the books I read who stated, “As I always say, you have to count to three: rigor, rigor, and rigor. I do not know of any other way to succeed.”

I want to succeed if only at living my life. No, not “if only.” I want to succeed especially at living my life. So, rigor. So, moments of beautiful laziness. So, discipline. So, hot, unexpected summers. So, anticipated futures. I start my lists up again from scratch. This thing now. That thing tomorrow. The habits I perform day in to day out bring my future into being. The discipline keeps me alive.

De la rigueur, de la rigueur, et de la rigueur.

As the summer slips to its own ending, I breathe out my thanks for it and breathe in the last measures of the time like music, like cool water, like fresh air. I wipe the humidity from my upper lip, from the expanse of my brow. The next perfect moment will come soon enough. The next perfect season will come along in its own perfect time. For now, I still have this moment for just a little bit longer and that’s enough.