This week’s Tuesday newsletter is about how we create the world with the kind of attention we pay to it.
Bicycles and re-enchantment
In an essay called “Talking About Bicycles,” C.S. Lewis recounts a “friend” telling him about the different “ages” of his riding a bicycle: first, the bike meant nothing to him, then he learned to ride it, and became enchanted, then, by riding it to and from school, he became disenchanted. Now, taking up the bicycle again, he became re-enchanted.
I think there are these four ages about nearly everything. Let’s give them names. They are the Unenchanted Age, the Enchanted Age, the Disenchanted Age, and the Re-enchanted Age. As a little child I was Unenchanted about bicycles. Then, when I first learned to ride, I was Enchanted. By sixteen I was Disenchanted and now I am Re-enchanted.
I feel this very deeply. I also feel it in terms of the city in which I cycle: I’m not sure I was ever fully enchanted with Austin, but I certainly became disenchanted with it. And now, somewhat thanks to the bicycle, I am re-enchanted with Austin.
There is magic here because there is magic everywhere… if you know how to look for it.
(Thanks, Alan!)
Watering the garden
“Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.”
—Psalm 126:6
“I climb up on the house / weep to water the trees”
—Guided By Voices
Another tearful week in our crumbling empire. At our house, we’re taking pleasure in our garden beds. Elsewhere, bad seeds are bringing forth rotten fruit, but here, good fruit is coming in. We’ve eaten a few strawberries plucked right off the plant. The tomatoes are getting bigger.
The more I learn about gardening, the richer the metaphor for creative work. This week I’m learning more about composting. On a recent bike ride, Hank gave me a mini chemistry lesson in exothermic and endothermic reactions, anaerobic vs. aerobic decomposition, chemical bonds, carbohydrates, etc. I even got to stick my hand in to feel the heat of the heap.
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes how she has “fullblown chlorophyll envy,” and wishes she could “photosynthesize” so that she could “be doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun.” It’s hard not to envy the plants, who seem to know how to grow without anybody’s help. They know what to do without asking.
Would I do it tomorrow?
A while back I found myself in the middle of doing something and thinking, Why on Earth did I agree to do this?
There’s a question that helps you avoid accepting invitations you’ll later regret: “Would I do it tomorrow?”
Here’s David Plotz to explain (who learned it from his wife Hanna Rosin, and her friend, New Yorker staff writer Margaret Talbot):
That’s it—those five words. Not: Would I do it on some theoretical day in the future? This is the crucial question: Would I upend whatever I am doing tomorrow so that I can go there and do that?
Are they paying you enough to skip your daughter’s soccer game tomorrow? Is the panel interesting enough that you don’t mind asking your colleague to cover for you, tomorrow? Is the conference important enough to your career that you would blow off your college roommate’s visit, which is tomorrow. When you get the invitation, pay no attention at all to its far-flung date: Move it mentally to tomorrow.
Tomorrow makes decisions simple…
A little extreme, maybe, but it helps me just a teensy bit more than Derek Sivers’ Hell Yeah or No. (I posted this on Twitter and James Kochalka responded,“ If I lived by that creed i’d just never do anything, I think. And also be happier.”)
* * *
Related reading: the “Learn to say no” section in Keep Going.
Stolen plants always grow
In a letter to a friend, Beatrix Potter wrote about her recent adventures in “proplifting,”
Mrs Satterthwaite says stolen plants always grow, I stole some ‘honesty’ yesterday, it was put to be burnt in a heap of refuse! I have had something out of nearly ever garden in the village.
Elsewhere, she said she was relieved when people offered her plants. “I don’t feel like such a robber of the village gardens.”
(h/t @brookemackey, Source: Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life)
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