“What about me?” my bedtable pouts. “A decade you’ve been describing in all directions. All the while I’ve been here – at your elbow – and not a word.”
I wince apologetically. Who doesn’t long for recognition? All these years while my gaze wandered elsewhere, my bedtable has stood waiting, uncomplaining as an old retainer. Neglect hurts, inadvertent especially. “Sorry, bedtable,” I almost murmur, “how about now?”
Its glass surface measures twenty by twenty or so. This provides space for three stacks of books and a vacant corner, where I crowd my morning coffee, pre-snipped bookmarks, backscratcher (among mankind’s inspired inventions), chewed pens, reading glasses, and the occasional balled handkerchief. Each book stack rises six or seven volumes before it teeters. If my math is right, I’m flanked by upwards of eighteen books, many of which I’ve repeatedly vowed to stow.
What might this evidence reveal about the flabby messy semi-recumbent guy splayed to the bedtable’s left?
a) He likes books. Note, no electronic apparatuses, gizmos or periodicals.
b) He procrastinates. Nobody can read eighteen books at once. Why hasn’t he shelved those he’s done with?
c) His attention is scattershot, almost A.D.D. What kind of brain simultaneously craves Spinoza, Hawthorne, Cheever, Hemingway, Flaubert, anthologies of American short stories, eighteenth century English literature, and ancient Roman authors (in translation), plus a hefty compendium of quotations, not to mention what appear to be four – four? – volumes of personal journals? Oh, and yes, a recent academic monograph called Purpose, which Signor Semi-recumbent’s inclined to discard, only, discarding books feels crueler than drowning kittens.
d) His back itches.
What are we to make of the heaper of these precarious stacks? For starters, he lives in his own world. He isn’t reading what anyone else is. The array suggests he’s searching for something – but what?
The proliferation of journal volumes puzzles. One’s understandable – as a confessional – but four? How many lives is this guy living? Peeking into the volumes might provide a clue, but that would be criminal. Such a multiplicity of privacies suggests internal discord, even a ruckus. Roger that.
Bedtables, it turns out, tattle about their users. A pristine bedtable seems an ominous indicator, like wiping clean a murder weapon. Too crammed and hectic a bedtable evokes many-mindedness, perhaps confusion. I wish my bedtable – and mind – were less unruly, but that seems beyond my strength. No sooner have I cleared my bedtable than the stacks reappear, different titles but the same disorder.
At lunch Jane and I are taking in enlivening lectures about Impressionism. The genius of Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, and the rest was to paint what they saw, not idealized scenes but life in its messy actuality, vividly present and tragically evanescent. The moments they depict are fleeting; the artist can hardly paint fast enough to capture them.
My bedtable reminds me of the immensity of now. All these years it has been there at my elbow with its revelations, and I never noticed. The same is true in every direction – above, below, left, right, ahead, behind. Wonders await: we need only look.
We live in a grumpy time. In America, most folks have plenty and nobody seems to have enough. Our national anthem is a whine. We seek out enemies to justify our discontent. I’m feeling bad because of… immigrants, abortions, election fraud, you name it.
Most of my life I was too busy longing, to love where I was. Slow down, look around, and everywhere is wondrous if you make it so. Discover where you are. Even your bedtable, if you listen close, has a tale to tell.