Boredom

A Stubborn Delusion

Life is an indescribable, at times almost indigestible trip. To think that I ever experienced boredom.

Boredom is a delusion of the first order. It’s a way to avoid being present by projecting an endless series of days into the future. Caricatures of days distilled into bullet points that recur endlessly, without variation. Mundate duties that must be repeated. But these are only the bones, not the meat.

Alarm. Wake up. Make bed. Get ready. Drive. Work. Nap. Brush teeth. Sleep. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

I was awake at quarter to three this morning. I decided to get up and smoke. Smoking is used as punctuation by the bored. My neck hurts. That’s new. I was able to fall back asleep after much fiddle-fucking with my two pillows —maybe if I put this one slightly overlapping the other, bunch them up just so and lie on my right side? My brain wants me to think about my week ahead. At three in the morning. It’s Sunday, I still have a day before I need to think about such things, but here we are. Fears that magnify in the dark during the witching hour.

The mile-markers are not the road, but I’m immediately thinking of the next event even while I’m half-heartedly participating in this one. Barely taking part in my life. No wonder we become so disconnected. Disenfranchised. Dissuaded. Delusional.

I went shopping for a calligraphy pen yesterday. I want something with a refillable inkwell. One that feels right in my hand. Like it was born there. A strong feeling of déjà vu —I’ve done this exercise before. While my dad was getting his haircut, I bopped over the the tiny stationery store, tucked away in a 70s-era strip mall. It was Saturday and the store was closed.

I’m actually surprised they’re still in business. I’m pretty sure the owner is the only employee and has been for some time. Clearly a labor of love. I get the impression he’s a bachelor and this is his much-loved and only child. He has a beautiful selection of pens and stationery, but I’ll have to come back during the week.

Not being one to give up easily once an obsession takes hold, I drive to Sugarhouse after I drop my dad at his home, to the big-brand art supply store. They have hundreds of pens of all types; rapidographs, gel, brush, ballpoint. Two options for calligraphy; bulky sets that come with books for the beginner or the unserious, or the archaic dip-pens, with their weird fucking handles. Why are they shaped that way? A friend later suggested that if I had just bought the beginner set and read the book, that I might have found out why. I like dip pens but they require a lot of prep, you have to carry a bottle of ink... I want something self-contained that I can slip in my pocket and take to a coffee shop.

I ultimately settle on a Pilot “Parallel Pen,” which isn’t even a calligraphy pen, strictly speaking. I will probably never use it. Why do I think this? Well, I’ve been through this exact sequence several times before. The irony is that I know I have a perfectly good pen among all my things, somewhere in a box or a closet, in my modest room.

The pen and the notebook are not the story. This is why I have a half-dozen unopened notebooks here and there.

I tend to want to shortcut the journey by counting mileposts on a map, congratulating myself for “taking steps in the right direction,” while never taking actual steps down the road.

Boredom, regret and middle-of-the-night terror are the predictable rewards of living like this.

I’ve started writing regularly on the weekends. For a couple months now, which is a pretty good streak for me. It’s rare that any of this writing meets my unfair, impossibly high standards, but I’m putting some of it out into the world anyway.

The Parallel Pen is weird and bigger than it needs to be but it isn’t terrible and I get to remember the joy of writing random, musical words that also, because care and attention is put into the task, look magical. To me.