No time

“We don't have time for this”

She blurted it out while she pulled herself into a position that would allow a straight shot to the front door. There was an explanation:

“We’ve got to get to the gym.”

There had been other explanations in the past:

“I want to go kayaking.”

“We need to climb Mount Katahdin.”

“I want to try ice climbing.”

Some things she actually did, but others were simply wishful thinking. There was a pattern to her behavior. She always had to rush to an activity, a lesson, sometimes even a competition. She had to keep moving, stay active. It was if she had the old Saint Vitus’ dance (Sydenham's chorea) disease, except that infection usually occurs in childhood. Some cultures would say she had o demo no corpo, the devil occupied her body. None of this is to say she was aggressive or even bossy. It was just who she was.

She had naturally acquired a fair amount of equipment and apparel for her lessons, excursions, and so on. It was money well spent, she told herself, if it helped one to maintain good health. Storing the items wasn’t easy, given all their different shapes.

He, in contrast, tended to be more reflective. Usually one found him with a book in his hands and a few others nearby. He still kept (and cherished) a metal pin he’d been given that said ‘I’d rather be reading’. For him, it was true, which is why he preferred books to beaches, reading to running on a track. So boring, lacking stimulation. One thing to note: he had a lot of books, but they were easily stored on shelves when he wasn’t busy reading them. They were all rectangular and had flat covers.

He had a wide ranging taste in materials to read, and there were actually many in digital form, but the majority were in hard, tangible form. On one day he might be rereading a number of classics, like the Odyssey or Moby Dick, The Color Purple and A.S. Byatt’s Obsession. Poetry, it goes without saying, from William Carlos Williams to Lorca to Adrienne Rich (an odd choice, since most men don’t seem to bother with her, but he was different). Other days he enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club or some Davis Baldacci thriller. There were so many books in the world and life would never be long enough to get through all of them!

All that reading bothered her, however, and her rejection of what she saw as his (in)activity had increased over the years they had known one another. They had become aware of their dynamic, how their natural interests shaped their lives and branded their relationship. Not in a good way, either. There were centrifugal forces at work, and they seemed to be gaining strength.

“We don’t have time for this,” she repeated, her voice sounding slightly more irritated. “We have to… “ (rush off, be somewhere at a scheduled time). To perform, that was his (unspoken) term for what she did. He, on the other hand, was entirely unprogrammed, meaning that he had no specific schedule for reading, which he did any time, all the time. There was always time for reading, in his experience. 

They were in danger of dissolving, and they knew it. After two decades, they could hardly not be aware they were on what seemed to be a slippery slope. They chose to do nothing for a long time, and with that choice they began to see how their relationship was slipsliding away. They were uncomfortable with the gap, but couldn’t find a way to fix it.

Then something odd occurred. For a while, both of them simply lost interest in their usual activities and sat around a lot. She rarely went to the gym and he was spending more time ruffling pages than concentrating on the word printed on them. 

Finally, they decided it was better to act and not become untethered - they had known each other for what seemed like forever.

He was the first to try.

“I’d like to go for a walk, or better yet, a hike. Maybe that path along the river?”

She was ready in two minutes. Finally they would do something together. It was a good start and a good sign.

“That would be perfect!”

She knew a lot about the trails in the area and so could calculate how long the route would probably take them. Afterward they could go for coffee. Then she added, surprising both of them:

“Can you find me a poem about a river?”

Could he find a poem? How about a hundred of them? A thousand? He set about searching for them on the internet in order to print some out and she knew he would be incapable of conversation for the next hour while occupied with that task. He’d print a few out, since carrying half a dozen books while trying to complete a walk was impractical. He disliked reading literature on small screens, detested the screen of his cell phone, so that wasn’t something he considered.

The walk went well, and they read three poems about rivers in a comfortable coffee shop. They hadn’t gone anywhere together recently, so the moment felt especially pleasant. It was then her turn to reach into his reading trying to figure out why, for him, there was always time for reading. 

“How do you choose what to read?” she asked. 

Not what do you read or why to read. The question was well designed, whether or not she was aware of this. Maybe it was so good because after so many years, one’s questions became deeper, more accurate. 

She mostly read things required of her: a manual; a committee report; the news. She couldn’t remember the last time she had chosen to read and had chosen what to read. She found plots hard to grasp and metaphors largely incomprehensible. Literature was quicksand and vague, unlike the packed earth tracks for sprinting she loved so much. (She wondered why they’d developed such an attraction for her.) Something about books made her think about slogging through eighteen inches of new snow. Well, maybe only eight, or four. 

“Let’s face it; I’m lazy. My brain dislikes thinking, I guess. It lets the rest of my body, arms and legs, take charge.”

She was being hard on herself, but it was probably the guilt talking. Now he was answering her query about why read, why do that - that - thing.

“There are probably several reasons, but here’s an important one: When I’m concerned about something, depressed, as I am nowadays with the global and national politics, reading helps me find answers.”

“What do you mean, answers?”

“Well, even horror stories can take place and nobody is really hurt. It all unfolds and is resolved between the covers of a book. Nobody is really hurt by knives or explosions or guns. When violence and other bad things occur, they dissipate among the pages.”

“Dissipate?” She knew the word, wasn’t stupid, just was puzzled by his use of it.

“Maybe dissolve is better? Or disappear? I don’t know, issues just seem to be resolved and I can breathe. Maybe it’s like the Greek tragedies and how they engineered catharsis for the spectators.”

“Catharsis?” She knew the concept, but her cathartic activity was moving, challenging the limits of her body. Afterward, she was calm, could think better, or rather, to not think. Everything had been discharged during the moments of physical effort. How could he achieve the same thing by staring at the pages of a book?  

The hobbies we cling to often hold the parts of us we don’t say out loud. (Stolen quote, maybe from YouTube.)

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Hello, I am the author of the above ‘story’ (if you want to call it that.) As a writer I don't have time for this. Characters need to be well developed, have depth, frequently they talk with other people. Plots need to trap readers and carry them along. Description should speak to the senses. Etc. The above story merely takes a stab at those features. However, I have a tight deadline for a book length manuscript. I don’t have time for this story until I’ve met the deadline, and then I’ll decide the fate of She and He. They either fail to find a common ground, or their relationship deepens. One ending is just as (im)plausible as another. (See soon-to-be written part 2)