Life's Economy

7 Feb 2011, Boise

Five am: a grey horizon at the bottom of an otherwise black western sky, light from the sunken sun carrying somehow from under the earth, reflecting off the flanks of the atmosphere to glint off that low distant bottom of the night.

There's never enough time in life. Or rather, there's always too much ambition. How can there not be enough time? It's like saying there's not enough life. And there is all the life around you that you can dive into, if you want it. But still, I suppose, one always craves more. It's the craving that skews our estimate. Craving doesn't quit even after you've topped your twentieth peak, but looks out on the twenty others unclimbed and hanging from the sky.

What I crave is more time, more life, with my family, my wife and daughter. The need to work is a cruel one in this modern age. Outside of going off together to gather berries and set traps, what kind of economics might we invent that allows us to be and work and live together more? We all need our personal time. But that's something different. I do feel a tad guilty over writing when I've been off at the job site for most of the day. I pit my vital personal time against our vital family time. But that's not the right standoff. It's job time that must compromise. If I give up, even a little, the things which sustain me, which inspire and distinguish my spirit, then I give up, by the same amount, what I have of myself to offer my daughter and wife. If I don't write, I don't live; I love life less and thus myself less and thus everyone around me, even my dearest, feels less of the soul that suffers in me.

I don't mean this as a narcissistic excuse for writing all hours of the day, but as an examination of the day's economics.

It's five in the morning, a soft darkness extending from beyond the glow of my little desk lamp, night's shadow like a cape over the rooftops and the valley below, scattered with a few neighborhood lights like morning stars. I came home from work last night and popped a beer and maybe it was the cold raw blue February breeze that had nipped at me all day as I hung siding, but I was in a testy mood and I took a testy nip out of Anna. She had made a comment that morning about my writing late into the morning (while she herself hadn't been able to paint for days, as she was watching Ada), and now I gave her my rebuttal. It was a mean argument, or I felt mean making it. To say, I work all day so I've got the right to an hour or two to write, is to oversimplify my day and to overlook hers. She watches Ada most of the day, has precious little time to herself, and rarely any studio time. At the very least, I get a break to myself when I'm off pounding nails and gazing out at the torn whitecaps of an ocean blue sky. The fundamental need here is for both of us to have a creative corner to ourselves each day. And when it doesn't happen, we both get cranky, depressed, and the world loses a shade of its vividness. To say nothing of romance.

So that is why I'm back on my old pre-dawn schedule. I had dropped off of it because we were training Ada to sleep without her mama, that is, without her breasts. She sleeps with me and it's a dear sweet thing to have that baby girl tenderness curled against you, until of course the kitty's claws come out and she bawls you awake out of your dreams. Meanwhile Anna tries to catch up on nineteen month's of dream deficit. The training had me sleeping pretty badly and hence I'd taken to sleeping in till seven. But by the time breakfast is over, and Ada is dressed, it's nearly mid-morning when I get to typing. So our day gets cramped.

But last night, after our tussle, I resolved to get up at five again, regardless. There is a sharpness, a keenness of mind that comes to you once you're up, had a couple cups of coffee, and the rest of the world around you floats in darkness. But this keenness can't for the life of me can't figure out what to do about the quandry of work. I'm not yet smart or rich enough for that. I know how to work, I've been a good mule that way since I had my first job at fourteen. And right now, other than carpentry, I know only one thing that truly drives me: writing. I also know what puts food on the table, and what doesn't.

There's alway enough time in life, if you get up early enough.