Sublime Capability

Recently I’ve found myself trying to cultivate, or really fall into, a sense of sublime capability. I’ll look at a problem, some physical fix or project, and think “I can do that.” And then I’ll think “I can do that and it’s no big deal.”

So, for instance, a Cat5 cable wants to be run from the network cabinet, in the basement, up to the TV, in the living room. I drill a hole in the living room floor, then go to see if it comes out of the basement ceiling below. It does not, and it’s no big deal. A longer drill bit is acquired, the process repeats, there’s still no hole in the ceiling, and still, it’s no big deal. Being as there’s a practical limit on the depth you can drill without increasing the diameter of your hole, I decide instead to poke my way through the basement ceiling. I walk to the hardware store, and buy a three-foot length of quarter-inch threaded steel rod, and after a few minutes with a file I’ve got myself a weirdly long shank that I can then insert into my hole and whack with a mallet until I hear the gypsum board fracture below.

This all happens in an afternoon. Then the project is abandoned for weeks, gestating while other, more urgent projects come into focus, and are processed, and then recede. Every time I see the threaded rod sticking up out of the floor I think it’s no big deal, I can do it later. Like so much else around me, this little corner of the living room looks kind of messed up. But I can manage it.

This is supposed to be inspirational, comforting. I’m trying to lean into my own capability, you see, and I think you should lean into your capability too. Whether they’re mandatory or elective, most of the projects you can do are honestly no big deal in the grand scheme of things. Go ahead, take them on: Repaint that wall, hang that shelf, snake that drain, flip that electrical receptacle around so that the cords lead into it more elegantly. People do these things every day, and you can too. It’s nothing to worry about.

So I’ve been getting stuff done, and when I finish something I step back and think yeah, see, I knew it wasn’t a big deal, and then I think about how much time and emotional energy I should spend congratulating myself on the accomplishment.

Sometimes I think that my celebration of a project’s completion should be inversely related to its complexity. A week or two ago I decided to roll all of my laundry up, Marie Kondo-style, and see if that felt good. I made this decision in the moments leading up to what should have been my bedtime, but in those moments I hit pause on the whole evening, and sat down there in the dressing room, and reorganized basically every garment I own. It took maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, and when it was over I stood there for a good long time and really patted myself on the back, congratulated myself for a job well done, agreed with the decision to take the project on, and to take it on at that very moment. I was genuinely proud of myself, and verbalized this fact quietly, savoring the feeling before turning back to my ablutions. The laundry-rolling was a real accomplishment; it was also easy, no big deal.

Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s all a big deal and everything is hard. Recently I’ve spent a lot of time hearing about the worst parts of people’s lives: an abusive ex, an unfulfilling job, a friend’s attempted suicide, a tough relationship with a parent. I hear these things and I find myself saying I’m sorry, that must have been so hard, how does it feel to you now? And then there’s usually some kind of shrug, and I kind of shrug back, and afterwards I find myself thinking about just how beautiful it is, that we can look across the table at each other, and talk, and empathize. None of it is resolved, but it’s beautiful anyway. It’s beautiful that we suffer, and it’s beautiful that we try, and it’s beautiful to stand back every once in a while and be proud of what you’ve been working on — regardless of whether it’s come to a satisfying conclusion.

And there’s so much in life that has not yet come to a satisfying conclusion. A month ago I bought a huge sheet of white Formica to laminate onto the dining room table. Last weekend I picked up a beat-up spindle-back loveseat, which needs new seat webbing, and cushions, and really wants to be refinished and maybe even taken apart and glued back together again. I’ve got an old bike that needs to be either rebuilt or disassembled and hung on the wall, and a stack of Baltic Birch scraps that really should be turned into shelves and side tables. The parlor entry door needs to be completely rebuilt, and the stairs down to the cellar need a handrail, and the tree of heaven in the backyard really needs to be trimmed so that the spotted lanterflies stop nesting (and pooping) all over the patio. Thought has been put into each of these projects; they occupy space in my life. They all ache a little bit, sitting there unfinished. But maybe the ache feels good.

How else could I describe, or at least contextualize, these feelings? Here, let’s try this, from a school holiday last week:

On the crowded subway back home from the Met, with the kids, I finally took out the book I had brought, and about which I had so many feelings, and read it aloud to them. I believe my mom was reading it aloud to me and my sisters, it being From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, when she was diagnosed with brain cancer in her left occipital lobe. I was about ten at the time, and she would have been thirty-eight or so — a few years younger than I am today. The tumor had destroyed her vision, making reading the book incredibly difficult, and I’m not actually sure if we ever finished it as a result. I’m sure this is part of the reason that reading its final chapters, to my young kids, on the subway coming home from the Met, was so intense for me — but also the end of the book is incredible on its own. Its protagonists, Claudia and Jamie, ages eleven and eight, ran away from home and have been camped out in the Met for a week. While there, they discovered an art-historical mystery and worked towards solving it; the trail eventually led them to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who narrates the book. And then, at the climax of the kids’ encounter with Mrs. Frankweiler, we get this exchange:

Claudia said, “But, Mrs. Frankweiler, you should want to learn one new thing every day. We did even at the museum.”

“No,” I answered, “I don’t agree with that. I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It’s hollow.”

So yeah, that’s how I’m feeling about things. There is no conclusion; it feels good anyway.

Scope Creep

• For years it seemed that my dream of owning a bidet toilet seat would be unfulfilled, but a couple weeks ago I decided that not only would I achieve this goal, but I’d go ahead and purchase a mid-range heated model. It takes energy to heat a toilet seat and the water that it squirts at you, and this meant that my bidet seat would need to be plugged in, and because the bathroom wasn’t wired for a bidet, this meant adding a new receptacle right near the toilet. I am not an electrician; I did not hire an electrician to do the work; the work has been completed, and it feels fantastic.
• Limerence is a state of intense, passionate, and potentially anxious romantic love. It can be obsessive, and probably looks a little crazy from the outside, and according to some studies can resemble addiction.
• Recently I’ve been listening to the same music on repeat, obsessing over the same set of lyrics and auditory moods. Some of it has gotten kind of weird, like this Headache track, which includes an unattributed line from an Emily Dickinson poem that I wasn’t previously aware of. In the poem itself, Dickinson says that the freight should be proportioned to the groove, and at least in the context of the poem’s first two beautiful lines I think I agree with her. But how proportional is an open question.