A Fallow Time

Reflecting on my enforced "vacation"

If you know me, you know I always have lists and plans. One of my oldest friends once gave me a birthday card to that effect.

Though much of my plotting and planning, I have to admit, has more to do with getting shit done than the leisurely pursuits Burroughs mentions. (I do read books like it’s an Olympic sport, however!)

All this to say that every big plan comes to a standstill when I’m sick, as I was last week. As it happened, I had just read a volume called The People’s Project—a collection of essays and poetry responding to the re-election of he-who-shall-not-be-named. I had noted down this quote by the late activist Alice Wong:

To fight, to provide mutual aid, to listen, care for, and love our people, to nourish and sustain yourself—all of these things take time and energy. We must give ourselves space, grace, and time if we are to fight fascism. The work will always remain, waiting for us. To have the discipline to slow down is an exercise in restraint when your body is screaming to fight or flight amidst a wildfire fueled by hate. In these times (and all times) look to your sick and disabled comrades.

Alice Wong, “Snail’s Pace: The Art of Cripping Time”

She writes in clear challenge of the toxic idea that our value is linked to our ability to produce.

Reader, I spent many years with a chronic illness, and I don’t mind saying that being sick today takes me right back there to those days and months and years of struggling against a pervasive sense of worthlessness. If I couldn’t be “productive,” who was I? All the messages of my upbringing, the whole culture in fact, taught me that I needed to keep hustling in order to be OK.

Capitalism, yay. Proclaiming that folks who sit still, for whatever reason, are somehow less worthwhile.

I see this latent belief in myself every time I brag about how busy I am or feel a bit superior just because I wake up super early. (In truth I’m not averse to sleeping late: probably would if I could.)

All our lives we learn this lesson. Resting is a bit suspect, illness a tad shameful. The New Age idea that we create our own illness is just one more manifestation of our puritanical roots, don’t you think? Whether it’s repressed emotions or bad food or a sedentary lifestyle or whatever, there’s this subtext of What did she/he/I do “wrong” to get sick?

From there, it’s a short jump to You reap what you sow. You deserve it.

Tangent: Cancer patients don’t need the bullshit language of “he lost his battle with cancer” etc. Dad seemed baffled and a bit miffed when people told him to “fight” his mesothelioma, as if he could win some kind of war against rampant cell division in his lungs. “Do you want to get better?” a well-meaning relative asked in his last months, before plying him with packets of miracle herbs.

So. Not. Helpful.

But I wanted to talk about the “fallow hour.” The withdrawal, the reverie, the quiet time. The exact opposite of what our culture prizes. In grade school I figured it out pretty fast: my day-dreaming was not setting me up for success. “Space Cadet” was a slam. In second grade, I had my hand rapped with a ruler for zoning out. Smarten up, little girl!

Yet I learned from Maggie Jackson’s book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure that there is actual research about fallow time, or the pause. How it fuels creativity and inventiveness. How absolutely necessary it is, in fact, to integrating experience, making meaning, being a fully reflective human.

Enter COVID. So here I am with a long pause. Long fallow days of quiet, surrendering to the peace of the day even in a body that doesn’t feel great. I was craving more time to drift and dream. So I try to just stay with that vibe. Luxuriate in nappage. Let my dreams unfurl. And remember Alice Wong.

(No part of the Full Attentional Living is machine-generated. It is all me!)