The Inconvenience We Long For
sorting out what we've accidentally made so convenient that we've made it less human and less connected for Mary Oliver May
Dear Reader,
Yesterday, I wrote to you all with inspiration drawing from the transcribed lecture from 1988 by Wendell Berry. Today, I found myself still perusing that essay, but wanting to give you some sort of fresh content, new inspiration, than the “same” piece. Mind you, this essay was a 30 minute read and contains so many ideas within it. In reflecting on this, I realized I was again being influenced by the consumerist view of ideas that is the current modus operandi online. If I’m still on this essay, why shouldn’t we keep talking about it? Why should we feel rushed?
Last night, I was watching the second installment of The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants. In it, Tibby, one of the four main characters, works at a VHS rental store in New York. She works with an odd man in his forties, and appears to find annoyance in each and every customer. Yet, she is out in the world because she had to be. The customers in the store have to interact with a surly 20 year old, but back then there wasn’t a choice to opt out of these interactions. As I watched the movie, I thought about how differently I decided (impulsively) to watch it after seeing a clip of it on TikTok. How quickly I could search the movie, rent it, and start it within a minute. Admittedly, if I had to go to a VHS store to watch it, I probably wouldn’t have, given how tired I was from a day working at the hospital. It’s so different from the Activity it would have been when I was a kid 20 years ago.
Growing up in a Midwestern college town, I had it relatively good—I lived about a mile from the nearest Family Video Store, and there was a safe trail along the way for running or biking or rollerblading. Next door, there was a Casey’s General Store (*ahem* a gas station), where you could get your favorite sour gummy worms or M&Ms for movie night, as it was preposterous to think you would get the up-charged candy they sold at the front counter of the movie store. I think of sunset-lit memories going on bike rides with my family or one of my siblings, or alone, to get the next DVD in the set of The OC, coming home, showering, and excitedly settling in for the next few episodes. The moment of alone time or consuming media came only after the interactions and events of the preceding hour. The effort, though, also made it special.
I am not a teetotaler—this is a romanticized and privileged perspective to take of that time 20 years ago. I hold that in one hand, and I hold in the other that there is still something we might make use of from noticing the cost of living a life without inconvenience. To think about Berry’s piece, when describing the work of local culture, he draws an analogy to a bucket collecting dirt hanging on a nearby fence where he grew up:
“However small a landmark the old bucket is, it is not trivial. It is one of the signs by which I know my country and myself. And to me it is irresistibly suggestive in the way it collects leaves and other woodland sheddings as they fall through time. It collects stories too as they fall through time. It is irresistibly metaphorical. It is doing in a passive way what a human community must do actively and thoughtfully. A human community too must collect leaves and stories, and turn them into an account. It must build soil, and build that memory of itself—in lore and story and song—which will be its culture. And these two kinds of accumulation, of local soil and local culture, are intimately related.”
The stuff of local community includes many portions that are not the pleasant snippets my mind recalls from going to family video. It is awkward interactions of a sweaty kid with another surly teenager at the store. It is scraped knees and arguments with my brothers about what movie we would rent. It is the decidely not aesthetic knowledge of the hours that the gas station is open, what candy my friend wants, getting to the video store and finding out the DVD is scratched or already rented. In other words, the bits that go into the soil of local culture or even local human community are not all flower petals and sweet scents. They are inconvenience and sometimes even gross—yet we get no soil without the contributions of the less appealing things that go in the bucket.
I’m not quite sure yet what to do with this idea, how to apply it to my own life. When is convenience worth it, and when is being less annoyed by the mundane actually reducing my access to connection and local community? When is it the time for mercy on yourself versus pushing yourself to engage more, to embrace discomfort even without a clear idea of what the outcome will be?
I’m not sure, but even holding this idea of what can and needs to go into the bucket to make the soil is important.
Today’s Reading: Still, The Work of Local Culture, by Wendell Berry
Today’s Journal Prompt: What is something that was inconvenient when you were a kid that you now look back on fondly? What is something you miss about a time or place that wasn’t efficient or necessarily beautiful, but is loved in your memory because of how familiar it was?
Today’s Mini Challenge: When you get takeout or a coffee or have a return to make this week, walk more than you normally would and keep your eyes up. See more, even while bored, of the place you live.
Happy Monday, and talk real real soon.
Sincerely,
Margaret of Bad Art Every Day
This really reminds me of a reading from a course I took in school (the whole course, but one specific reading especially): "A Space for Place in Sociology (Gieryn)":
"First, place is not space-which is more properly conceived as abstract geometries (distance, direction, size, shape, volume) detached from material form and cultural interpretation. Space is what place becomes when the unique gathering of things, meanings, and values are sucked out,"
and
"Or perhaps the places most conducive to community are not "designed" at all, but are disordered-and lose much when they are purified (...) So, too, can estrangement be built-in (...) When "community" does arise inside such enclaves- wealthy 'burb or gentrifying neighborhood- it tends to be defensive, exclusionary, and protectionist, and works against a more inclusive public sphere".
The second quote covers about two pages, so please ignore the two cutouts. This was also written in 2000, so well before the internet became what it is-- but I think it still gets to the heart of a lot of what Berry is talking about. Place is messy, and defined by doing, and how we do it. And when we move it or collapse it, we always lose something. In Gieryn's view, it's a literal loss of our space, and essential to how we define our place in the world.
Not really sure what the point of this comment is. Just got hit with a reminder of this paper with the force of a Mack truck, and wanted to share.