Starting a Project: An Introduction

As I've been ruminating about beginning this blog, I've been thinking off and on about Donald Hall and a phrase he used in a letter to me at least twenty years ago. I still recall the phrase because it was a little more odd than felicitous, not exactly his style. He was going on about "new ones," about the joy of starting "new ones" and how exhilarated "new ones" made him feel. I don't recall whether the new ones were poems or essays or books or what, but I remember thinking at the time that I'd like successfully to complete an old one. Or two.

Now I understand: I can think of few things better after a week's work than a list of new work projects for the weekend. And so it was toward the idea of work that my memory was directing me via Don's phrase. I pulled his Life Work from the shelf and browsed the sections until I landed on my theme. Henry Hall, grandfather to Donald Hall, owner of the Brock-Hall Dairy had the secret of life down to a single, Connecticut-accented sentence: "keep your health — and woik, woik, woik."

“Wuhk, wuhk, wuhk.”  That would be my octogenarian neighbor, my resource for things southern. I knew his name before I knew him because I saw it emblazoned on the hundreds of portable toilets that are deployed around town and campus on football game days. Yankee-like, he saw a need, made it a niche, and founded a company that has provided him with a retirement that features grueling, daily yard work no matter the heat and humidity. His property is magnificent, and his work habits are as relentless as they are (as I discovered early on) joyous.

I've lived in Athens, Georgia, for seven winters. On three occasions we've had snow events worth mentioning. Two were duds, but one storm — while nowhere near the ridiculous volume of my former western New York snowstorms that lumbered in off Lake Erie, and far from the fury of the storms that rushed out of the North Dakota plains and into my Minnesota backyard — my first Georgia snowstorm, was bona fide. Nine inches or so of heavy, sloppy snow were covered by an inch of ice. It was beautiful. But when I lived in the northern plains, I learned that one's character could be judged in part by how clean he kept his driveway in the winter, so with this southern snow I felt a familiar pressure and I relished the task ahead. I needed to shovel at once, but like everyone else in my new city, I didn't own a snow shovel. So I set to work with the only tool I had: a round-pointed garden shovel, at best a foolish implement for the job.

In a very short time I was tired and frustrated. My driveway was on its way to becoming an embarrassment. I was cursing this brave new world of mine when I saw my neighbor, grinning, chuckling, and carrying two square-point digging shovels. And talking. These were the best he could do, he told me, then launched into a history of Athens snowstorms that morphed into a treatise on southern weather that somehow slid over into the economy, into politics, into whatever he had heard on talk radio that day. We were poles apart culturally and politically, but we were right there together, in that place, working. I could have used a little more silence, a better chance to give myself over to the job, but it was clear that part of his pleasure at work involved talking. My responses were circumspect; I didn't want to confront or perhaps insult my new and good hearted neighbor. Then finally we hit on common ground. One of us, I don't remember who, said something like "It just feels so good to work, doesn't it?" We talked about work: work projects, heavy work, work injuries. Of course he had to add some bits about welfare cheats or the evils of unions, but mostly the talk returned: work mistakes, dirty work, work jokes, satisfying work. And come to think about it, I had a lot of trouble with his accent, and I'm sure my speech perplexed him as well. Besides, we're both getting deaf, so there's a better than fair chance that little of conversational importance happened that day. But I remember that we cleared the driveway together, and I hope he does too.

Returning to Don Hall briefly, I'm reminded of his poem (and later a children's book) "Ox Cart Man." Each year the ox cart man loads his ox cart with that year's produce. He drives the cart to the Portsmouth Market and sells all the goods, after which he sells the cart and the ox. Then he walks home — with money "for salt and taxes" —  to begin the process once more. Contented man or frustrated man? It depends not only on one's attitude toward work but also on the nature of the work.

If work is approached mindfully it can open up into all the traditional desiderata: compassion, love, understanding, peace. But mindfulness is more easily practiced when the work is meaningful: building cupboards for a rich couple not selling them a BMW, preparing coq au vin in your own restaurant not scaling leg quarters at a Pilgrim's Pride plant. The difference between the ox cart man and Sisyphus lies in the tasks each performs.

Those of us lacking the life skills of a Buddhist monk have to search out work that enables mindfulness. Washing the dishes, clearing the driveway, all the quotidian tasks offer such moments for anyone willing to make the effort. But for work that truly absorbs, I'll choose writing; its labors — researching, thinking, synthesizing, ordering, composing, revising — are also its pleasures.