Out of Sheer Rage, Part 4
The true meaning of procrastination
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Give me a deadline and I’ll give you a plethora of baked goods and a freshly weeded garden. In one desperate act of work-avoidance last week, I took Bert’s pet Bearded Dragon out for a walk, fitting on his little dragon harness (which was like putting knickers on a wriggling brillo pad), and holding his leash as he strolled through the undergrowth. At any time when there is no urgent work to be done, I will go to great lengths to avoid this kind of task, spending diligent hours at my desk in my desperation to feel useful. But when the time comes for me to actually get my head down, I’ve got nothing. Suddenly, exercising lizards seems like a great idea.
Tony saw my act of procrastination and replied with his own: he crawled into his log and went into brumation. He does twice a year, which is 100 per cent more than he should. Apparently, some lizards just do that. They get confused about whether to brumate on Southern or Northern Hemisphere time, and opt for both. Personally, I get the sense that he gets fed up with dealing with us, and so decides to sleep it off for a while. Being a lizard can be put off for a few months, and then maybe it will all be fine.
In Out of Sheer Rage, we have reached the true, beating heart of procrastination. Having moved into a new flat in Oxford (or Dullford as he renames it; I feel this is rather harsh on the city of the Bodleian Library and the Ashmolean Museum), Dyer’s time is taken up by DIY projects rather than writing. There is inevitably a parallel in the life of DH Lawrence, who once wrote to his publisher: “I have painted windowframes by the mile, doors by the acre, painted a chest of drawers till it turned into a bureau, and am not through by a long chalk.”
I wonder, though, if this is really evasion. I notice that my brain - and, clearly, D.H. Lawrence’s brain, and Geoff Dyer’s brain - can’t work in the way I expect it to. Sit it down at a desk with an unblemished page in front of it, and nothing will come to fill it. Try to think, and thoughts will flee. But turn my attention away, towards something else, and ideas will start to gather shyly in my peripheral vision, all of them a little evasive, but suddenly beguiling.
This, however, makes it sound like more of a method than it actually feels in practice. All I know at the time is that I absolutely must dig a garden pond or paint over the stains made on my kitchen wall when I empty the coffee grouts. Procrastination dresses itself as urgency when it knocks on the door. As Dyer points out though, what feels like procrastination can also be something else in disguise, something you only notice after the event: “I’ll be glad that this little book turned out how it did because I will see that what was intended to be a sober, academic study of D.H. Lawrence had to become a case history,” he writes. “Not a history of how I recovered from a breakdown but of how breaking down became a means of continuing. Anyone can have a breakdown, anyone. The trick is to have a breakdown and take it in one’s stride.”
Where we’re at in the readalong:
5th May - 11th May: pages 122 - 162, section ending ‘I read other letters in the same spirit, obsessively, eager to see what will set him off next.’
12th May - 18th May: pages 162 - 208, section ending ‘then you can despair.’
19th May - 25th May, pages 208 - end.
And alternative page numbers for the Canadian Canongate edition:
5th May - 11th May: pages 124 - 166, section ending ‘I read other letters in the same spirit, obsessively, eager to see what will set him off next.’
12th May - 18th May: pages 166 - 212, section ending ‘then you can despair.’
19th May - 25th May, pages 212 - end.
Announcing our next Book Club read!
I’m excited to announce that our next True Stories Book Club pick is Modern Nature by Derek Jarman.
Modern Nature, first published in 1991, is the journal of the late artist and film-maker Derek Jarman. In it he describes creating his famous garden at Dungeness on the south coast of England, memories of his youth and life as an HIV positive man in the 1980s. It's such a rich book, and I can’t wait to explore it with you all.
If you think a friend or loved one would enjoy The Clearing by Katherine May, gift subscriptions are available here | Website | Buy: Enchantment UK /US | Buy: Wintering UK / US | Buy: The Electricity of Every Living Thing UK / US
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I wonder too if my acts of procrastination (currently weaving a hazel border for a flower bed) are a touch of demand avoidance - even thought the demand is only coming from myself.
Ooooh Modern Nature , will now have to veer myself back to Dyer who I am finding interesting . As an artist and writer I work better swopping between the two. My MA dissertation was inspired by Jarman and illness and an imaginary apothecary so have the book. My Dissertation was at its best while I was making 3d paper choughs for a pop up reliquary for a Physco geography Congress at CCCU . Home made soup is a good method of thinking too .