I was going to write an essay called The Obvious, on misunderstandings and the impulse or desire for clarity and unambiguous messaging. The idea appeared in my mind as I walked here, and after sitting down I spent five minutes thinking about it, until I believed I realized it was a miscarriage.
I wonder what you are doing as I write this. Perhaps not so much what you are doing, but the environment you’re doing it in. In my mind, this is what you do: You occupy (sit or stand) in a small kitchen where the floor, cupboards, counter and everything else except for the kitchen sink (porcelain or enamel, brass faucet) is made of wood. The kitchen is lit by morning light through a single, fairly small window and a single lightbulb trapped in a glass dome under a high ceiling. I imagine, first and foremost, the space right in front of the kitchen counter and the window. As I think of you, I realize you are not there. And I’m not there either. All is that space, which I infer is “between the kitchen counter and the kitchen table”, not because I see the kitchen table, but because the kitchen is small and ought to have a table and at least one or two chairs in it, but I don’t see them or even feel their presence.
I’m fortunate in the sense that I can sit down and write without effort. I don’t need discipline in order to write. I am also fortunate in the sense that I can write effortlessly. At least, it feels like I’m fortunate.
Writing The Obvious would require me to force something onto the page which “is not there”, I tell myself before remembering that the words I am writing were not there either, until I just wrote them down. The question is: What’s the difference?
It seems that the difference lays in one idea (The Obvious) being of the “should or could” variety, whereas the other (this essay) has no imperative attached to it.
Another question: I’m a grown man. Did I not realize from the start that The Obvious idea was a miscarriage before I even started? The answer is yes I did, but in the moments immediately following the news of the idea, the imperative shouted louder than the answer, and left me disoriented as I was trying to establish whether the idea’s demands were reasonable or not.
Thirty minutes later, I realize that The Obvious is not a bad idea. It was not forged at the miscarriage factory. But it was shipped too early, or to the wrong address. If I’m the one to write this essay, it will have to happen some other time. It needs to arrive in different wrapping, without its insolent imperative cellophane.