A Reverie on Failure Part 14: Coping with Urgency

Or, “That’s a Bummer, Man…”

Commentary

The last line of the following journal entry is “…next to a creek, which is bubbling.” I know the spot well: that particular place is at the corner of a field at the elbow of a bend in a large creek which winds its way several miles into Lake Ontario. Wood ducks make their home there, as well as several wild turkeys (about whom I wrote last year). The bend collects larger detritus, such as tree trunks and the occasional empty pesticide barrel. When the water hits this morass, it bubbles prettily, as though it is not bothered at all to have to rouse itself from its lazy winding to overcome a fairly hefty obstacle. The breeze, which desires to bite, is mollified by the technological advances in outdoors clothing, and becomes only an added instrument to a low, soft, orchestra that sends this hunter, tied to a tree, into a world of peace.

What is a sense of urgency going to do to bring about the desired telos of this endeavor? Will it make it come to pass faster? Will it make it come to pass better?

Indeed, the human spirit fights against peace and tranquility with senses of urgency and anxiety, to acquire what is hoped for in the immediate, as though seeing is believing. Urgency replaces anticipation, making over hope with plaintiveness, which actually is a form of despair in the time at hand for that which will never come to pass. Such is the character of urgency: loss of hope. This is not a timed football game; this is participation in the phases of the moon and the many variations of cold fronts atop warm air masses.

There is an application here, of course, the idea of sitting high above the ground, harnessed to a tree while, above low gray skies, the stars wheel, hidden by the light of the sun, which is wheeling in his own courses. These are the paths we can trace out, but only with careful study and in ideal environments, checked and re-checked, measured against complex and long mathematical formulae which include in them a kind of certainty, a certainty which is still finally grounded and tethered and anchored to the theoretical. And so we stand proud, until that warm air mass gets jiggety with the cold air aloft, and what paths are being formed we cannot trace out, not all alone in the woods, not even with a partner, a friend, a lover. Why so anxious?

Because I missed, that’s why! And I might miss again! And then what? Something bad!

The powerful held up their hands to the virus and to the people and commanded, “Stop!” But neither would ebb; they only washed on, stupidly (mostly), frothing around those who thought themselves powerful and found themselves to be like everyone else: children in the woods. At least we have social media, unlike our forebears, where we can hammer out the truth and discern the path, the right path, and those who do not follow deserve what doom befalls them. And may it befall them soon, and with epithets piled upon their bios! Because if it does not happen soon, then we will all suffer, and it will be something bad.

I wonder: is there a lawyer who counsels patience and rest? Even though the wheel of justice grinds slowly, to make a fine flour, does it ever just stop, so that we can be at peace from justice?

What do we do when we step wrong, decide wrong? When we get angry wrong? When we get it wrong?

 Journal Entry

November 25, 2020

So my [aforementioned] friend had a good opportunity yesterday and…missed entirely. A clean miss, however, is preferable to a wounding shot, but still, in a year like this—at least where we are hunting—a miss is a bummer. We’re sitting in a woods between two big fields, and in an adjacent field a farmer is doing some work. From here (about a half mile) it looks like he’s turning over the corn stumps. I don’t know whether that helps us or hurts us. I highly doubt we will see any movement now, but I suspect that once he’s done, we might witness some mammalian activity.

I must say I’m feeling some urgency, but this is true for me most years. One thing that has changed for me is that I’m able to cope with the urgency, when in years past I was anxious about it and could not set the possibility of disappointment aside. It’s a control thing, see. I enjoy it now more than ever as an endeavor.

While it’s true I could be using my time better, say, to finish a PhD dissertation, my disposition improves with each passing hour of sitting and observing. It is a particularly lovely day today, thirty-three degrees Fahrenheit and a light breeze, overcast, next to a creek, which is bubbling.