May the Days Be Aimless
May the days be aimless. Do not advance the action according to a plan.
That’s from DeLillo’s White Noise via the filter of my memory.
I like the sound of those lines as much as anything, but some other things too, though I should mention that speaking these lines do not exactly solve the narrator’s problems. He has a wee bit of trouble taking his own advice, and does in fact advance the action in his life according to a plan, and shall we say it’s a bit of a bad plan and goes disastrously, but not unamusingly.
But the thought–
I don’t suppose it would be practical to abandon all plans and be aimless, but I’m thinking that a little of this lightness and non-attachment could help sometimes. Especially because non-aimlessness planified actions do not always seem to be entirely optimal in my case, not least because I sometimes have bad plans, or a combination of bad and good plans, or just a general crazed drivenness or obsessiveness. These, of course, are not particularly productive even if they are well-meaning.
What works is me doing things toward goals but not always too narrowly defined–sometimes just directions–and not crazed plottingplanning. And then once I’ve done some of each those things it would be better to let go and quite fussing with things or over things.
And aimless days–what a thought–like a dream. May they be.
Because then I think there’s space for things to happen.
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Tags: delillo, Memory, narrator, white noise
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