The Topical Autobiography of Mark Dorset

Idleness, for Which I Have No Talent

    I was stretched out on a chaise longue at poolside in the courtyard of a condominium complex in St. Petersburg, Florida, reading, when I met the Idler. It was nearly noon on a Monday in January. The sun was delightfully warm. Margot and Martha were in the pool, swimming lazy laps. The three of us were, technically speaking, vacationing, but because I am, professionally, a student of human behavior who specializes in motivation, I am always working, always on the job, observing, making mental notes, composing something about something. I was at that moment composing a memo of self-congratulation, commending myself for having engineered our escape from the chill of New York. The flapping of a pair of flip-flops heralded someone’s approach. Let me say here that I dislike flip-flops. There is something about them that makes my hackles rise. I think it’s a message they send about cheapness and vulgarity. I can hear it in every flap. I looked up from my book and saw that the person sauntering by in flip-flops was carrying an open bottle of beer in each hand. I did the polite thing and said, “Good morning.”
    He answered with, “How’re you doing?”
    “Okay,” I said. “How about you?”
    “Me?” he said, smiling broadly. “Man, I’m livin’ the dream.”
    “Which dream is that?” I asked.
    “The universal dream,” he said. “The dream of doing nothing and getting away with it.”
    He settled onto a chaise longue near mine and set the beers on the table beside him. He was a young man, in his late twenties, I’d say.
    “You do nothing?” I asked with professional curiosity.
    “I can boast that I do nothing, and I thank my stars that I have nothing to do.”
    “That sounds familiar,” I said.
    “It’s Samuel Johnson on idleness,” he said.
    “Interesting,” I said.
    “‘There are some that profess Idleness in its full dignity, who call themselves the Idle,’ he wrote. That’s me. I am one of the Idle. Hell, I am the Idler himself.”
    “Interesting,” I said again, and this time I meant it, because while he had been speaking the thought had occurred to me that I might make profitable use of my time in St. Petersburg by composing a short piece on the subject of idleness. If I had had my computer with me, I might have written a rapid draft on the spot, but it was upstairs, in the condominium that friends had lent us for a week, on the coffee table in the living room, where I intended to work in the early morning hours, while Margot and Martha were still asleep.
    “How do you do it?” I asked.
    “Do what?”
    “Be idle.”
    “Well, generally, I loaf and invite my soul.”
    “That’s Walt Whitman,” I said.
    “Of course,” he said.
    “Do you—” I began, but then I paused, uncertain how to phrase the question.
    “Do I—?”
    “Do you have a job?”
    “I sit in an office for a number of hours five days a week. However, I have the option of ‘working from home,’ which I interpret as ‘sitting somewhere else instead of in that office,’ and I exercise that option as often as I can.” He took a pull from one of the bottles of beer.
    “What do you do during those hours in the office, or somewhere else?” I asked.
    “I loaf at my ease,” he said. “Often, I seem to be gazing into the distance, lost in thought, but I’m not.”
    With a sigh, I let my book drop, stretched myself, and gazed upward. Above me, the fronds of a palm stretched their green spikes against the clear sky. I tried to do nothing but loaf and invite my soul, just lean back and loaf at my ease, observing the spikes of the fronds. In a moment or two, however, I found myself wondering how, if I were to compose a short piece on idleness, I might bring those fronds into it.
    “I don’t have the knack for it,” I said.
    “Hmm?” said the Idler.
    “Idleness,” I said. “I just don’t have the knack for it.”

Copyright © 2009 by Eric Kraft. All rights reserved. Photograph by Eric Kraft.