Two days in since gym and work closings, since friends and family began to bunker up, and my body feels trapped inside itself, the energy churning and twitching out in irritability and an incapacity to go quiet, to reconcile with a prescribed stillness. My normal, acute restlessness is becoming more intense. What does one do with a body that creates more energy than can be used, that begins to skitter about like a mouse looking for any breach in the box that seeks to contain him?
Work is the balm for me. It has been since I began teaching in 1975. Before that, I know now, it was movement — biking everywhere, playing ball, running, hiking, canoeing, walking, loping New York streets with packs of friends in the early 70’s, the most naive animals in that dangerous, breathtaking city.
I rise at 5, close to my teaching schedule, and this week I am cleaning a part of the book store, emptying shelf by shelf, soaking the shelves in spray, wiping them down and then restoring all to harmonic order, book by precious book. I have always been a restorationist, a maker of structures, a believer in systems. I would make a terrible revolutionary.
I walk out happy. Somehow, on those few square feet of polished boards that I have handled, entropy has been stayed. For today.
