‘The Art of the Wasted Day’

 Patricia Hampl’s book is a defense of the quiet life: daydreaming, self-examination, reflection, loafing, mediation, prayer. She uses the phrase “the life of the mind,” which I heard often as a boy, but rarely now.

Human beings can get lost in thought. But we also can get lost in the pursuit of things, including the pursuit of happiness, business, careers, wealth, fame.

We make lists. We get anxious about productivity. We tie ourselves in knots.

Hampl argues for getting lost in thought.

I like the language she uses to describe what “the life of the mind” is like.

Interviewers and reviewers have notices her distinction between “what happened,” a narrative, and “what has happened,” an attempt at understanding. I’m still thinking about that one.

More to my liking are her remarks about notes and why we make them — and why we think of them as having no form. She notices that we English speakers had to borrow words for some forms. Do English speakers tend to see essais, vignettes and memoirs as formless?

Here’s a simple description of a note:

 

Details, tossed into the shoebox of the mind, fragments.

 

I admire her remark. And doing that sounds like a good way to spend a day.

• Source: Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day; New York: Viking, 2018, p. 97.