ambient procrastinations

I'm having this lazy sort of urge to start making all kinds of lists. specific ones. on paper that won't get lost.

lists of all the stories in my head.

lists of all the things to save up money for.

lists of all the people I should write letters to.

lists of everything important.

and everything that isn't important should stay in the background, right? all that mindless stuff that comes and goes. the weather. the radio. the advertisements and the junk mail.

but it seems like so much stuff from the background creeps in and blots out my careful list of important things. the fat, unimportant distractions walk in and sit down, put up their feet, staring at me as if to ask, why are all those things more important than me? you don't really remember why you wrote all that down, do you? or how you're going to get it all done?

I need a nice, blank, back wall to hang up all those cluttering rolls of wallpaper on, where the unimportant patterns can be simply that. and for any clutter that I might need, someday, I'll find a shelf where it can stay quiet but accessible in case its time to be in the spotlight arrives sooner than I think it will. and then I'll take the real masterpieces-in-progress and frame them in all the space they need to drink up my attention, my visions and revisions. then those most important things will become what I want them to be. and maybe I will too.

but all my backgrounds might be someone else's foreground. all my clutter, deemed less important than the rest, may be the very substance of somebody else's existence. that way everything gets the attention it deserves, I suppose. and I don't have to pay attention to the state of it all. I may as well share.