The Paris Project

I heart ideas

When I was an undergraduate, one of my professors talked about his father being a railroad worker, and how and why he chose to be a professor instead of a laborer. He said, "I wanted to live in the world of ideas." That phrase created a mental image for me of such a world, and I knew I wanted to live there, too.

These days, the world of ideas is like a place from which I've moved, and I can't afford to go back and visit. Nearly every task I face requires numerous material objects. A meal requires two bowls, milk, bottles, spoons, grain, fruit, vegetable, high chair, two bibs, a rag, and a stool. A diaper change involves pants, socks, onesie, dirty diaper, clean diaper, wipes, diaper table, and desitin. Times two. Times six diaper changes and five feedings a day per beastie. I can't even move from room to room without lifting and lugging forty pounds of humanity around (not to mention my own tub of pounds that won't be numbered here).

I used to take care of my physical needs, indulge in a few especially wonderful ones, and spend my days in the world of ideas, supported materially by books, a classroom, pens, and paper. My students and I, we talk about the social construction of racial ideologies, the internalization of social constructions, the redemption of our minds and lives, the past, and how we create knowledge and learn about the world. We talk about how to not be duped by the bullshit. We're not dualists - we pursue wholeness (and holiness) in life as well as thought. But we take care of things like eating, dressing, and cleaning ourselves in a minimum of time, which frees us up for things like thinking, talking, and reading.

I'm feeling weighed down by material things. I'm well aware that the vast majority of baby stuff comes from China and Malaysia - plastic shit decorated or packaged with American-pleasing images. Yet parenting creates financial pressures that weren't there before, making cheapness of goods even more valuable. I try to use less, reuse, purchase out of need and not boredom or fashion, and make baby food. Nonetheless, there are mountains of baby clothes, diapers, jumpy-bouncy-walky contraptions, and toys all over my house.

--interruption-- I heard a thump and had to go downstairs to make sure that no one had followed us home from the health club, waited outside in sub-zero weather until I wasn't in the nursery, and broke in to kidnap the boys. And the local news had surely warned us about this guy on last night's news, but I didn't watch the news and now my babies are in danger...The thump was just the cat.

I'm not complaining about how I spend my days. If I had to choose between being a mush-minded, semi-literate, inarticulate blob with my boys or being a library-dwelling, pocket-protected egghead without them, the choice would be easy. I'm just saying that there's a world of ideas out there, and I used to live there, and now I don't even have time for a weekend visit. I haven't listed any more of my next hundred books because I haven't finished a book since mid-January. I'm keeping my suitcase open, however, tossing in a thing or two when I have time, knowing I'll make the trip soon. When I get there, I'm going to think about sexual identity, what's wrong with the terms of the homosexuality debate in the church, how women construct spiritual narratives, and find some interesting demographics about race and class.