What the Cluck?
Are we just like eggs? Do we need to get sat on to hatch?
I’m in a tent. In a sleeping bag (North Face, rated down to 20°F). It’s cold, but not 20°F. I’m in a tent in a sleeping bag with two additional blankets on top of my legs. I’m also wearing a puffy hooded jacket (North Face again) and a black beanie. I’m in the Mojave Desert (Southern end, current temperature 38°F) and I’m in a state of semi-panic.
It is 8:30 a.m.
That’s not why I’m semi-panicked.
About an hour ago I stuck my icy-to-the-touch MacBook Pro under my legs to try and bring it up to operating temperature, which I have been told is above 50°F. I have some work to do. It’s due on Monday and my Macbook Pro doesn’t like the cold. I know this because it has told me so by not working. Hence the panic. The slight chill of a 13” Apple Metallic Grey seeps through the high-tech fluff of the North Face Cat’s Meow sleeping bag, rated down to 20°F.
I won’t turn it on until it is well and truly warmed up. Cold starts are not always conducive to the best work anyway, right? Some things just work out that way. That’s what I’m telling myself.
Me. In the desert. The Mojave. Surrounded by sand and rocks and cholla and the occasional Joshua tree and look at me—sitting on a laptop trying to hatch this egg.
Cluck.
It’s raining. Did I mention that? It rained all night and was heavy and melodic, and I don’t care how waterproof you think your tent is, everything has its limits. I moved things away from the walls in the middle of the night, because as long as nothing’s touching the wet canvas—no mattress, no clothes, no electronics—everything is fine. If you never touch the walls, you never have to face the reality of the outside. There’s something in that for all of us.
Cluck.
I sit on my lithium-infused egg and write in my Moleskine notebook. In pen. Black. I am Old School. Or just old. I like it. I am hatching something of my own.
This notebook, with its off-white paper, black ink, and my barely legible scrawl, has already reached operating temperature. My hand is moving freely and words flow, but I’m doing that thing where I’m writing so fast the ends of the words are just sort of fading away. I’m flattening the ‘ngs’ in the ‘-ings’, and it’s happening because I’m in the zone now. I have warmed up quickly from my cold start idle. My brain hatchery lamp produced a thing. Words now ooze from me like a Cadbury egg left in a hot car.
Even bad analogies sometimes taste good.
Warming up is good.
Singers warm up.
Athletes warm up.
Dancers warm up.
Performers warm up.
It’s good for you.
It loosens the muscles.
It frees up the mind.
It is the beginning step in bringing yourself to that creative juice boil I talked about last week.
I’m warmed up now.
The desert will warm up later.
Even this tent will get its temperature rising.
Cluck.
But not this Macbook. It seems you can’t get a lithium battery to room temperature if your room is a rooftop tent on the back of Toyota Tacoma in late December in the Mojave desert. On a rainy day. Did I mention it was raining?
Oh, cluck.
The point of this story—if you’re wondering where I’m going with it—is that sometimes no amount of warming up will help if the environment is vehemently and violently against you. Find a place or a time that’s right for you to warm up in. Someplace you know sets your brain on fire. If it doesn’t work, move1. While the desert temps are vehemently against my Macbook Pro warming up, I am still able to power up. Because even though it’s cold, this situation meets my other hatching criteria: I am a morning writer.
It’s when my brain is most alive.
It crackles with heat.
This explains why I’m here in a sleeping bag in a tent with a notebook and a good old-fashioned pen and my brain and doing the work of it. With a laptop under my legs. Warming up is a practice. Part of the juice-extraction process. If your mission is to be creative, it’s simply part of your day.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen2
This week’s amends…
“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”
- Roger Ebert
From The Essential Man Esquire Interview, Feb. 16, 2010
On Rotation: The Stooges, “I Wanna be your Dog”.
Who doesn’t love anything from the mind of Michel Gondry? (I’m sure there’s someone, but it ain’t me.) Some behind the scenes, here
Via Laughing Squid
I love a good headline.
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?
Which is what I will do to complete the freelance work. I need to resupply to keep staying out in the desert, so I will pack up this tent and do an overnight in a hotel to get the work done. Because that’s what you do to meet deadlines. I also typed up this post in that very same hotel. Semi-panic, be gone!
The laptop in the image is not mine. Mine is shivering. And like I said, under my legs.
Love the CLUCK, SOMETIMES ,