boolar

Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. “Do you wish to buy any baskets?” he asked. “No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “What!” exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, “do you mean to starve us?” Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off,–that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and by some magic wealth and standing followed, he said to himself; I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it would be necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?” –Walden, Henry David Thoreau

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Holland Days

Maybe my friend down the hall remembers it, the part she played in the paper I wrote on Walden that first and only year I was at Mount Holyoke. It was this time of year. That hill outside my window might have been covered in snow. It started one of the many existential crises I had during the long three-quarters of a year I spent as a student in New England. I just could not write the paper. It was supposed to be many pages long, I can’t quite remember how many, but I couldn’t even imagine starting. Not because I didn’t love the book; I adored it, and still do.
I don’t remember all the details (I so often don’t), but I do remember the feeling of calm and the sense of purpose I finally had when I decided to write my paper (with the approval of that friend who surely wouldn’t have done the same herself, but was willing to try the experiment through me) on why Thoreau should not like me to write my paper, using Walden itself as my evidence. It was about a page and a half long and definitely included a line about planting beans.

I had never so anxiously awaited my grades, not since my junior year of high school, when I had convinced Mr. Milam the Algebra II teacher who wore his straight-fronted, flatly pressed slacks at the waist like a military man that if he really thought that his exams accurately reflected what he wished his students to learn, he shouldn’t count homework toward the final grade (unless it would help, of course). The deal we finally made (it took a few days to break him) was that I didn’t have to do any homework if I got no less than an A on each and every exam. You might be able to guess which student got 89% on the third exam. By my calculations, I would have gotten a D in the course if he held me to our arrangement. I held my breath, but I didn’t bother doing any homework.

In both cases, I was rewarded for my… what would you call it? moxie?

Ten years later, instead of using it only to avoid jumping through hoops I’d rather not, I’m trying to use this skill (or affliction) to get myself into something. It’s really a much more difficult position.

Instead of biting my nails while waiting for my grades to come in and prove that I have pulled it off again, I’m having my first migraines and wondering if it just won’t be enough, this moxie of mine.

Maybe not. But it is still worth trying, right? I know that my friend down on the opposite end of the hall who once agreed would probably do so again. I’m actually counting on that belief, though the hallway between us has grown to cover half the globe.

For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case, my pains were their own reward.” –Ibid.