The Importance of Being Idle

GUESS marbled maxi dress available at Jean Machine // Max & Co. clutch // Miu Miu sandals // Le Chateau sunglasses // Taudrey mini coin necklace 

Do you remember your dreams after you wake up? Salvador Dalí was fascinated with dreams and their meaning, so much so that his surrealist style almost always dealt with ideas such as time vs. space, dreams, reality, perspective, memory, life and death. He is one of my favourite artists and I am really quite impressed with myself that I was able to endure (with pleasure!) a few hours in the Dalí Museum in Sarasota.

Rewind it back to summer 2004, when on a guided tour of the Uffizi in Florence standing in front of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, I whispered to my friend, “I’m tired of this museum,” which went down as the most philistine thing I’ve ever said and she has yet, to this day, let me live it down. But back then I was genuinely more excited by the prospect of sipping cappuccinos along the Arno, smoking Malboro Lights and pondering my own philosophies about imbuing a North American sensibility with just the right amount of European style to continue living.

I was much more excited back then about possibilities and vast amounts of idle time came to me like gifts from the gods. Nowadays, idle time sends me into a panic. Oh, is that idle time over there headed straight for me? Quick, we must fill it!

I’ve had the worst time on the beach these past few days trying to sit still. After two hours of reading, checking emails, going for a swim, reading some more, I’m ready to come back inside and move onto the next activity, the next distraction. I’m the only one in my family who likes to watch TCM – the rest find it boring in black and white (if they only knew what they were missing!) – and just the other night I finally convinced them to watch and episode of The Twilight Zone, and now they won’t stop talking about it! (Typical).

I feel like time is running out. Like the episode in Two and a Half Men when Alan has a breakdown in Barnes & Noble realizing he’ll never have enough time to read all the books in the store, I feel like I’m racing the clock to absorb as much around me as possible whilst keeping my mind occupied so as not to think about the passage of time. When I have nothing to do I think about dying and how soon that will come and how I haven’t even accomplished all the things I want to do.

Who the hell wants to think about that?

Instead, I overload my schedule to quench my insatiable curiosity and simultaneous thirst for knowledge. Visiting Dalí (I actually went around with one of those little headsets – 10 years ago you couldn’t pay me to listen to one of those things) I was reminded to find solace in introversion and that unlocking the subconscious mind might actually be more liberating than we think, if we can get past the fear of doing so. Maybe I try to do that a little bit with my writing.

Ten years ago I was the girl who skipped Pompeii so I could spend the day on the beach. Now, I’m the one trying to peel everyone off their beach chairs to go to a museum. I even sit in the shade.

I ask you, what have I become?

As Todd Chrisley calls it, grown.

Justine Iaboni