On Puttering
"Wherever we go, we are friends" -Sloth and Manatee
Sloth and Manatee
I’m not sure where the term “puttering” came from, but I think I got it from my grandmother Irene. Because she was the master putterer (pronounced like “sputter”).
Maybe it comes from “putt-putt” like an old car. I don’t know.
But, puttering is one of the best things you can do with yourself. It’s also a thing that the Online Business Machine actively hunts down like a mineral in the ground, its digging claws extended out to scoop it up for its own benefit with no regard for yours.
By way of definition, puttering is, as far as I know, the process of going all around and doing things as they come. Seeing what is in front of you. Fixing this, arranging that.
I think of Miss Tiggy Winkle from the Beatrix Potter series, sweeping her front stoop and greeting the day with her hedgehog nose and frilly bonnet. Or the high-tech version, Wallace sliding down to breakfast by way of his sweater-putting-on machine, to his chair where his toast is being splatted with midair jam before landing on his plate opposite where Gromit reads the paper. Or the introduction of so many characters in Miyazaki movies, just going about their business and humming or whatever.
When I would visit my grandmother Irene as a kid, all we did was putter. We puttered in the vegetable garden. We puttered in the kitchen. We’d go to the “old folks’ home,” as she called it, and she’d putter her way down the hall helping people with their blankets, trimming nails, doing whatever needed doing.
Everything does not need an externally-defined purpose or trajectory. I mean, if you are a storm trooper you should definitely try to look busy when some Darth comes by. You don’t wanna get randomly force-choked. But life is lived in order, and you’re always where you are. Puttering embodies this. Making something out of what is in front of you.
I’m reading a book recommended by my friend Mike called “I Never Thought Of It That Way” by Mónica Guzmán. In it she notes that our attention isn’t us consuming things, it’s things consuming us. Eating up our very consciousness. Well, this is not okay on a fundamental, cellular level.
An effective putterer is in possession of their attention and their time and space. They might be opening a hotel room window to listen to the street below, or fixing up a campsite, or straightening socks. They might be arranging rocks on a beach. Or alphabetizing some books. Writing a letter. Walking to the corner, then walking to the next corner. Tiny moments that add up to being a person. As Arnold puts it, “a million little tiny victories.”
My family thinks I’m real funny when I putter around. Maybe that means I’m doing it right, if I’d fit into a Miyazaki movie or a Beatrix Potter story. That’s a nice place to be.
I wish you a quality puttering time.
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Things Of The Week
There’s a movement afoot to rekindle the Internet as we once knew it, a weird little place of people making weird little things. Here’s a whole magazine about it, which looks just lovely.
Also, nominations for The Tiny Awards are open, for weird little websites. Know of one? Submit! Or just keep an eye out for the winners ‘cause it’s always marvelous.
This is kind of amazing, a whole database of Canadian cartoonists that you can search and slice and dice all kinds of ways. What a lovely resource.
Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.
May you find time to putter about, may you experience at least a hundred little tiny victories, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy
HELLO AND THANKS FOR READING!!
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