Aspirational Boredom: A Look at “The INtrovert and the nectarine” by Anna Joyce
When I was a teen I’d complain about being bored. Too many hours crowded each day during the breaks I had from school. My mother said, “Some day you’ll wish you were bored,” and I probably scoffed. How could anyone enjoy boredom, that beige absence that made me feel so claustrophobic?
With each passing year, as high school became college, college became career, and career became parenthood, boredom became something aspirational. Stillness and silence became a goal to attain, not avoid: the infant asleep, the faintest rising and falling of their chest, a moment to sit between chores. There was a thrilling anticipation to boredom now. Even as my children grow well into their teen years, I have little time for boredom.
I hate to say it but my mother was right. Perhaps when I was young I had no “Inner Resources” as another mother might have told me.
Boredom, I know, is a strange way to praise a poem, but “The Introvert and the Nectarine” by Anna Joyce gives me the same feeling of that perfect, delicious boredom I so crave. It isn’t about being devoid of sensation. It’s about the fully realized present, senses enhanced, everything captured. Boredom became the thing that connected me back to myself. This poem speaks to that experience, in the voice of the poet and with the wisdom of my mother.
Joyce’s poem is the perfect pause, an escape for the introvert and the overwhelmed. “Is there anything better than hiding / in the kitchen” the poem begins as the speaker enjoys a nectarine all to themself, all by themself, the “succulent flesh / drowning out the background hubbub.” The speaker has escaped a party for a brief time and although there is no specific occasion mentioned, it works well regardless. It can be a birthday party, anniversary, a random holiday. I don’t think it matters so much as how well it fits for the competing priorities that take up our lives. Don’t get me wrong; I love a good party but am absolutely wiped out by them.
The language, intentional and even playful, makes every stanza enjoyable. A poem that takes such pleasure in this “stolen moment of calm” also takes equal joy in language. I am given the experience of their moment through words as delectable as the nectarine itself: the juice trickles, drips, the speaker is “Satiated, revitalised.” Even the sink with its “limescale, tannin stains, and dirty plates” is made glorious with rhythm and sound. The whole scene is relatable, necessary, and to be honest, empowering.
There are things I enjoyed in my childhood that perhaps many would find boring: fishing with my father and brother on the Crow River, drawing for hours on end alone in my bedroom, playing video games. There are things I enjoy now which perhaps my old self would have found boring: lying in a hammock in the backyard (reminiscent of another poem that gives me that feeling of boredom as enlightenment), reading poetry, writing reviews. The nature of life, at times, is about shifting from one crisis to another, sometimes multiple ones simultaneously. Maybe the best thing we could offer each other is space for our own boredoms. There is tranquility and possibility in boredom. Whether one is overwhelmed by a party, by family, or by the world, isn’t a moment alone with sweetness in hand exactly what you need?
