Stealing time

By Randy Koch

On Sunday morning the alarm buzzes at six o'clock. I shut it off, sit up on the edge of the bed, and yawn. As I stand up, I sigh, then steal across the dark room to the window, move the blinds apart with a finger, and peer outside. Nothing stirs in the neighbor's house or in the mesquite and huisache on the other side of the cinderblock wall where the mockingbirds and kingbirds run riot during the day. On the corner of Shiloh and McPherson a half-mile away, streetlights burn above the Exxon station and Whataburger, and on the eastern horizon a sliver of pink glows under the dark sky like light seeping under a bedroom door. The neighborhood, quiet and still, suspects nothing, and no one knows what a beating the Eighth Commandment is going to get again today.

According to the Greeks, Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans, was sentenced by Zeus to a long, cruel punishment: he was bound to a crag in the Caucasus Mountains where each day an eagle swooped down on him, ripped at his body, and fed on his liver. While the story of the Titan Prometheus and Zeus, the chief god, is a myth, humans' penalties for stealing are no less imaginative. Although Old Testament punishments are well known for their brutality, people probably give little thought to the fact that both of those “crucified” alongside Christ (Matt. 27:38) and whose legs were broken by the soldiers so that their “bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day” (John 19:31) were, quite simply, thieves. During the Middle Ages, those convicted of stealing were sometimes blinded but more often had their ears, fingers, or hands cut off. In the early 1700s in Jamestown , Virginia , the punishment for stealing a hog was 25 lashes on the bare back; for a second offense, the convicted stood two hours in the pillory and had both ears first nailed to the stocks and later, upon release, cut off. In mid-18th century England, those found guilty of any of a variety of crimes, among them stealing livestock, such as sheep, cattle, and horses, were sentenced to either death or transportation. The former is self-explanatory while the latter means that they were shipped to the colonies -- either the Americas or Australia -- which, for almost half of those convicted, was a sentence equivalent to death. Maybe less creative though just as severe is the law in present-day China . In the last ten years, several thousand Chinese have been executed -- many by shooting -- for a variety of crimes, including stealing cultural relics, motorcycles, diesel fuel, and small sums of money. And in Afghanistan under the Taliban, as in most Islamic countries, the thief's right hand is severed, but in California if you were Winona Ryder and sacked Saks for over $6,000 worth of goods, you'd be sentenced to three years' probation and 480 hours of community service.

The consequences of what I have in mind this morning are far less severe, however. After getting dressed, making the bed, brushing my teeth, and turning on the computer in the small office across the hall from my bedroom, I put my plan into motion. I neither intend nor have the skill to use the computer to break through firewalls, subvert passwords, and steal someone's identity or electronic funds. I don't run a shady online business through which I bilk the elderly and the innocent out of their hard-earned dollars or the family fortune. And I'm not the source of the persistent email that says you have the same surname as that of a wealthy oil magnate who will pay you a percentage of the take if within the next ten days you provide some confidential information to help transfer millions of U.S. dollars out of the Congo or Nigeria before the account is confiscated by the bank. Instead, today -- like yesterday, tomorrow, and the day after -- I will steal time to write.

I've heard many people say they want to write and soon will, that they've got this idea for a story or poem, a children's book or a novel, and as soon as they find the time, they'll work on it. Weeks and sometimes months pass before we see one another again, but when we do, the dream remains. The key, however, is not in waiting for time to show itself but in actively searching for it, and since it's rarely offered by our friends, families, or employers, we must -- if we're serious about writing -- do the necessary and honorable thing: we must steal it. Through practice, I've refined my process for identifying the larcenous opportunity, and what my outward life lacks in sophistication or style, my writing life makes up for in poems and paragraphs.

A culture's language reflects a people's values or common experiences. For example, the Inuit, or Eskimos, have 31 different names for snow, such as “qanniq” for falling snow and “maujaq” for deep, soft snow. Because it's such a vital, oft-observed element in their life, they make distinctions that the rest of us, with much less familiarity, would never think to make. To us, snow is simply snow. However, our common experiences are also reflected in our language, and, as a result, we have more than 31 names for stealing, many of which have specific uses or referents. Some, for example, specify the thing stolen. Livestock, particularly cattle, are generally rustled, while wild game and fish are poached. You can embezzle money, snatch a purse, and hijack a plane or transported goods, but you purloin a letter and cop a plea or a feel. Some words are particular to location -- homes are burglarized and businesses and especially banks are knocked over -- while other words specify the type of thief about whom we're speaking: pirates and Vikings, for instance, plunder or loot while rebels seize power and political activist Abbie Hoffman was famous for suggesting we liberate objects from their owners. We jack a car, nab a kid, palm a watch, or swipe third base. We can filch, lift, pilfer, or pinch; swindle, nab, borrow, or heist; rip off, rob, capture, or thieve. But not surprisingly, American English lacks a verb that means the writer's act of stealing time.

The choices I've made may appear to be those of an unrefined bachelor, but don't be deceived. The paper plates from which I ate my dinner three nights last week saved me the trouble and time required to fill the sink with hot, foamy water, scrub the CorningWare, and later move the dishes from the rack to their neat stacks in the cupboard. When I've actually used flatware and dishes, I often abandon them in or near the empty sink on my way upstairs to the computer. However, my failure to put dishwashing before drafting has occasionally resulted in a trail of ants across our kitchen counter, which then costs me valuable time as I battle the insect invasion and drive them back into the wall. By my calculations, each use of a paper plate steals at least 15 minutes that would otherwise be spent at domestic duties in the kitchen, and those 15 minutes can mean the difference between a metaphor and a more Martha-Stewart-like home.

I also suspect I'm part of a very small minority that still doesn't have cable TV. I haven't seen MTV or PBS since the 1980s, only know Hardball from the SNL skits, and since rabbit ears in Laredo limit my viewing to NBC, CBS, and a few stations from Mexico, I have to choose among golf, Stars on Ice, and a novela while everyone else watches the Spurs-Pistons series on ABC. Yes, I've declined paying for TV for over 20 years and refuse to cough up $35 or $40 a month for cable, but the real issue is time, not money. It's much easier to steal away to work on a draft of an essay when the only thing on TV is an infomercial for the Abmaster or Harrison Ford's The Fugitive stretched out to three hours and interrupted by commercials every ten minutes.

For similar reasons, during the last 14 years I've lived in an apartment or condo, not a house. While purchasing a house may be the smarter financial decision and renting one would provide my daughter Mary and me with more room and more privacy, it would also mean that I'd need to devote time to maintaining my investment and doing the many things required of the responsible home owner or house renter. Leasing an apartment or condo, on the other hand, allows me to be less responsible and to do what I'd rather do: to trim language instead of the lawn, to work with a paragraph instead of a pair of pliers, to plunge into a story instead of climbing two stories to use a plunger. What homeowners likely forget or fail to realize is that renters may pay to borrow space, but in the exchange some also steal time to write.

I go to great lengths and, according to some, suffer considerable discomfort in an effort to squeeze out of each day a little extra time for myself. Since I was a teenager, I've always driven old cars -- in the 1970s a 1960 Bel Air, in the 1980s a 1970 Plymouth, and in the early 1990s a 1974 Gremlin -- often because I couldn't afford anything else. However, in 1996 while still in Minnesota, I bought a 13-year-old Honda with a good heater but no air conditioning, and for the past nine years, my most productive writing years, I haven't spent a single Saturday morning washing or waxing, detailing or vacuuming. Instead of trying to rub a shine into those cancerous fenders, I worked at polishing prose.

Stealing time is a matter of setting priorities, and shopping, particularly for clothes, is nowhere on my to-do list. I'll wear the same clothes for years -- until they go thoroughly out of style or, better yet, come back in -- anything to avoid having to compete with experienced shoppers, rummaging through racks, finding a fitting room, getting in and out of clothes, and -- if I actually find something I want to buy -- waiting in the checkout line. I would rather find a synonym for “fashion” than devote time or energy to bringing it into my life.

This may at least partially explain my limited social life. However, my frequent preference for staying home is a conscious choice and not designed to offend anyone who might have invited me to an event he or she is hosting. I prefer staying home in the company of books filled with the voices of other writers to attending more social events -- the Washington's Birthday parade or wine-sipping party, a company Christmas bash, or a Friday evening at a local club or restaurant -- where, amidst all the background noise, I often struggle to hear conversations and usually can't even hear myself think. I'm not anti-social, just selective about the company I keep and protective of the time I steal.

The image of Moses smashing the stone tablets on which were written the Ten Commandments suggests that sometimes the rules and norms have to be broken, that, in fact, some time thou shalt steal.

(Randy Koch teaches English at Texas A&M International University and is director of the Writing Center at TAMIU.)