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It's a simple composition, and some will be completely unaffected by it, but some will be quite taken with its atmosphere, wistful, perhaps even a little defiant in the face of the darkness of the night. I asked my older brother if he thought it was lonely, and he replied, "No, it's not lonely, the tree has the moon for company." And the moon is the thing I like most about the entire work. Strange how just a yellow circle can be powerful.
I went there last week, not for any holiday shopping, but just because the house needed a few odds and ends. Just like Hallmark (see previous posting), it’s right down the street from my office, and so I succumbed to the usual trade we make in modern times: convenience for quality. Sigh. I must really learn my lesson. Although as usual I only found half the items on my list, for once the store was fully staffed, evidently prepared to deal with an expected influx of seasonal shoppers, and my hopes rose when I saw no line at the register. I plunked down my basket, opened the wallet, extracted some cash and waited expectantly for the cashier to notice me. Then I got the Third Degree:
“Will you be making your purchase with your Sears Mastercard?”
“No.”
“Would you like to open a Sears Mastercard account?”
“No, thank you.”
“You get 10% off of your first purchase….”
“Um..No.”
“Would you like to donate $2.00 to the Children’s F –“
“No, thank you!"
“Are you a member of our Sears Craftsman Club?”
“Nooo….”
“Would you like to become a member of our Sears Craftsman Club?”
“Look, I just want to make my purchase!” I exploded. I brandished the twenty in my hand, “Behold – money!” I gestured at the basket with my free hand. “Product!” I pointed from one to the other repeatedly. “Transaction! Come on, let’s make this thing happen!” There might have been some finger-snapping involved.
She rung me up without another word.
OK, I admit that I lost it at that point. It’s a personal failing of sorts to let others get to you; it’s far better to maintain one’s poise and demonstrate “grace under pressure”. But really, how much longer was this going to continue? The Sears Mastercard question was hardly new; they have been plying me with that one for 7 or 8 years now, testing the limits of my resolve, but they keep adding more and more questions. What if it literally gets up to “20 questions”? When does it become necessary to finally make a stand? Why do merchants insist on suggesting services or products I don’t want and didn’t ask for? Are we actually so easily pressured and manipulated? If there’s one thing that still grinds my gears, it’s when people waste my time. You only have so much of it, after all. We’re only here once, never to come back again. So unpleasant or mind-numbing tasks should be minimized in quantity and duration. For me, that includes shopping. I want to get in, grab what I’m looking for, pay and exit in as little time as possible. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
A man's home may be his castle, but his studio is the inner Sanctum, the Holy of Holies, and here, at least, I can decorate as I see fit. And so I proclaimed, "Bring out the whiplash curvilinear forms!"
I customarily went to the Hallmark store because there is one right down the street from my office, and another one within walking distance to the house, and let’s face it; they have more variety than you would expect to find in the grocery store or CVS pharmacy. I have a difficult time selecting greeting cards, especially for my mother, since she is very quick to take offense (the tone must be perfect: respectful, appreciative but not too gushy). Moreover, the sentiments in many of these cards are so mawkish that no one could possibly envision me uttering the words contained within them without either laughing outright or retching in disgust at such an unnatural spectacle. The entire venture is a minimum 20 minute waste of time.
Last week I ran into one during my lunch hour to pick up a card for the Wife’s birthday. I immediately noticed that the store had been completely rearranged, which put me off immediately.
Of course, like the supermarket that insists on stocking milk in the rear of the building, all the greeting cards were at the back of the store, so I had to walk by displays of kitschy bric-a-brac, stationary, candles, wind chimes and dream catchers, and specialty wrapping paper (all exorbitantly priced). Are people still willing and able to blow their money on this dreck? It pains me that there are industrial facilities somewhere devoted to churning out these pastel-hued figurines of girls learning to tie their shoes and other such nonsense.
I was surprised to note that the floor space allotted for cards was only 25% of the entire store area. Previously it was 33%, and I seem to recall a time in the not-too-distant past when it was half. Clearly the cards are being “de-emphasized”, despite their vital role in Hallmark’s existence.
Having reached the back of the store, the birthday section now needs to be located. But first I must make my way past the seasonal greeting cards. Oh look – an entire half aisle reserved for Thanksgiving cards! Are you kidding me? Next there is an entire aisle just for cards with embedded chips that emit sounds, a concept they have been flogging hard for several years. Like I am going to spend $12 on something you look at for about 30 seconds tops and then throw in the garbage. Or are you supposed to save these things? And if you do, are you actually supposed to change the [watch] battery in the chip when it goes bad in 5 years?
So you find the birthday section, and get to the female half of it (clue: it’s pink). Then you have to settle on the correct relationship of the woman in question: aunt, daughter, sister, niece, grandmother, mother, mother “from both of us”, “like a mother”, general “lover”, and yes, here’s “wife”.
Then there’s the entire process of elimination I employ to find just the right one. No, these are too tacky/funny, no, these have dogs on the front for some reason (the Wife is a cat person), no, this one is too religious, this one is too wordy, this one with the silhouette of the woman in the tub with a glass of what is presumably champagne is too “hip”…
It’s like a Kafka tale I once read in college – a young man daydreams that a courier is delivering a personal message to him directly from the Emperor, but first the courier must pass through all the rooms of the palace, all the courtyards, past the checkpoints and main square and boulevards, and so on – you get the picture – and that the journey has so many steps that he will never actually get to the intended destination, like some movement paradox proposed by the Greek philosopher Zeno.
And the cards themselves? I shudder to think of the waste – I don’t want to hear any woman that habitually shops at Hallmark EVER pontificate on environmental issues. When I think of all the trees harvested merely to create the pulp for the paper, the chemicals required for the various inks for the illustrations, the embossing machines and whatever apparatus is used to apply glitter, the gunk used to make the adhesive for the envelopes, the fuel expended to deliver most of the cards long distances, I am appalled. And guess what? I never did find the right card, and ended up getting one at Walgreen’s instead. Screw you, Hallmark.
I have always liked maps. I like seeing the relationships between political boundaries and geographical features, highways and cities, the network of roads whose density denotes the presence of civilization. I like the colors, I appreciate all the effort that must have gone into making them, all that information - drawn to scale, no less. I like how they afford the opportunity to daydream: simply place your finger on a destination and imagine what it would be like to visit there, or relocate there permanently. A globe offers the most exotic locales in the most accessible way. Sumatra. Morocco. Kamchatka. All these are at your fingertips, which can span thousands of miles with even the most indolent gesture.
Of course, it is highly unlikely that I’ll ever go to these places. But often, the dream itself is enough. For if truth be told, I don’t look at a new prospective experience and say, “this looks like it could be an exciting adventure!” Rather, I see an increased level of risk.
At work there is a conference room that has an impressively large map of the United States glued onto the wall on one side of the room, and on the opposite side an even bigger map of the world (a Mercator Projection, of course). These amenities naturally make it my favorite conference room by far, so when I am in some tedious meeting or teleconference, bored to tears while waiting for the opportunity to utter my standard contribution of two sentences, I can entertain myself by staring at the maps. Often I think of alternative boundaries that I would impose, had I the power. Just last week I was musing that if I had concluded the Louisiana Purchase, I would have divided it up to form different state boundaries.
A little back story: When I moved down to Columbus back in ‘96, I bought one of those accordion-style road maps of Franklin County, which, once unfolded, was well-nigh impossible to return to its original state. To save time, I simply repeatedly folded it back on itself, resulting in an exposed portion of the map that became a permanent occupant of the passenger’s seat. In the middle of this square was my apartment, and it also contained everything else required for day-to-day survival: the workplace, the grocery store, library, movie theatre and so forth. My roommate, who was beginning his graduate work at OSU that year, did the same thing. A secondary goal to settling in and kicking off my career was becoming intimately familiar with all the features contained within that quadrangle, within which my entire normal routine was contained. Everything outside of it could be dispensed with, so our entire world shrank down to the contents of that portion of the map.
Occasionally, drastic measures were called for. You had to go to a car dealership to service your vehicle, for example, and those are never conveniently located. So you had to venture beyond the set boundaries of the map. We called it “leaving the Square”. This was only done under duress or in grave circumstances. I am not kidding you.
I fear road maps have become obsolete, with GPS systems and so on. But it’s a running theme of modern technology – why learn anything, when we can just look it up? Recently I went on a whitewater rafting trip in Pennsylvania. Armed with several maps provided by the benevolent cyber-entity Google (one of the few internet tools I acknowledge), I made the trip without incident and at the destination met up with a group of friends from the Cleveland area who drove in together. I asked the driver which route he had taken, hoping that if we had used some of the same roads in Pennsylvania, we could travel part of the way together on the return trip.
“ I have no idea what roads I took, “ he said, “I just do what the GPS says, and if the pink arrow says to turn, then I turn.” Thinking is now overrated; if it is unnecessary, how could that be otherwise? And planning? Don’t even get me started.
…You can use the Slippery Slope if you want.
I hear a lot about these various cable drama shows, and see adverts for them everywhere in magazines, online and on TV. There are always slickly produced, which at one time would have been sufficient inducement for me to consider watching them, but I don’t appreciate products being relentlessly pushed on me – I’m recalcitrant that way.
Anyway, as time has gone on and my incidental exposure to these programs has increased, my Indignity Meter keeps registering something, and I finally figured out what it is that bothers me about all these “quality”, critically-acclaimed productions. Let’s connect the dots, shall we?
"Weeds" – the main character sells marijuana – in a suburban environment (gasp!). But it’s OK, because weed isn’t really harmful.
"Breaking Bad" – the main character (a chemistry teacher – gasp!) produces and sells crystal meth. But it’s OK, because he has cancer.
"Big Love" – the main character is an old-school Mormon bigamist. But it’s OK, because he loves his wives equally.
"Dexter" – the main character is a serial killer (who works in forensics for the police – gasp!). But it’s OK, because his victims deserve what they get.
…And I’m not even going to touch “Hung”
Notice a pattern here?
The primary entertainment value is derived from a titillating premise that is necessarily explored and expanded upon in massive story arcs that show the characters struggling to secure or maintain “normal” lives, while engaged in activities that society as a whole definitely do NOT consider normal. I guess that’s where the entertainment comes in – without the obscenely contrived premise, the shows wouldn’t exist. The problem I perceive is that there is always a mitigating factor (delineated by the italics above) to elicit empathy from the audience so that a sufficiently large fan base can be cultivated. In other words, the producers of these shows need everyone to tacitly accept the statement that, “just because these characters are degenerates or perverts doesn’t mean they’re not people too.”
I’m sorry, but I subscribe to the old quaint notion that wrong (i.e., criminal, immoral, stupid, irresponsible, selfish, etc.) behavior, and those that practice or engage in it, should be shunned. And furthermore, that desensitization is the first step towards contagion. And because these shows to some extent invariably rely on shock value in their subversion of societal norms and morals, it is inevitable that future programming will become ever more lurid and decadent as “the envelope” is pushed towards some cultural event horizon in which moral relativism has completely triumphed – accomplished solely through the quest for ratings.
The unspoken lesson from the elite among our “content providers” has become simply this: Relax and enjoy - decadence is completely normal. We know this because everyone is doing it…
Once I listened to Andrei Codrescu (editor of the journal “The Exquisite Corpse”) read one of his charmingly eccentric essays on NPR back in the mid-90’s, lamenting that technology has cheapened the significance of certain words. One of his specific examples was the word “icon”, originally the name for a venerated stylized portrait of some biblical figure in the Orthodox Christian Church, now mainly known as the little fingernail-sized pictures littering your computer screen standing for different software programs.
The English language is rich, the breadth of its adjectives alone vast beyond measure. And I am weary of words being cheapened as they are co-opted and harnessed to mundane or trivial purposes that drain them of their original vitality.
Have you ever been in an office environment and heard of someone, perhaps in IT, referred to as a “troubleshooter”? A troubleshooter actually was someone employed by the railroads, when they still held awesome power in the American economy, to literally shoot people who caused trouble – bandits, thieves, vandals or trespassers in rail yards and other places.
Or in economic news when I hear talk of the financial or gaming “industry”. Industry should be primarily involved with manufacturing or at least creation of some sort, such as raw material extraction (mining and farming), refining, construction, distribution of the extracted materials and manufactured goods, or perhaps even technological research and development – NOT the moving around of paper or other literally nonproductive enterprises.
“Analysis” is another much abused word. The concept of analysis describes the process whereby complex systems or substances are “broken down” into manageable parts so comprehension can be facilitated, and as such it is critically important in the fields of engineering, chemistry and mathematics, to name a few. Yet whenever I go into the health club locker room I hear some buffoon on ESPN promising “in-depth analysis” regarding some trade in baseball or draft pick in the NFL, and I must cringe accordingly. Give me a freak’n break!
The common theme here is that all these words are misappropriated by people determined to make their activities seem more important than they actually are. Apparently, though actions may speak for themselves, they do so in a subdued voice that can easily be overpowered.
In fact, the current economic crisis is in no small part due to the obfuscation that resulted from the meanings of words being twisted as the words themselves are assigned to signify things they shouldn’t, words like “assets”, “derivatives”, “debt” and even “profit”. People didn’t understand the nature of the equities they were buying, the terms they agreed to when borrowing, the activities of the corporations they are investing in, and can’t interpret the balance sheets and earnings of those corporations. Once the informed consent so crucial to commercial transactions has been waived, you are engaged in sheer speculation and might as well go to the racetrack and place bets there. Oh, what a tangled web we have woven.
We’ve all seen them on Facebook – those “let’s-get-to-know-each-other” quizzes or lists of favorite this-or-that showing up on “The Wall”. You get “tagged” in a note and are all curious to see what someone else thought would be of interest to you. Sure, I’ve been sucked into participating, I’ve filled out a few lists myself and sent these toothless chain letters off to other people – the “15 top books” list comes to mind, but now I am giving notice: NO MORE!
Recently a college friend of mine “tagged” me regarding one of these lists, literally called “Getting To Know Each Other”. [It was not nearly as sleazy as I anticipated, but no matter.] It was gratifying to be tagged by this person, actually. Not only is he a professed curmudgeon by nature, but like many of us he is ensconced within a bubble of his own making. Between the twin obligations of work and family I’m sure he has little time/energy to lavish on the likes of little ol’ me. Hence, the tangential effort at contact was appreciated.
It is bad enough that data is being mined from our personal information. Say you list “Atlas Shrugged” as one of your favorite books in your profile. Guess what? Every time you log on Facebook you have a 50% chance of seeing an ad to the right for “Ayn Rand T-shirts”! You list Star Wars as one of your favorite movies of all time – ditto. Maybe this tactic works on other people, but these transparent ploys merely irritate me, they are so gauche and opportunistic. A couple months ago I heard a late-middle-aged (aren’t they all?) commentator on NPR grousing to another correspondent at length on how her and her female friends on Facebook always are confronted with weight loss schemes and advertisements for anti-wrinkle products. Their concerns are legitimate: who wants to log onto what is supposedly an intimate, friendly, secure environment only to be bludgeoned with their insecurities? But I think this consumeristic rot has penetrated far deeper than that….
This is a sampling of some of the questions in this particular note, which doubtless was originally drawn up by someone in Facebook’s employ:
4. What is your favorite TV show? currently?
10. Favorite dressing?
12. What are your favorite clothes?
13. Where would you visit if you had the chance?
18. What is your favorite sport to watch?
36. Favorite fast food restaurant?
See a pattern here? I do; it’s all about PRODUCTS, and as I am reading the questions I begin getting paranoid…
11. What kind of vehicle do you drive?
(OK, this is a little annoying, but mostly because it tacitly subscribes to the narcissistic view that we are defined not by what we do, but by what we own – and what we own is a reflection of WHO WE ARE, get it?)
39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
(You’ve got to be kidding me – this one really raised the red flag. Talk about blatant – why don’t they just ask for our credit card statements?)
41. Like your job?
(If I say I don’t like my job, will I see ads for job search sites? Or perhaps remedial education?)
43. What was your favorite vacation?
(If I say a cruise, am I going to see ads for cruises? If I say a snow boarding trip in upstate New York am I going to see ads for snow boarding? Or up-state New York?)
47. How many tattoos do you have?
(If I have more than 3, will I see ads for Kat von D’s tattoo show on TLC? )
50. Coffee Drinker?
(So if I say yes, am I going to be bombarded with Starbucks adds?)
I am tired of people trying to get something for nothing (like my zip code when I buy a pair of shoes - what, my cash is not sufficient to complete the purchase?), but I am outraged that they employ subterfuge in order to do it. Doesn’t anyone find it sinister that our postings are being sifted through for certain keywords and concepts just so they can be relayed to advertisers? Personally, I find it somewhat degrading that I am principally regarded as a mere potential “consumer”. And I know a thing or two about degradation…
Favorite restaurants, clothes, and salad dressing – does this say who we are? It is market research masquerading as communication. This all will seem so nauseating and trivial when we are scrounging in the muck like serfs for food and shivering with cold in ten years, when escalating energy costs and shortages of all kinds force us back to lifestyles not seen in America since the early 1800’s.
A Whiff of Destiny
By definition Tragedy should be unforeseen. Anything else is avoidable waste. Getting hit by a car while playing in the street. Never backing up your hard drive and then freaking out when your computer has a meltdown and succumbs to some virus or power surge. Choking to death on one’s own vomit after binge drinking. The family that leaves candles burning unattended and then loses everything in the ensuing house fire. These are not tragedies.
For those with awareness and discernment, there are a multitude of daily learning experiences, or in today’s political parlance “teachable moments”, when you can absorb a lesson that can forestall undesirable outcomes. Attentive homeowners know this. You water the lawn so that it does not die. You prune the tree so that the big limb doesn’t fall on the house. You change the batteries in the smoke detectors, not because it’s a fun time, but because it can save your life. Preventative measures, these.
Now when the Wife came home recently with the flashy, brand-new black leather purse, and plunked it down on the cushioned Mission Style bench by the stairs, we both saw Mickey the Cat eye that creaky fresh leather. He crept slowly up to the bench, craned his head up in the air and inhaled deeply the unmistakable scent, utterly enthralled by this new object constructed of animal skins. When a few seconds later he jumped on top of the purse and assumed the squatting position, the alarmed “NO!” in stereo from us prevented him from achieving his intended goal of christening the purse with his pungent urine. He jumped back down on the floor and scuttled away. Crisis averted, yes? As it turned out, not really.
First, a few words about Mickey the Cat: a 20 lb. armful, back humped like a camel, a sweet disposition but doesn’t like a lot of commotion – and cautious about the unknown. Always hiding upstairs when visitors arrive, until he has determined that the strangers haven’t killed and dismembered us. And then with the grand entrance into the living room, down the stairs: thump-thump, thump-thump, into the midst of stares of amazement and exclamations of “is that a normal cat?” and “Gosh, he’s a big one!”, et. al. One more thing: like all cats, he is persistent.
But the Wife, possessing a heedless and trusting nature, fails to spot the Looming Catastrophe. And me, I don’t pay attention to purses all that much. Thus the resting place for the new purse became that same location on the bench, for t’was convenient and accessible. Too accessible, as it turns out.
Perhaps we fell prey to the mistaken assumption that the growing familiarity of the purse would make it a less attractive target for the cat. No such luck. That black leather was irresistible to him. And given the chance, he would claim it in that special way that certain animals have…
And so it was, that just before she was set to exit for a night of girly Saturday fun, the Wife hoisted up the purse to find it was dripping with cat pee. Cat pee which had run inside, wrecking the fabric lining, and trickled down about its face, pooling on the vinyl cushion of the bench, where, as habit also dictated, her iPod was sitting. And since the iPod was connected to the nearby outlet via its charging cable, and electrical gadgets don’t do well when immersed in liquids, it shorted out. It was a Bad Scene. Let’s just say there was the gnashing of teeth, and Mickey the Cat was in the dog house.
But then he looks up at you with those round, button eyes, complete incomprehension on his face, and it’s somehow hard to remain mad at him. For there is no trace of guile there, he is just being himself. And maybe the Wife was only being herself, too. Habits are seductive solely because they relieve us of the effort of thinking. Maybe we are stuck in patterns that chart a de facto destiny, not because we lack free will, but because we consistently choose not to use it. The question then arises: is THAT a tragedy?
O.K. Latest Facebook note. This time it's name the 15 books that you can name in 15 minutes that have had a lasting impact upon you.
1. Atlas Shrugged (Rand) - for connecting the dots of my worldview
2. The Republic (Plato) - for showing how an astute assessment of human nature is vital to arrive at good governance and a just society
3. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) - for so ably laying out a story arc depicting the struggle of/for faith and the search for meaning
4. The Unstrung Harp (Gorey) - for affectionately delineating the timeless trials and tribulations of writer's everywhere
5. Confederacy of Dunces (Toole) - for showing me that novels can be as funny as movies.
6. Beowulf (?) - for showing me how to be a real man
7. Tropic of Cancer (Miller) - for showing me how to be a real degenerate
8. The Nick Adams Stories (Hemingway) - for showing me that brevity can not only be effective, but elegant.
9. Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs (Barret) - The perfect fusion of storytelling and [illustrative] art
10. Lord Foul's Bane (Donaldson) - for showing how evil can manifest itself as corruption, and not only be malevolent, but clever in how our own strengths can be used against us.
11. The Rubaiyat (Khayyam) - beautiful gem-like ruminations on the nature of mortality - from centuries ago. Thoughts persist even though the thinkers do not.
12. Steppenwolf (Hesse) - despite its surrealism, the tortured nobility of the Outsider has never been more clearly articulated.
13. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (Lovecraft) - from the man that started all of modern horror, a tale of meticulously constructed, slowly building menace
14. The First Man in Rome (McCullough) - for showing that the history of the ancient world is engaging, and that human nature does not change through the ages. Historical fiction rocks!
15. The Return of the King (Tolkein) - defines the very meaning of "Epic"
It has become fashionable to blend work with other aspects of life. People think it gives them more flexibility; employers know it is a sneaky way to “get something for nothing”, by having you labor on projects while off the clock. They give you a cell phone or a laptop or a “Blackberry”, and you get all giddy about it. But then the emails and calls start, and soon you are pausing in your yard work on a Saturday afternoon to remedy a construction error or returning a call of a client during dinner to resolve a contractual dispute because he is two time zones to the west (and is a certifiable jerk, to boot). It is symptomatic of much that is wrong with today’s society: unwarranted responsibility is assigned to us in the attractive guise of Choice (btw: happy with the way your 401(k) is performing? How about the healthcare service provided by your HMO/PPO?). We are given the illusion of power, but really we are just more ensnared by a shortened leash. We put on a blindfold and say we are self-sufficient as we stagger about, ignorant of the pitfalls around us.
It’s more of a surrender than anything; we’ve thrown up our hands and said, what the hell, we spend most of our waking hours at work anyway, so why not? Maybe all the new technology has just opened up more avenues for abuse and exploitation. Or maybe it’s a consequence of women’s influence in the workplace – I hear they like to mix things together. It fits in with the whole multi-tasking thing. But enough musing, before I get totally pilloried, or pierced with a fusillade of sardonic barbs that sting even as they miss the mark, the actual purpose of this posting.
Last year the firm hired a project manager that seems to have walked right out of a Dilbert cartoon, an overly jocular “loud-talker” with a booming laugh who conducts two conference calls a day but never arranges to have them in a conference room. Naturally, he was seated one cubicle away from me, and I get to hear the most minute detail of his every activity, often multiple times. It’s a good thing that I don’t really have to concentrate much to do my work. Oh no, wait, I DO. That is why productivity soars when he is traveling to attend design workshops or coordination meetings. By nature he is a very social person, and has thrown himself into company life, where he is a fixture of all the after work bar sessions, “international Thursday lunches”, and other various outings cobbled together to foster an esprit de corps – all functions I typically opt out of (don’t I see enough of you people already?). Now he’s caught on to the fact that I shy away from him as much as is practicable. He probably wonders why I don’t “like” him. What he doesn’t get, is that “like” and “dislike” are irrelevant. I am there to do my job, and his presence needlessly interferes with that. His unfortunate delusion is what happens when people blend work with other aspects of life.
I’ve known some people at work who fall on the other side of the spectrum, who are mercenaries, pure and simple. They never last long, however. The “odd man out” quickly becomes the first man shoved out the door when the circumstances become sufficiently dire, or they depart of their own volition, lured by the mirage of greener grass. Admittedly, striking a healthy balance is challenging. I have loyalty, and a sense of professional duty. But there’s a line. I’m not here to make friends with colleagues, these people aren’t my family, the office isn’t my “home away from home”. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic to read the stories about all the disgruntled jobless who are bitter that their former coworkers haven’t checked up on them; they feel they’ve been unceremoniously written off as friends, they feel let down by the promises that they inferred from a tenuous workplace camaraderie. Memo: those people were never your friends.
Certainly, truths such as these are unpleasant – so what else is new? But most shy away from taking the extra step, because it’s “cold”. I have taken that step. I have realized how transient these flimsy office societies are. I have a list that reminds me of that fact that I keep in the office, titled “architects I used to work with since starting with the company”. The list currently has 43 people on it. See, within the context of work I’m a sociopath, so I don’t regard people as people – I see them as objects (With this attitude I should be elevated to managerial status in no time!). Objects can either be tools, or obstacles – or scenery. If you’re a tool, then you are used to serve a purpose and achieve an end. If you’re an obstacle, then either I have to work around you, or remove you from the equation. Removal can mean many things, and only about half of them are sinister. The point is, it is better off to see things as they are, not as you want them to be, or what some authority figure packages them as. Fairly obvious, I know, but still worth stating for the record. Don’t buy into the hype, don’t fall for the propaganda. Realize the safety net is a bit more threadbare than you first assumed, and look out for yourself, because you can’t count on someone else to do it for you, not your coworkers, not your boss, or his/her boss, or your financial advisor/stock broker, or physician, car mechanic, real estate agent or what-have-you. No one may be out to “get” you per se, but by far most of the misery of the world is due to negligence, and the sin of Omission bears toxic fruit indeed.
The Resumption of the Existential Crisis, Part IX
Got angst? I've been down a bit, lately. I know, boo-hoo, cry me a river. We all have problems.
For several weeks things had already been, shall we say, dicey. Then a college friend of the Wife's died a couple days ago. [Yeah, I don't used "passed away", or "passed on". Let's just dispense with euphemisms.] It was the logical progression of muscular dystrophy. Downgraded to a wheelchair while in college, she then suffered a slow, wasting decline for the next 13 years, until an enlarged heart caused pneumonia, she went septic and died in agony, even though the day before, the doctors said she was stable and should be OK.
I met her once a couple years ago at her 30th birthday party. It had a Hawaiian theme. Even a troupe of native Hawaiian dancers was hired to perform. The rationale was simple: she always wanted to go to Hawaii. But since travel was now out of the question, this party was an effort to bring Hawaii to her. And this was the closest she would ever get. The partygoers thought it was a fun celebration, a thoughtful gesture, a suitable consolation prize. The entire occasion depressed me. Why, I thought, for her that's as good as it gets! The irony, and the fact that it specifically was arranged for her benefit, was suffocating: there she was, shrunken and bent, watching dancers perform an activity she would never be able to learn herself. If there had been liquor there, I would have partaken heavily.
Not that I know all that much about it, but muscular dystrophy is a rather horrid disease. Genetic and hereditary, it is tantamount to being preprogrammed to suffer, and your chances of making it to middle age are not good at all. And all the while you are slowly losing strength, mobility, independence, the capacity to live a life any average person would consider fulfilling. And the entire time you know the clock is ticking down. And so her options were limited...no kids, never married, not even a relationship. I can’t answer the question of what sort of life is not worth living, but the question comes up all the same.
And now, for the 90 degree turn...
A couple days later, I realized I had to cobble together a dish for a division meeting. This monthly meeting is held during lunch, which saves the firm money because we don’t have to charge the time. Previously, as an inducement to give up our lunch hour for this purpose, food was provided. However, in yet another effort to cut expenses, the decisions was made to “go potluck”, and I had been told to provide baked beans. I remembered this the morning of the day before the meeting (what can I say, it wasn’t a priority), and so when lunchtime came around, I headed out on this fool’s errand.
So there I was, in Aisle 8 at Kroger, looking for baked beans. I finally located them. There were four brands. And each brand had four to six flavors, with names like “traditional”, “country style”, “hickory smoked”, “barbeque” and so forth. Trying to remain focused, I picked up a can at random, and squinted at the label, trying to determine if the contents had bacon in them or not. And then I basically flipped out.
I stepped outside of the experience and had a moment of rancid clarity: I had left the office on a special trip to the grocery store, to purchase beans. This is what I was doing - this was apparently the best use of my time. I mean, REALLY? Are you f**king kidding me? BEANS. Seriously?! Can anything be possibly more mundane?
I looked around in dazed revulsion at the shoppers around me. So this is it? This is as good as it gets?
This has happened to me before, but not in quite a while, so I guess my tolerance for this sort of existential attack had ebbed considerably. In fact, when I was younger, unattached, and cared more about the world in general, there typically was an undercurrent of disgruntlement that colored most of my thoughts, born of the comprehension that all our self-important activities and pastimes are shadows, illusions of purpose. And hence, my discontent arose from the clash between my perceptions of the world and the ideals of what I thought the world should be. So if you ever saw me in the past and I’ve been surly or appeared irritated, that's probably why, because everything seemed so retarded and inconsequential to me. Sorry about that. Nowadays I am more laid back, even jovial. Usually I try to keep a sense of humor about things. I certainly can appreciate the absurd, so there is ample fodder about for my amusement. I had trouble finding anything funny that day, though.
Of course, the Wife feels dejected. Distraught. Even guilty, for not seeking her friend out for quality time the last few years. Certainly a crisis of confidence is in order. Core beliefs will be questioned. The traditional responses to tragedy will be examined, and found wanting. She does not desire platitudes, and I have no wish to supply them. Aside from the obvious expressions of sympathy, what am I supposed to say? That the good often die young, that there is no justice (which is an artificial human contrivance anyway), that nothing has a meaning because the ultimate outcome is always the same, that happiness is fleeting and such a small part of life, that nothing good or valuable or worthy ever lasts? That all the scrimping and saving, and investing and budgeting and planning for some bright, or at least comfortable future is an exercise in futility? That 99.99% of us spend the last moments of our lives unexpectedly, alone, painfully, and in terror? That we should spend our days in the pursuit of spasms of hedonistic pleasures, so that we can be distracted from the inevitable specter of Oblivion, or dope ourselves up with antidepressants so our denial can remain intact?
Oh yes, I know what is coming. Time for someone to tout the sustaining power of Faith! To that I can only respond with my own observations, the sum of which is the following: I have seen people with the boundless, unshakable faith admired by all the would-be believers, and at the end it failed them. When someone's last words are literally a plaintive, "I don't want to die", you know the the promise of a golden afterlife is insufficient and cold comfort, that even a life full of suffering is preferable to accepting, or rather I should say embracing, one's own demise. Not saying the spiritual thing can’t work, but I haven’t seen it work yet.
The Wife and I were folding up laundry, and as usual one of us was exasperated at the various socks missing their respective partners. But this time there was a new twist, leading to the following exchange:
“I can’t believe this! I have one pink sock, and one blue sock! And now I have one purple sock! How the hell did this happen?”
“Well, honey, I don’t totally understand it, but I bet it has something to do with Gregor Mendel and his pea plants!”
The fact that she did not glare at me (or worse) was a testament to her love more than anything else.
I just had to have a 55 year old ash tree put out of its misery. The neighborhood I live in is a classic 50’s development – a grid of streets ramrod straight, sidewalks adjacent to the curb but no street lights, overhead power lines in the back yard, Cape Cods and unadorned colonials set cheek by jowl on 60 foot wide lots, leaving the option of either one-car attached, or two-car detached garages. And the tree of choice, 50 years ago? Ash trees – Green or White (I can’t tell the difference). And as developers were unaware of the concept of biodiversity, an ash tree was planted in the front yard of every single house – and some people have more than one. I have two – one in front, and other in the back, where it towers over everything and effectively prevents me from having a vegetable garden. Actually, I’ve never been a huge fan of ash trees, with their ungainly limbs, compound leaves, poor fall color, and the thousands of seeds that clog the gutters and pile in drifts against the fences. Nonetheless, I was happy to move into a place that already had plenty of shade. Then I started hearing about the Emerald Ash Borer. The Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) hails from Asia, and arrived here in the wood of packing crates sent to Michigan in 2003. It’s been munching its way down to Columbus ever since, and has been solely responsible for killing millions of trees. Lax firewood rules allowed it to leapfrog to Franklin County by 2006. I had witnessed the front tree’s slow decline from the comfort of my living room: the boughs devoid of leaves, the suddenly brittle wood that when examined is found to have channels burrowed through it, the persistent woodpecker activity and ultimately, the sinking feeling when you realize at last that all is lost, there is no remedy, and all you can do is get “removal” estimates. I think about a third of them are gone from the neighborhood already. Add them to the list of other exterminated trees: chestnuts, elms, and so on…casualties of world trade. Last year I heard with some horror about Sudden Oak Death in California , and the millions of Lodge Pole Pines out West killed by beetles – what, are we going to end up like Ireland now, and not have any trees at all? Though this will make no sense to those of you who dabble in economics, it just seems to me that when you write a check for $850, you should be actually getting something for it, not paying for something to be taken away, or even worse, destroyed. Blah.
There’s a new hit comedian on Comedy Central that I’ve been partial to since I heard him interviewed on Fresh Air (NPR) by the name of Demetri Martin. He has an agile mind, honed by doing puzzles, and a lot of his humor revolves around wordplay – similar to George Carlin, but without all the nastiness and phony indignation. In the interview he was demonstrating how powerful words can be, and it’s not even which words are chosen, but their very arrangement in a sentence that can completely alter the tone or meaning (indeed, he often does this on his television show, where he physically moves around strips of paper with words on them). My favorite example was his use of the overused phrase “sort of”. In the middle of a [spoken] sentence it doesn’t do much; it’s filler that more often than not serves as a delaying tactic for a speaker struggling to find the “right” word when describing something. But put “sort of” at the end of a sentence, and everything changes.
“I love you”, becomes “I love you…sort of”
Or -
“Congratulations, it’s a boy! Sort of.”
Now what if I told you: that I was sitting in Goodale Park in the Short North, looking at the pond, enjoying a sunny day in early Spring with its accompanying old people, frolicking dogs, and half-dressed college students, and a man with salt and pepper hair and a tweed overcoat strode up to me carrying a small battered wooden box with brass hinges, thrust it into my hands and emphatically said, “You know what you have to do now,” before stalking off, leaving me to stunned too follow? And that I subsequently opened the box, and found snugly fitted in its velvet indigo casing a plastic pouch containing a syringe filled with a clear fluid?
I suppose I would probably conclude the guy was some crank, and assuming the best – that the syringe contained only distilled water or something else as innocuous, I would pitch it in the nearest trash bin – perhaps retaining the wooden box for some other purpose.
HOWEVER -
What if I told you, that I was sitting in Goodale Park in the Short North, looking at the pond, enjoying a sunny day in early Spring with its accompanying old people, frolicking dogs, and half-dressed college students, and a man with salt and pepper hair and a tweed overcoat strode up to me carrying a small battered wooden box with brass hinges, thrust it into my hands and emphatically said, “You know what you have to do now, ALEC”, before stalking off, leaving me too stunned to follow? And that I subsequently opened the box, and found snugly fitted in its velvet indigo casing a plastic pouch containing a syringe filled with a clear fluid?
Well, I've read enough Kafka to know that as soon as I got home I clearly would be rolling up my sleeve, dabbing at a patch of skin with some antiseptic, and injecting myself with the syringe given especially to me! What else am I supposed to do?
See? Words - particularly names - have power.
“Honey – it’s really foggy out this morning, so please be careful driving to work!”
“OK!”
“And make sure you avoid any creatures that may have inadvertently slipped into our world from another plane of existence!”
“OK!”
What can I say? I value safety and preparedness.
Though to some they embody all the elements of kitsch (which I’ll probably discuss in a future entry), I must confess that I adore garden gnomes. There’s something about them that just brings out the kid in me.
I should be more specific, however. Actually, I really like the concept of gnomes and the physical representation of them is just a convenient trigger to inspire the thought process, the daydreaming that relieves me of leaden reality for a moment here and there (and that’s what art should do, right?).
First, a little background concerning gnomes. It is thought by some that the word “gnome” is derived from the Greek genomos, meaning "earth-dweller". According to their most widely circulated description, they are “two spans high” and very taciturn. In the Central Europe of medieval times, many tales arose about them and they were generally depicted as more benevolent than other creatures found in folklore, if nowhere else. In the mid-1800’s, ceramic artists in Germany began making them for gardens, and from there they quickly spread to France , England , and presumably throughout the Commonwealth of English-speaking nations.
I like the thought of these industrious little fellows helping me out in the yard while I am slumbering at night. In fact, ever since I was a child I have been partial to the stories and cartoons where inanimate objects come to life after humans retire for the evening, or pets or other animals suddenly slough off their bestial stupidity like doffing a disguise and reveal themselves to be fully intelligent beings with a yen for adventure and mischief. I like the thought of, not necessarily an unseen world, but the existence of a parallel world where things transpire of which we have no knowledge because we are too busy to take the time to observe them, things perhaps familiar but strange because they occur within a completely different context. It’s a fantasy of societal superposition. Like the birds, rabbits and squirrels in my back yard – just what are they up to while I’ve gone to the office for the day? And which ones are responsible for eating off all my tulips? We each go our separate ways, even while frequently occupying the same space, like a mixture of gases all contributing their respective partial pressures within a closed system. Admittedly, it’s counter-intuitive: I have a curiosity and a love of learning but I don’t want to get to the bottom of all the mysteries around me. I like the thought of something else out there yet to discover and experience, like the street in my home town that I have driven past thousands of times but never travelled down, or the one album in the discography of your favorite rock group that you have never purchased or even listened to. It is an anticipatory hunger for an unknown that we can dwell on that is much less terrifying than the ultimate unknown of Death. Perhaps I prefer my unknowns to be “bite-sized”.
It’s been my contention for some time that I was born too late; I should have been born precisely 100 years ago, and then I would have been at ease in an era that provided a better fit for my outlook and sensibilities. At the very least I would be less alienated.
Back then structural engineers were practically heroes - prophets who opened the eyes of the populace to America ’s awakening industrial might and technical prowess. It was a time where dreams and engineering mixed and the assumed limits receded back beyond the horizons of the Future.
A brief overview of some of the achievements of the era:
Brooklyn Bridge - 1883
H.H.Richardson’s masterpieces of cyclopean masonry – 1880’s
Home Insurance Building (first steel load bearing frame, considered by many to be the first skyscraper) - 1885
Statue of Liberty - 1886
Wainwright Building (first “modern” skyscraper) – 1891
Chicago “EL” (elevated transit line) - 1892
The Ferris Wheel (World’s Columbian Exposition) - 1893
New York Subway – 1904
Pennsylvania Station - 1910
Panama Canal - 1914
“Skyscraper”. How quaint that term now sounds! If I was born a century ago, in 1893 I would have been attending college, and during the summer I no doubt would have hopped on a train to Chicago to be awed by the glorious White City of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Then in subsequent years I would have seen the ensuing City Beautiful movement bloom before my eyes – indeed, Daniel Burnham, the chief architect and organizer of the Exposition would draw up the 1903 Group Plan for Cleveland . Newly created leafy boulevards and parks would have testified to the charming belief that a pleasant urban environment would shape people’s behavior for the better.
Meanwhile, the fantastical inventions birthed of unflagging trial and error and the expression of the rich theories devised by Victorian scientists came in rapid succession: electricity generation and distribution, telephones, motion pictures, bicycles, trolleys, automobiles, airplanes…and there were still entire worlds to discover. Literally.
Culture was advancing on all sides (not decaying from within like it is now). For those with the eyes to see were treated to the hazy glow of Impressionism and the whiplash stylings of Art Nouvaeu, the first artistic movements to be completely free from historical constraints. Musically, there were the newly minted strains of giants like Rimsky-Korsakov and Wagner, and for the masses previously accustomed to only the crudest folk tunes and hymns, there now were Sousa’s marches and barbershop quartets.
More importantly, I could be attired in a dress coat with tails, brocade vest (its pocket containing an enviable pocket watch), spats, carried an ebony and silver cane, and even sported a silk cravat without being regarded as a weirdo. I could have smoked a pipe or cigar where I pleased, and worn kid gloves. I could have attended racy shows at the local burlesque house without being bludgeoned by rap music.
The nation was rife with optimism. Pride. A “can-do” spirit infused civic affairs. Sure, water treatment was still in its infancy and there were few vaccines and no anti-biotics, but at least there were disinfectant and anesthetics (crude though they might have been). Labor asserted itself; pension funds were created. Teddy Roosevelt was articulating America ’s innate sense of fair play by advocating a “Square Deal”. And the reformers were out in full-force, to save us from our worst impulses and the excesses of capitalism. An equilibrium had been achieved, and for a while seemed stable. Western Civilization was at a high water mark. Then the Great War baptized modern man in gasoline and lit the match. And it’s been receding ever since.
