So here's the deal. Report cards, A to F, for nations, societies, ethnic groups, organizations, individuals, etc. judged on two overarching criteria: culture and civilization. Nations and larger groups will be judged on how they embody and foster their values collectively, while individuals and small organizations will be graded on how they contribute to the greater good.
Culture I'm counting as more or less arts and entertainment, and attitudes toward them. Civilization I'm considering laws, liberty, civility, freedoms, tolerance, morality, and order.
There is a great deal of overlap. Architecture, for example. How impressive a building looks is culture. The fire code is civilization.
I wondered if science deserved its own grade, but I'm lumping it in with civilization. Cuisine I'll throw in with culture.
So what are the standards? Only two, inspired by Kenneth Clark in his series Civilization. For culture, the quality is energy and for civilization, confidence
Carriage
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
Naaaaaaarzis? Ve veren't Naaaaaaaaaaaarzis...
I remember when I read Lauren Collins's article about Ikea and its founder Ingvar Kamprad in the New Yorker last year, as I went along I kept thinking about Kamprad: "This guy's a Nazi." Meaning it figuratively, of course.
And then I got to the part reporting how, no, Kamprad was an actual Nazi. From a news story:
In 1999, Kamprad admitted his past involvement with Nazism in a book about his life and asked for forgiveness for his "stupidity." He also admitted to Swedish media that he had attended meetings of Nazi groups between 1945 and 1948.By 1945, it was reasonably clear that Nazism was not such a hot idea. Even 1935, Nazi involvement was perhaps more than mere stupidity, but by 1945-1948, it transcended stupidity.
But now we find this out. "Ikea regrets using prison labour":
Ikea used forced labour from political prisoners in the former East Germany for three decade...The Swedish group said it deeply regretted the use of political and other prisoners to produce furniture from 1960 to 1990, which was detailed in an investigation by Ernst & Young, the auditors. The investigation was commissioned by Ikea after media reports in Sweden and Germany...“We deeply regret that this could happen. The use of political prisoners in production has never been acceptable to the Ikea Group,” said Jeanette Skjelmose, a sustainability manager at Ikea.My goodness. Never been acceptable? Thirty years is never? Well, at least they're deeply regretful.
One of the many good things about my traditional Jewish education is the ability to recognize two types: the authoritarian and the brute. For insight on the brute, read about the Stasi prison at Hohenschönhausen. For a little insight about the forms the ongoing totalitarian project has taken, it might be useful to read about sustainable management.
The thing with feathers
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
- Vaclav Havel
- Vaclav Havel
Friday, November 16, 2012
So I went to a funeral
Last Sunday, I went to the funeral of a woman in the community I knew a little. She had appealing flower child energy, a sharp mind and kind of a sharp tongue. She died of cancer at age 57, which was about my mother's age when cancer took her. She had a boy, 19, and a girl, 15-16, which were my and my sister's ages more or less when my mother died. They both spoke well and together sang "Stand by Me," with the boy laying down a doo-wop rhythm that the girl's sweet mezzo soprano floated over. Nice kids.
The funeral brought me back 31 years, and I remembered how I didn't feel like a kid at the time, and wasn't treated like one (although it's likely that I pushed away the people who tried to). These two will probably get better care - their uncle is a well-known doctor and their grandparents seem like they'll be able to step up, at least in the short one). My sister and I were pretty much alone emotionally. What happened to us over the next three years was that I was adrift in NYC, drinking alcoholically, and my sister was married to a 35 year old man and had a baby on the way. For us, that seemed par for the course, but I couldn't help thinking that if in three years that's where these two kids ended up, I'd consider it, if not a tragedy exactly, than a bad outcome. So I at least had to consider what happened to my family in that light, and it made me very sad.
When I was in my mid-20s and leaving NYC for Miami Beach, my psychotherapist sat me down at our last session and gave me the best advice anyone ever gave me. In fact, it was so astute, so perfectly tailored to precisely what my problems stemmed from, and so clearly a strategy that, if followed, would spare me a world grief, of course there was no chance in hell that I would follow it.
After telling me I needed some help to stop drinking, he asked: "Do you know what being an adult means? Being an adult means looking at a situation you are in, and asking yourself: 'What do I want out of this?' Defining what you want is crucially important and Sly - you should want something good. Then ask yourself: 'Am I going to get what I want out of this situation?' And if the answer is 'no,' then you must leave that situation behind and not look back. Do you hear me? Get out and don't look back."
About 90 percent of all the problems I've had since can in some way be traced back to not heeding that advice. About 90 percent of all the success I've experienced accrued by following his words. So I'm a big believer in the power of advice, etc. And since it was easy to imagine myself in the coffin last Sunday, I've been lavishing my 6 year old son with affection and words of wisdom.
I'll probably save the get out and don't look back advice for later, but here are the principles I've been instilling in him since he was 3 or 4 that might do him some good. I wish I'd heard them from someone who I loved, who loved me, and who had my best interests in mind. The last one is key, the one that holds all the others together.
The funeral brought me back 31 years, and I remembered how I didn't feel like a kid at the time, and wasn't treated like one (although it's likely that I pushed away the people who tried to). These two will probably get better care - their uncle is a well-known doctor and their grandparents seem like they'll be able to step up, at least in the short one). My sister and I were pretty much alone emotionally. What happened to us over the next three years was that I was adrift in NYC, drinking alcoholically, and my sister was married to a 35 year old man and had a baby on the way. For us, that seemed par for the course, but I couldn't help thinking that if in three years that's where these two kids ended up, I'd consider it, if not a tragedy exactly, than a bad outcome. So I at least had to consider what happened to my family in that light, and it made me very sad.
When I was in my mid-20s and leaving NYC for Miami Beach, my psychotherapist sat me down at our last session and gave me the best advice anyone ever gave me. In fact, it was so astute, so perfectly tailored to precisely what my problems stemmed from, and so clearly a strategy that, if followed, would spare me a world grief, of course there was no chance in hell that I would follow it.
After telling me I needed some help to stop drinking, he asked: "Do you know what being an adult means? Being an adult means looking at a situation you are in, and asking yourself: 'What do I want out of this?' Defining what you want is crucially important and Sly - you should want something good. Then ask yourself: 'Am I going to get what I want out of this situation?' And if the answer is 'no,' then you must leave that situation behind and not look back. Do you hear me? Get out and don't look back."
About 90 percent of all the problems I've had since can in some way be traced back to not heeding that advice. About 90 percent of all the success I've experienced accrued by following his words. So I'm a big believer in the power of advice, etc. And since it was easy to imagine myself in the coffin last Sunday, I've been lavishing my 6 year old son with affection and words of wisdom.
I'll probably save the get out and don't look back advice for later, but here are the principles I've been instilling in him since he was 3 or 4 that might do him some good. I wish I'd heard them from someone who I loved, who loved me, and who had my best interests in mind. The last one is key, the one that holds all the others together.
- Payback's a bitch.
- Talk is cheap.
- Life is unfair.
- Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
Some facts
Yesterday, I was bloviating about having misapprehended Obama's re-election chances because I read too many reasonable Conservative writers, while tuning out the Right-wing fringe voices that are clearly not ignored by people who vote. But at least I am aware of them, what they're about, and cognizant of the peril of indulging their pathologies.
What always amazes me about my friends on the Left is their lack of interest in the facts about the bad behavior enabled by their politicians' policies. They have no idea about how bad the behavior really is, how at odds it is with their values.
I was reading Taranto's column the other other day, about some TV journalist named Nancy Giles who said that white people who hold an anti-abortion stance are trying to build up the race. Taranto comments:
As a Republican who subscribes to Bill Clinton's formulation that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, I find the disparities in rates disheartening, as they indicate that abortion is not a last resort, but rather a form of birth control. Abortion as birth control is like using the emergency room for primary health care.
Why am I Republican? Because this outcome is exactly what the polices of the Left produce.
What always amazes me about my friends on the Left is their lack of interest in the facts about the bad behavior enabled by their politicians' policies. They have no idea about how bad the behavior really is, how at odds it is with their values.
I was reading Taranto's column the other other day, about some TV journalist named Nancy Giles who said that white people who hold an anti-abortion stance are trying to build up the race. Taranto comments:
But a look at the numbers shows this to be nonsense. According to U.S. Census estimates, the overall abortion rate in 2007 was 19.5 abortions for every thousand women between 15 and 44. But the rate is much lower for whites (13.8) than for blacks (48.2). For women classified as "other"--neither black nor white--the rate is slightly above the national average (21.6).
The census table goes back to 1990, and the same pattern holds, though the rates were considerably higher than for both whites (21.5) and blacks (63.9). If one wanted to slow the increase in minority populations, one would urge more, not less, abortion.
Have you noticed how abortion proponents always seem to come up with amazingly strained theories about opponents' motives--they hate sex, they want to control women, etc.? Abortion opponents say they believe that unborn children are human beings with the right to life. One may disagree, but that belief is an entirely straightforward and reasonable explanation for why someone would take an antiabortion position.
Apparently the pro-abortion side fears if it acknowledged that position is sincerely held, that would be tantamount to acknowledging it may be true.
As a Republican who subscribes to Bill Clinton's formulation that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, I find the disparities in rates disheartening, as they indicate that abortion is not a last resort, but rather a form of birth control. Abortion as birth control is like using the emergency room for primary health care.
Why am I Republican? Because this outcome is exactly what the polices of the Left produce.
On preparing to reread the Song of Songs on Erev Shabbos
During my religious reawakening of 2010 in the synagogue of a Chabad rabbi, one of the most interesting customs I discovered was how some observant Jews read the Song of Songs every Friday night. I'd just read David Hazony's The Ten Commandments and, inspired by his humane and practical analysis, was exploring the meaning of a sabbath, and finding ways to apply it to my life. My favorite part of the faith is the texts, so I thought I'd follow the practice and see where it got me.
I was familiar with Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch's magnificent translation - I'd even given my wife, Aishes Chayil, a copy when we were newlyweds - and revisited it. Unless you've read this translation, you probably never got the feel for the poem. The usually astringent Jonathan Alter amusingly to points to this verse in the King James Version:
While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth thereof.
A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me.
And contrasts it to the Blochs's:
My king lay down beside me
and my fragrance
wakened the night
As I kept reading the poem and my Hebrew started coming back, I was able to appreciate how closely the Blochs hew to the spirit of the poem, which is the best expression of ardent love that I have ever read. It is so perfect and so human and so life affirming, it's not surprising that religious leaders through the ages have insisted that the poem is a metaphor for the love shared by the Lord and his people.
Which is obviously bullshit, and I wonder if the Orthodox are doing more than mouthing the words. I read the translation Chabad uses in its prayer book, and the English did not even resemble the Hebrew. It was a disconnect akin to seeing a picture of a naked centerfold with a caption "The rolling hills of Samaria in Eretz Israel." The English words would not get you in the spirit of Shabbat.
Which clearly someone realized that the Song of Songs is uniquely capable of doing. It reminds you palpably of ardent love, of its joy and its madness, and mostly the way it fills you with joy that you are you and your beloved is your beloved in that moment.
No better way to locate the spirit of Shabbat.
P.S. This was a fragment I saved as a draft a long time ago, and if I was going anywhere with it, I can't remember.
I was familiar with Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch's magnificent translation - I'd even given my wife, Aishes Chayil, a copy when we were newlyweds - and revisited it. Unless you've read this translation, you probably never got the feel for the poem. The usually astringent Jonathan Alter amusingly to points to this verse in the King James Version:
While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth thereof.
A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me.
And contrasts it to the Blochs's:
My king lay down beside me
and my fragrance
wakened the night
As I kept reading the poem and my Hebrew started coming back, I was able to appreciate how closely the Blochs hew to the spirit of the poem, which is the best expression of ardent love that I have ever read. It is so perfect and so human and so life affirming, it's not surprising that religious leaders through the ages have insisted that the poem is a metaphor for the love shared by the Lord and his people.
Which is obviously bullshit, and I wonder if the Orthodox are doing more than mouthing the words. I read the translation Chabad uses in its prayer book, and the English did not even resemble the Hebrew. It was a disconnect akin to seeing a picture of a naked centerfold with a caption "The rolling hills of Samaria in Eretz Israel." The English words would not get you in the spirit of Shabbat.
Which clearly someone realized that the Song of Songs is uniquely capable of doing. It reminds you palpably of ardent love, of its joy and its madness, and mostly the way it fills you with joy that you are you and your beloved is your beloved in that moment.
No better way to locate the spirit of Shabbat.
P.S. This was a fragment I saved as a draft a long time ago, and if I was going anywhere with it, I can't remember.
This week's tally
No booze Mon. thru Thurs., and not surprisingly, I feel great - thinner, clear headed, and less aware of the aches and pains. Which is no reason to abjure the Friday night drunk in the sense that it's every reason to abjure the Friday night drunk but I won't do it. Nope, not me.
Got me some Danish gin for a martini, some Italian white wine to sip while cooking, and then a nice Languedoc red to go with the chicken in the pot (Cook's Illustrated recipe, here helpfully stolen) and root vegetable mash (plus roasted Brussels sprouts). I should feel great by 5:30, bad by 11:00, terrible at 3 a.m., and hungover, chastened, fatter, muddle headed, and achy by tomorrow morn.
Magnificent.
Got me some Danish gin for a martini, some Italian white wine to sip while cooking, and then a nice Languedoc red to go with the chicken in the pot (Cook's Illustrated recipe, here helpfully stolen) and root vegetable mash (plus roasted Brussels sprouts). I should feel great by 5:30, bad by 11:00, terrible at 3 a.m., and hungover, chastened, fatter, muddle headed, and achy by tomorrow morn.
Magnificent.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Four more years
Back in the 80s, someone elegantly defined for me just exactly what a Yuppie was - not someone who liked expensive mustard, or who had a "Baby on Board" sign on their car, or who embraced any of the accoutrement that people used to characterize Yuppie likes and behavior. No, my friend said, a Yuppie was someone who liked those things and wanted to be at party with 40 other people who liked the same exact things.
A very useful way to look at people. With that in mind, some opining about Conservatives. As I see it, Conservatives you can talk to fall into three broad categories. (I'll not concern myself with the fourth category, the "there-are-Red- Chinee-massing-at-the-Mexican-border-I-tells-ya" Conservatives. Yet.)
First, there are the congenitals, people whose basic personality type suits them for the political philosophy, the straight-laced social mores, the entertainment and institutions, and so forth. People like Rich Lowery and Jay Nordlinger of National Review. Fuddy-duddies, I guess you'd have to call them, who embraced their fuddy-duddiness and achieved a kind of wisdom, seemingly never tempted by allure of the left.
Second, there are the common sensicals, the call the spade a spaders to whom that quality comes naturally. You have people for whom that quality manifests itself as a fulcrum guiding their intellectual understanding and exploration of the world - think Victor Davis Hanson, V.S. Naipaul, or Thomas Sowell. Some are artists - think Clive James or James Taranto (who is an artist, a comic genius). Others are people from all walks of life who have the ability to see the world as it is because they had to in order to get along. People who really get Naipaul's first line to A Bend in the River: "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." People like my friend Xiji, who immigrated from China and who voted in her first election this year. When Mitt Romeny's comments about the 47 percent of Americans who wouldn't vote for him essentially because they were no-accounts, the Left exploded with outrage and most people on the Right either thought it was an unfortunate thing to at least say publicly or perhaps even to espouse privately (count me among the latter). Xiji, on the other hand, said that was when Romney began to interest her.
I wish I had come to Conservative side through common sense. Instead, I fall into the third category, the wised up. Wised up are folks include David Horowitz (the paradigm) and David Mamet (the recent poster boy). When I first started doing cryptic crossword puzzles, I was instructed that the easiest way to figure out an anagram was to scramble the letters of a word and put it back together. For most of the wised up, I imagine conversions came after things that we had internalized or long looked at without questioning were somehow rearranged. Moreover, some tempermental proclivity or acquired cast of mind receptive to a conservative outlook guided the re-organization of facts and attitudes in question. For me, while I had long been attuned to the cynicism and perniciousness of the Left's social agenda, 9/11 turned me decisively Conservative - though perhaps I was trending that was by casting my first vote for a Republican to vote against Hillary Clinton for Senate in 2000 (but then, I voted for Gore, which seems inconceivable, not to mention embarassing, to me today). It was the explosion worldwide of anti-Semitism and anit-Westernism from the Left that changed me.
I had a traditional Jewish upbringing that shaped my values. Most of my friends are Jewish. Facebook has allowed me to connect with (or at least glimpse) many people from my past and get some sense of their directions in life, and I have to say, almost all the people exposed to the kind of Jewish upbringing I had identify as Conservatives. Most of the friends who didn't identify as Liberals. There are some exceptions, but not many.
I was dismayed by the recent election. I thought Romney had a much better chance of pulling it out, and I think I missed the boat so badly is the result of spending too much time in the echo chamber of wised up conservatives. What most of us wised up Conservatives didn't get about ourselves is the extent we have internalized the good things about Liberalism, such as they exist, and incorporated them into our personal definitions of Conservatism. We've made our peace with the fringe "Red Chinee at the Mexican border" type, who to us do not seem representative of our thinking. But to the uncoverted they seem part of our continuum of thought, much the way Barack Obama and Peggy Joseph seem opposite ends of one line of thinking.
The echo chamber did many of us in. One guy who was seeing it all clearly was Bret Stephens, whose article in WSJ Online "Earth to GOP" should be required reading for the wised up. He cites an earlier prediction that the GOP would lose:
What we found out last week is that some people can't. That plus the 47 percent was enough to give us four more years of what we'd been getting.
A very useful way to look at people. With that in mind, some opining about Conservatives. As I see it, Conservatives you can talk to fall into three broad categories. (I'll not concern myself with the fourth category, the "there-are-Red- Chinee-massing-at-the-Mexican-border-I-tells-ya" Conservatives. Yet.)
First, there are the congenitals, people whose basic personality type suits them for the political philosophy, the straight-laced social mores, the entertainment and institutions, and so forth. People like Rich Lowery and Jay Nordlinger of National Review. Fuddy-duddies, I guess you'd have to call them, who embraced their fuddy-duddiness and achieved a kind of wisdom, seemingly never tempted by allure of the left.
Second, there are the common sensicals, the call the spade a spaders to whom that quality comes naturally. You have people for whom that quality manifests itself as a fulcrum guiding their intellectual understanding and exploration of the world - think Victor Davis Hanson, V.S. Naipaul, or Thomas Sowell. Some are artists - think Clive James or James Taranto (who is an artist, a comic genius). Others are people from all walks of life who have the ability to see the world as it is because they had to in order to get along. People who really get Naipaul's first line to A Bend in the River: "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." People like my friend Xiji, who immigrated from China and who voted in her first election this year. When Mitt Romeny's comments about the 47 percent of Americans who wouldn't vote for him essentially because they were no-accounts, the Left exploded with outrage and most people on the Right either thought it was an unfortunate thing to at least say publicly or perhaps even to espouse privately (count me among the latter). Xiji, on the other hand, said that was when Romney began to interest her.
I wish I had come to Conservative side through common sense. Instead, I fall into the third category, the wised up. Wised up are folks include David Horowitz (the paradigm) and David Mamet (the recent poster boy). When I first started doing cryptic crossword puzzles, I was instructed that the easiest way to figure out an anagram was to scramble the letters of a word and put it back together. For most of the wised up, I imagine conversions came after things that we had internalized or long looked at without questioning were somehow rearranged. Moreover, some tempermental proclivity or acquired cast of mind receptive to a conservative outlook guided the re-organization of facts and attitudes in question. For me, while I had long been attuned to the cynicism and perniciousness of the Left's social agenda, 9/11 turned me decisively Conservative - though perhaps I was trending that was by casting my first vote for a Republican to vote against Hillary Clinton for Senate in 2000 (but then, I voted for Gore, which seems inconceivable, not to mention embarassing, to me today). It was the explosion worldwide of anti-Semitism and anit-Westernism from the Left that changed me.
I had a traditional Jewish upbringing that shaped my values. Most of my friends are Jewish. Facebook has allowed me to connect with (or at least glimpse) many people from my past and get some sense of their directions in life, and I have to say, almost all the people exposed to the kind of Jewish upbringing I had identify as Conservatives. Most of the friends who didn't identify as Liberals. There are some exceptions, but not many.
I was dismayed by the recent election. I thought Romney had a much better chance of pulling it out, and I think I missed the boat so badly is the result of spending too much time in the echo chamber of wised up conservatives. What most of us wised up Conservatives didn't get about ourselves is the extent we have internalized the good things about Liberalism, such as they exist, and incorporated them into our personal definitions of Conservatism. We've made our peace with the fringe "Red Chinee at the Mexican border" type, who to us do not seem representative of our thinking. But to the uncoverted they seem part of our continuum of thought, much the way Barack Obama and Peggy Joseph seem opposite ends of one line of thinking.
The echo chamber did many of us in. One guy who was seeing it all clearly was Bret Stephens, whose article in WSJ Online "Earth to GOP" should be required reading for the wised up. He cites an earlier prediction that the GOP would lose:
"It doesn't matter that Americans are generally eager to send Mr. Obama packing," I wrote. "All they need is to be reasonably sure that the alternative won't be another fiasco. But they can't be reasonably sure, so it's going to be four more years of the disappointment you already know.His main point is that the social issues doomed the GOP. Since the wised up people I'd been reading are (like myself) pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, balanced about immigration, etc., etc. - yet align with Conservatives on Islamic fundamentalism, the economy, the welfare state, Obamacare, Federalism, etc. etc. We don't see any contradictions because we've made, like I said, a certain kind of peace with the people on our side who disagree with us on these matters. My criteria on social issues is whether someone can come to a position contrary to mine honestly. For example, I can imagine a good person with good intentions make a sincere argument against gay marriage. I can accept it and not feel threatened by it.
What we found out last week is that some people can't. That plus the 47 percent was enough to give us four more years of what we'd been getting.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Prayer
Prayer is a way to master what is inferior in us, to discern between the signal and the trivial, between the vital and the futile, by taking counsel with what we know about the will of God, by seeking our fate in proportion to God.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Friday, February 17, 2012
Why I got heavy, besides the eating too much part of it that is 99% of the reason
At this point, I could walk into any community theater group's auditions for a production of The Addams Family musical and have everyone in the room immediately shout out in unison: "We found our Uncle Fester!" But I wasn't always so - I was skinny, until I became muscular, until I became heavy. This is the 1 percent of the reason it happened.
So there were the surgeries - the big one on the left knee and bunion on the left foot that slowed me down. Before that, I was about 180 lbs. As part of the recuperation, I threw myself into yoga and squash, and went up to 194 lbs. - all muscle. My waist stayed at 34 inches. Then came the next knee injury, which slowed me down. Then the right foot bunion surgery. Then the tendonitis in the wrists, elbows, and shoulders from carrying the baby after all the typing. Then the constant discomfort. Then the end of sex as I knew it.
Of my great sensual pleasures, yoga was gone, sex was unreliable, the wandering and exploration of the city was replaced by homebodiness, and what do you know, all was left was the food and drink. I always had an appetite, but the consumption was counterbalanced by the exercise and the impulse to sit around and gorge myself nightly was thwarted by place to go and people to see. As for constructive outlets for my energies and appetites, sorry, that's not how I roll.
The last physical thing I do that doesn't hurt (and yes, it hurts sitting and watching television) is eating and drinking. The thinking of what to cook is the fantasy and anticipation. The shopping for ingredients is the buying flowers and planning the date. The chopping and cooking is the foreplay, the cocktail or first glasses of wine starts the sloughing off of ordinary consciousness that will culminate in surrender to sensual pleasure. Then the meal, the controlled meting out of the deliciousness, tucking in and being immersed in the flavors and filling up, sipping wine and feeling the warm intoxication. Then the satisfaction of being spent, light-headed, and knowing I did good.
So I got heavy. Hey, I used to be really good at yoga and quite the cosmopolite and fun in the sack. Now I'm good at the food, which basically should keep me until I die of the effects of the overeating, a recurrence of the cancer, or not noticing the cab speeding toward me as I check out a woman's bum.
So there were the surgeries - the big one on the left knee and bunion on the left foot that slowed me down. Before that, I was about 180 lbs. As part of the recuperation, I threw myself into yoga and squash, and went up to 194 lbs. - all muscle. My waist stayed at 34 inches. Then came the next knee injury, which slowed me down. Then the right foot bunion surgery. Then the tendonitis in the wrists, elbows, and shoulders from carrying the baby after all the typing. Then the constant discomfort. Then the end of sex as I knew it.
Of my great sensual pleasures, yoga was gone, sex was unreliable, the wandering and exploration of the city was replaced by homebodiness, and what do you know, all was left was the food and drink. I always had an appetite, but the consumption was counterbalanced by the exercise and the impulse to sit around and gorge myself nightly was thwarted by place to go and people to see. As for constructive outlets for my energies and appetites, sorry, that's not how I roll.
The last physical thing I do that doesn't hurt (and yes, it hurts sitting and watching television) is eating and drinking. The thinking of what to cook is the fantasy and anticipation. The shopping for ingredients is the buying flowers and planning the date. The chopping and cooking is the foreplay, the cocktail or first glasses of wine starts the sloughing off of ordinary consciousness that will culminate in surrender to sensual pleasure. Then the meal, the controlled meting out of the deliciousness, tucking in and being immersed in the flavors and filling up, sipping wine and feeling the warm intoxication. Then the satisfaction of being spent, light-headed, and knowing I did good.
So I got heavy. Hey, I used to be really good at yoga and quite the cosmopolite and fun in the sack. Now I'm good at the food, which basically should keep me until I die of the effects of the overeating, a recurrence of the cancer, or not noticing the cab speeding toward me as I check out a woman's bum.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Today's missive from the spirit world
To make a long story short, last year a dying musician sat for a bunch of interviews with me, telling me his (fascinating) story for an article I proposed to write. For reasons of my own - tangential to the slygrogging, although at this point the slygrogging may be central to each of my shortcomings - I didn't follow through. He died.
I went to his memorial service this fall. The most moving tribute was from his oldest friend, who shared with the mourners the song he sang to the musician on his deathbed. Playing the autoharp, the friend sang I song I hadn't heard in maybe 25 years or more, Randy Van Warmer's late-70s dreck rock classic "Just When I Needed You Most" (here lip-synched with strange dancing).
His rendition, so pure, so loving, broke all our hearts and, given that this was a guy I intended to speak to, but hadn't and in my laziness maybe never would, filled me with guilt.
Skip ahead a few days, I'm eating breakfast in my local diner, when "Just When I Needed You Most" suddenly comes. Now not only am I guilty, I'm convinced the musician is communicating from the grave. Not only that, everyone I tell about the coincidence agrees, because they know I believe and it gives them pleasure to see me not only as tormented on Earth, but in all possible modes of being.
Skip ahead to today, to the supermarket where I'm shopping after a long drive. Next to the canned tomatoes, the daily guilt over still not having done anything about the story burbles to the surface and I think of the musician and of the song. At that very second, the song begins.
Let me say this succinctly and without hemming, hawing, or qualification - I believe that a dead person is sending me messages from the Great Beyond. Understand that in saying this I am asserting as true several propositions that many will find dubious, among them - that there is a Great Beyond,
that the dead can breach the border and communicate with the living, that a dead person is either angry with me for abusing his trust while he lived or through my laziness I am tormenting the soul of someone recently departed. I believe all of this to be somehow true, not just possible. Why I didn't instantly fall to the linoleum of the Big Y in Pittsfield, MA, shamed by my uselessness and awed by the majesty and mystery of the universe that had been revealed to me, I can not tell you. I should have been rolling on the ground and speaking in tongues, but instead I kept going, wondering where they kept the fresh-baked onion rolls.
In the past, I would have tried to come up with an answer. Now, I leave it at this - I don't have an answer.
I went to his memorial service this fall. The most moving tribute was from his oldest friend, who shared with the mourners the song he sang to the musician on his deathbed. Playing the autoharp, the friend sang I song I hadn't heard in maybe 25 years or more, Randy Van Warmer's late-70s dreck rock classic "Just When I Needed You Most" (here lip-synched with strange dancing).
His rendition, so pure, so loving, broke all our hearts and, given that this was a guy I intended to speak to, but hadn't and in my laziness maybe never would, filled me with guilt.
Skip ahead a few days, I'm eating breakfast in my local diner, when "Just When I Needed You Most" suddenly comes. Now not only am I guilty, I'm convinced the musician is communicating from the grave. Not only that, everyone I tell about the coincidence agrees, because they know I believe and it gives them pleasure to see me not only as tormented on Earth, but in all possible modes of being.
Skip ahead to today, to the supermarket where I'm shopping after a long drive. Next to the canned tomatoes, the daily guilt over still not having done anything about the story burbles to the surface and I think of the musician and of the song. At that very second, the song begins.
Let me say this succinctly and without hemming, hawing, or qualification - I believe that a dead person is sending me messages from the Great Beyond. Understand that in saying this I am asserting as true several propositions that many will find dubious, among them - that there is a Great Beyond,
that the dead can breach the border and communicate with the living, that a dead person is either angry with me for abusing his trust while he lived or through my laziness I am tormenting the soul of someone recently departed. I believe all of this to be somehow true, not just possible. Why I didn't instantly fall to the linoleum of the Big Y in Pittsfield, MA, shamed by my uselessness and awed by the majesty and mystery of the universe that had been revealed to me, I can not tell you. I should have been rolling on the ground and speaking in tongues, but instead I kept going, wondering where they kept the fresh-baked onion rolls.
In the past, I would have tried to come up with an answer. Now, I leave it at this - I don't have an answer.
Slygrog talley, midday 2/1 update
Three 21st Amendment Brewery Back in Black IPAs, succumbed to with a delicious tuna fish salad lunch after a long morning's drive home from NYC. Followed by a nap on the couch that had my name on it from the minute I woke up this morning. I would have fallen asleep anyway - the beer made the nap more definitive, is all.
Some say each IPA should really count as two beers, given the high (in this case 6.8%) alcohol content. I say, that way lays sophistry.
One is one.
Some say each IPA should really count as two beers, given the high (in this case 6.8%) alcohol content. I say, that way lays sophistry.
One is one.
Why I grog
I know no sensation so perfect as when, in the right environment, I drink just the right amount to look around and see how wonderful everything is right now. It is an ephemeral feeling and alas too much time and soul is wasted trying to sustain or recapture that sensation. But the feeling is real and it is perfect and it makes me happy and I drink and drink and drink.
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