Decadence and Hedonism

Posted on August 24, 2011 by sputterpub

9.8.08
I wondered a few days ago if the words decadence and decade were related, which made me first consider how decadence differs from hedonism, and later look the words up.

No relation. Decadence comes to us from the Latin decadere (to fall away, decay) and decade is just another way of expressing the Greek for the number 10 (dekas).

In similar but not etymological fashion, decadence and hedonism really have nothing in common.

Decadence describes the process of falling into an inferior condition. It means deterioration, decay. It also signifies moral degeneration, and in our times unrestrained self-indulgence.

The word has been around since the middle of the 16th century.

Hedonism wasn’t used for another 200 years. It’s a philosophy: the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the highest good. Straight from the Greek word for pleasure: hēdon. It can mean devotion to pleasure as a way of life, which starts to look like decadence and that may make the words synonymous as we proceed. But for now there’s a distinction. Hedonism is responsible and has no taint of decay.

You aren’t a good Hedonist if you ever have a hangover. You don’t succeed if you engage in acts which you later regret. Effective Hedonists understand that the first obligation of intelligence is to be happy, and that happiness is built of creative endeavor, exercise, and a clear conscience.

Decadence is about self-indulgence. Hedonism is about self-esteem.

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Waking

Posted on August 23, 2011 by sputterpub


At the risk of repeating myself, I like living alone. As an only daughter I was the one in my family who had a single room. I spent so much time there, both parents tried to nag or shame me to come out, play with friends, help in the yard, exercise.

I got along well enough with my college roommates: in the dorm, in the co-op and then with Lisa, the only chosen one, in our two apartments, but I hit my stride as a senior, living in the little studio on Addison.

I married twice, and I wouldn’t have missed those years for the world. But I was relieved each time when the union ended. Both of my exes picked subsequent wives and appear content; I can’t claim they were the problem …

My condition is so extreme that if I dream I’m engaged it’s a nightmare, and I’m surprised and grateful when I wake up. Here’s a record of what I mean:

I watched an early-morning dream today
about another house: a big abode
of stucco, on a corner, which I’d pay
for with somebody culture calls my co-
dependent, never chosen, seldom seen,
somebody nice enough but not enough,
and as it faded into waking keen
I felt determined to retain my stuff.

I woke alone and starfished in my bed,
alone on cotton sheets, beneath my down,
alone inside my little house, the dread
of trading up a fading feel, my gown
for night instead of wedding. These I seem
to cherish, I’m reminded by a dream.

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Talk to the Copier Repairman

Posted on August 22, 2011 by sputterpub


I should announce right here that I don’t think sales is a real career and I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of brand advertising. With those in mind:

If you are offering a worthwhile product and you know it, and if you have communication skills and don’t dislike people, your product will sell. You don’t have to engage in quack behavior or harness jingles or wear certain colors; those activities will not promote the sale of enduring products of value and when it comes to the truth of the matter, none of us needs to buy a pet rock.

I’ve tested this theory. I’ve never taken a sales or business or economics class or read or listened on the subject. But as a young person I was stuck in some retail jobs, and I never had a problem selling what I liked. The best example I can cite were the several 13-volume sets of the Oxford English Dictionary I sold at Lucas College Book Company, across from Cal, around 1970. I sold them well because I lusted to own the volumes myself.

Even now, 32 years after I set out my shingle in my accidental career, I don’t “sell” retirement plans; I just answer the phone and the questions. I strive to demystify my field, to explain the organics of what we do, and there’s never too few clients.

Here are my general shopping ideas. When we need a new copier or other item of office equipment, we ignore everything the salesperson tells us (especially if the salesperson uses “you” instead of the definite or indefinite article: “this unit has your sorter and your stapler built right in.”) Instead we have a conversation with a person whose job it is to fix or tune the item. We want to know how it works after the factory warranty expires. We want to know its weak links.

And when choosing a consultant or professional to provide services, I go for motivation over reputation. For example, the only time I had a house built for me, I choose architects who were energetic and brimming with ideas, folks who weren’t too busy or popular yet to work with me. If I’d picked the architect at the top of the field, I probably would have worked with one of his/her associates, at best, and expensive egotistical attitude, at worst.

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Unraveling

Posted on August 19, 2011 by sputterpub

      Everyone I know is heroic. But we’ve all been placed in a mostly non-catastrophic scene; we lack crises in which we can work and shine.

Look how well people, most people, step up when the chips are far down. When there’s a pipeline explosion, an earthquake/tsunami, a terrorist atrocity, people band together, support one another, rise to the necessary and more.

Look how passionate every teen is, to make a mark, lead a life, save the day or the world.

And then see how we tend to lose it in a traffic jam, when the kids whine at 5:30 p.m., when the partner once again doesn’t hear us. Look how we don’t fix the slow-moving misfortunes like environmental depredation or cheating.

I get it, I get it: survival doesn’t depend on handling small stresses. You can contend with worsening traffic all your life and it probably won’t affect your ability to reproduce. There’s no reason for us to adapt to annoyance. All we can do is detest it, avoid it, bemoan it.

Catastrophe would be relief to her
who gathers irritation everywhere.
As if adherent seeds congest her fur,
the traffic pressures and the noises blare
until she overfills and throws a fit,
and flings her arms and curses in the air,
her kindling vehemence appropriate
for marathon, condensed into a glare.

She’s irked by crowds – impeded, bothered, pressed
into heroic passion. She’s afraid
her time is wasted; as her day is messed
she feels the hours leak, the future fade.
Persisting fitfully she is distressed
by little things.
By minutes she’s unmade.

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Shoes

Posted on August 18, 2011 by sputterpub


I still have my first pair of shoes. My mother is not a packrat by any means – in fact she’s been known to dispose of treasured items like old letters from friends – but she saved the soft white leather lace-up boots I wore when I started to walk. My father would have saved the shoebox too, and any inserts that accompanied it, but my little white shoes are in a small Poll-Parrot (Brown Blucher Oxfords) box that had nothing to do with them.

I’m happy to have them. I’m glad they’re not bronzed. They’re the only shoes I retain.

That’s not to say I live unshod. I love to go barefoot but I inhabit a land of pavement and gum and germs and plenty of chemical-laced dirt. I slip my feet on or into some protective gear whenever I leave my house.

Because I walk for transportation, foot comfort is a priority for me. And because my feet grew young and big (size 9 before I was 5′ tall, and size 11 at my full height of 5’6″), shoe fashion was not as obtainable for me as for my small-footed friends. Until the shoe sellers began marketing to black women and trannies, most stores only stocked one pair of size 11s in each style. If I didn’t shop for next winter’s boots by June, I was usually out of luck because the store was out of stock

When we were college roommates, Lisa and I argued about shoes. I was for function but she insisted footwear was ornamental. It took decades of aging for me to win that one.

My father had strange and inconvenient ideas about the subject. Jewish tradition says mourners go barefoot. Dad was never religious, never comfortable in temple, never more than pidgin in Yiddish, but he wouldn’t let us go without foot-covering in the house because it reminded him of mourning. And he believed in the support that he thought only a clunky oxford-type shoe would provide. I lusted for Capezios when I was a little girl. I was into ballet, and Capezio shoes were soft, graceful, feminine, elegant. “Cardboard soles!” Dad scoffed, and he banned them (and even talk about them) from our house, from my feet.

He made me so conscious about how odd bare feet look, that I had some trouble adjusting to California. Suddenly I was surrounded by visible toes. It took me awhile to get used to seeing my own, in summer, in sandals.

I select footwear now for support but also for comfort and coolness. I won’t wear a stiff shoe. And I never wear shoes in my house.

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Testification

Posted on August 17, 2011 by sputterpub

9.8.08
A few weeks ago, Katie suggested testify for a word o’ the week. She’d heard that it came to us from testicle, because it’s what men used to swear on when they claimed to be telling the truth.

“Oh cool,’ I said. And a few hours later I considered the title “Hysterical Testimony” to unite uterine and testicular suggestions in one phrase. “Isn’t that neat?” I asked her. “It’s just you, Mom,” she replied with sardonic affection.

The next day I looked. Here’s what I found.

Testify and testament and testimony all come from the Latin testis, which meant witness. Testis hailed from the Proto Indo European tris, which simply meant three (3). The notion is that a fair witness is an independent party: the third person present in a dispute between two contestants. From three we got witness and from that idea came these testy words.

It seems obvious what then happened. Witnesses were male, and they swore on their important part. In time, that/those important part(s) came to be called by a word that relates to what they were doing when they were swearing.

I wonder if a eunuch could testify? And I guess if we find a man with three cojones, his parts will earn their term.

By the way, the word “test” is unrelated. It comes from the Latin testum, meaning earthen pot, because that was the container used to assay precious metals.

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Posture

Posted on August 16, 2011 by sputterpub


This one is dedicated to those women who have tried marriage and not flourished in it, and who are not dead yet but are resistant to going there again.

I can’t stay long – I’ll simply take a kiss
if you don’t mind, but I won’t fall for you.
I’ll lose out on some ecstasy; I’ll miss
your best I guess, but I’ll miss tantrums too.
You’ve baggage on your shoulders, and your back
is stuck with obligations sharp as spears.
Although I lace my words with rue, the fact
is I decline to spend compressing years
involved with you the way you’d soon insist,
together born again to marry, fit
for worship, stress, and straining hip and hand.
You praised me half to crazy when we kissed
and almost made me lose myself … but sit
up straight, behave I say, and let me stand.

Posted in Poetry | 2 Comments

Black Bug’s Blood

Posted on August 15, 2011 by sputterpub

I just killed a big fat fly. He’d been cruising around my cottage since last night but he didn’t annoy me to murder till this morning. I obliterated him with the back of my little spiral notebook, and then I had to wipe the black wing-flecked smear off the notebook, the window screen, and the floor.

“Black bug’s blood,” I said with a grin as I tissued off the notebook. That was one of my father’s favorite tongue-twisters. The other unusual one was “A box of biscuits, a box of mixed biscuits, and a biscuit mixer.” We also did the regulars, about pepper-picking Peter, industrious woodchucks, seashell sales and even the naughty verses about slit sheets and smart fellows, but I never heard about bug blood or biscuit boxes except at home.

Back when I was first exposed to it, black bug’s blood was rare. Flies were hard to kill. If I went at one with a rolled-up magazine, the air I forced ahead of the weapon usually warned the insect away. I had to use a fly-swatter; its mesh allowed the air to remain undisturbed so I could sneak up on the beastie.

But flies have changed in my lifetime, and I don’t understand why. Nowadays houseflies seem lazy and inattentive. They are a breeze to swat! I like how easy it is to rid my environment of the little invader, but I’m disturbed a bit about the change. It seems like we ought to have healthier flies.

Has anyone else noticed this?

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But What is a Backwards Dessert?

Posted on August 12, 2011 by sputterpub


I like to think I discovered the fact that stressed is desserts spelled backwards, even though I now see cookbooks with that title. I first wrote a piece using the phrase around 1995.

But let’s look at what it means. The immediate implication is that the cure for or proper response to stress is to eat desserts, yes? Maybe no.

Maybe if you’re stressed you should eat a backwards dessert, or backwards eat dessert. That might mean anti-dessert. A walk.

The fact is, when we’re stressed our digestion stops. It’s a sensible somatic response; our bodies are designed to run when the pressure’s on, and they don’t need to be digesting while running. So the last thing you should do when you’re stressed is put food into a factory that’s not operating.

It’s crazy to promulgate the suggestion that the thing to give a stressed or distressed friend is a plate of cookies. Or a tub of ice cream. Instead take her out for a walk.

The movement will help dispel the stress. The exercise will provide pain relief. Talking will be easier and vision will expand.

At Walk was started one autumn, but I think it works year-round:

The knobby trunks of sycamores recall
potato shapes I’ve seen on market shelves,
and amber drifts fill gutters with the fall
of leaves, as she and I exhaust ourselves
each weekend walking to deserve our food,
to contemplate divorce and family,
to hunt for grace in age and attitude,
while learning to pronounce anemone.

Sometimes I praise her strength, or I declare
that she is lovely, bright, attractive, fun.
And then her chin will quiver but despair
she doesn’t show me, and her tears don’t run
as long as we are wearing out our feet,
exploring and expounding on concrete.

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My Racist Confession

Posted on August 11, 2011 by sputterpub


One day, probably 20 years ago or more, I was riding a rowdy bus. I can’t remember if it was an AC Transit vehicle or a San Francisco Muni, but I recall it as an afternoon event, traveling eastward in a rather full conveyance. As is my preference, I had a seat near the back of the bus, on the starboard side (that’s away from the sun during my regular commute).

The riders were a fair reflection of Bay Area diversity: white, black, Latino, Asian, other. But the rowdiness was all black.

There was a group (or two) of adolescent males aboard, with complexions of varying tones, but all looking darker than white and sounding culturally black. They got louder as the bus proceeded, and ruder too. They were classically obnoxious.

I didn’t feel unsafe but I sure felt annoyed. More than anything else, those boys needed to hear some stern mama-talk: Sit down back there and behave yourselves! You oughta be ashamed. Act right or I’ll slap you silly. Something like that.

But I sure wasn’t going to say it. I wouldn’t dare. I’m not black.

So I looked forward in the bus, to where some mature black people sat, and I wondered why none of them stood up and dealt with the loud jerks.

Whoa!

No sooner did I harbor the thought than I saw my own idiocy. What was I thinking? Why was I trying to make anyone responsible for the rude kids but the rude kids?

I sure don’t feel like I get the credit or blame for how a white jerk acts. Or a loud Jew. Or a wussy woman. I’m not the defender of white collar workers or an apologist for Berkeley extremists.

I was amazed at my own stupidity but I got it right away. And although I contain prejudice still, no matter how much I despise it, that was the brief example, the amusing one, the one that illuminated the issue for me like a parable.

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