Highly emotional people may seem wildly unconstrained, but they are not. Well-accustomed to emotionality, they preserve some shred of control and restraint in the midst of explosion or collapse.
By contrast, people who feel they possess complete emotional control are dangerous because we can't constrain what we don't recognize. Such a person might crush your skull over some triviality because there's no ongoing measured process of ascertaining proportionality—or any other sort of measuredness when it comes to emotions.
Those who fashion themselves evolved beyond emotion are actually emotionally stunted, so when emotions do arise, they're like daggers wildly projected from subconscious viscera.
Saturday, December 28, 2024
Friday, December 27, 2024
Longevity Escape Velocity
LEV (Longevity Escape Velocity) is, they say, coming (I think later than sooner, but I'm in the minority, plus I'm just a trombonist). We're all going to live to 150 or a thousand or whatever.
Suicide is fundamentally taboo, so don't be so sure we'd be permitted to opt out of more life this way, either. It's already been firmly decided that we mustn't leave money on the table.
As for me, I'd be super stoked to go another 50 years with arthritic shouders, overstretched ankle ligaments (randomly and excruciatingly flopping into sprain while I walk) and torn plantar plates (the tissue just below the toes which let you walk), among other compiling ills. Fun! And how awesome for us Olds to fossilize ad infinitum in a society where we can't speak the lingo or follow the references.
Meanwhile, the Youngs, currently struggling for foothold in job and housing markets, and caught in a holding pattern munching cannabidiol gummies in their parents' basements, will remain there forever, because mom and dad won't be passing on their assets. The Olds will keep holding the best jobs, the best properties, and disproportionate power, while more and more Youngs keep piling up behind them.
With Olds calcifying and Youngs languishing (and me mercilessly animated despite a growing checklist of bodily insults), society will take on a zombie-like quality, shambling onward without the essential churn and renewal.
It sounds nearly as fun as colonizing Mars, or Universal Basic Income!
Wishes are notoriously problematic (we're urged to be careful with them, not that we ever are). And Utopias are nothing but great big hairballs of demented wishes. Here's the absurd lowdown: Cartoon Me wants to live forever, and go to Mars, and never need to work.
See also "A Case for Opting Out of Life Extension"
Suicide is fundamentally taboo, so don't be so sure we'd be permitted to opt out of more life this way, either. It's already been firmly decided that we mustn't leave money on the table.
As for me, I'd be super stoked to go another 50 years with arthritic shouders, overstretched ankle ligaments (randomly and excruciatingly flopping into sprain while I walk) and torn plantar plates (the tissue just below the toes which let you walk), among other compiling ills. Fun! And how awesome for us Olds to fossilize ad infinitum in a society where we can't speak the lingo or follow the references.
Meanwhile, the Youngs, currently struggling for foothold in job and housing markets, and caught in a holding pattern munching cannabidiol gummies in their parents' basements, will remain there forever, because mom and dad won't be passing on their assets. The Olds will keep holding the best jobs, the best properties, and disproportionate power, while more and more Youngs keep piling up behind them.
With Olds calcifying and Youngs languishing (and me mercilessly animated despite a growing checklist of bodily insults), society will take on a zombie-like quality, shambling onward without the essential churn and renewal.
It sounds nearly as fun as colonizing Mars, or Universal Basic Income!
Wishes are notoriously problematic (we're urged to be careful with them, not that we ever are). And Utopias are nothing but great big hairballs of demented wishes. Here's the absurd lowdown: Cartoon Me wants to live forever, and go to Mars, and never need to work.
See also "A Case for Opting Out of Life Extension"
Thursday, December 26, 2024
Corrected Shoulder Posting
I have rearranged the ordering of yesterday's posting, "Self-Healing Shoulder and Arm Arthritis". I realized I'd put some of the harder moves first, burying the very easy moves that provide useful quick relief.
I've put the easy stuff first.
I've put the easy stuff first.
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Self-Healing Shoulder and Arm Arthritis
I wrote about my calcific periarthritis of the shoulders in July. Globs of calcium crystals build up in the shoulder joint, gradually destroying the joint and limiting movement. What's worse, symptoms of pain and immobility spread down the arm, all the way to the wrist. Yikes!
The only relief beyond heavy painkillers is surgery requiring months-long recuperation with severe pain (my physical therapist - who's birthed two kids and worked with patients after this surgery - says the pain levels seem comparable). But that's actually an improvement. Untreated, the pain has driven me into seizure.
That low point was six months ago, and the experience focused my attention wonderfully. Necessity mothered invention, and I seem to have fixed it. Against all odds and every medical expectation, I've been nearly symptom-free for half a year (my doctors tell me it's a medical impossibility). And I'll explain my bag of tricks for any sufferers stumbling in.
I've drawn on yoga positions, but you won't find this routine in yoga books. It's a fresh solution - based on 50 years of yoga practice and working around physical challenges - to a terrifying condition. And much of it applies to any sort of shoulder or arm arthritis.
Arm/Elbow Arthritis
The condition spurs arthritis down the arm in a chain reaction as biceps try to compensate for immobilized shoulders, and then elbows try to compensate for immobilized biceps. It took a few years to figure out what was going on, and a few more to experiment with fixes. Forced by horrendous circumstance to conjure up a miracle, I've eliminated most pain and restored my range of motion. It's not a cure, though. I need to recharge twice daily via the routine below. But it sure beats surgery! I beat the rap!
While these poses are normally supposed to be practiced with straight arms, that part is much more important for this purpose. Focus on maximally straightening your arms....or at least intending to, which is just as therapeutic. It's the intention that counts; trying to go from a 15° bend to a 14° bend, if that's the most you can do, is an act of straightening! The following will only improve your arthritis insofar as you apply effort to keep your arms as straight as possible. Think of all these exercises as "straight arm therapy under duress". Every extra iota of straightening yields disproportionally more therapeutic effect.
Now that I've beaten this critical point to death, here are two easy tricks for quick relief before we get to the more deeply healing moves.
Trick One: Hand Extension and Rotation
This provides instant but temporary and limited relief of arthritis pain in the bicep, elbow, and wrist.
Keeping (or intending to keep) your arms incredibly straight, and elbows locked (or intending them locked), extend your fingers like this:
Now push your palms forward 90° to make (or intend to make) a right angle with your forearms. If you hear cracks and pops (from you arms, not your shoulders), that's good! Now rotate your wrists slowly and sensitively in both directions, while keeping/intending your arms and elbows fiercely straight and stable. As you rotate, you'll find spots that are less comfortable (though nothing should seriously hurt). Hunt for these spots, and work them the most.
Then flip between the two hand positions with wrists rotated this way or that. Experiment like a curious child, hunting for less comfortable (not painful) spots to work. Lock at the elbows, so you're not torquing anything near your shoulders.
This offers immediate relief which lasts for a surprisingly long while. You'd never imagine that such a simple action could have such profound effect. It will feel scary at first - it's the last thing you'd think to do with arthritis pain - but it shouldn't hurt (if you feel any sharp or alarming sensations, stop immediately).
Self-healing is always like this. It's hard to straighten your arms? The cure is to...straighten your arms! Self-healing is the move you don't want to do. You must fly into the eye of the storm - always with careful attention to your body's signals.
Trick Two: Shoulder Rolls
Shoulder Rolls, aka Circular Shoulder Shrugs, are an easy move we all learned in grade school - where it felt ridiculously pointless. Well, now you actually need it!
As you do shoulder rolls, you'll feel and hear tendons plucking against each other, like guitar strings. This is incredibly beneficial. It is more therapeutic for a tight muscle to have its associated tendons plucked than to work the actual muscle directly, and shoulder rolls pluck many tendons en masse with hardly any effort.
Do five or ten rolls forward and then an equal number backward, slowly and sensitively. Make this your warm up and warm down for any of the moves suggested below, and it's also something you can do throughout your day, especially if your shouders smart a bit. Stop if there's the slightest bit of real pain!
Step One
Maximally straighten your arms before you lift them over your head, and diligently maintain that as you gradually bring them up.
You can ignore the Sanskrit names, but FWIW, this one's called, ridiculously, "Tadasana Urdhva Baddhanguliyasana."
Step Two
This flips the arm-straightening the other way. The counter-stretch, if you will.
If you're older and inflexible and in arthritis pain, you'll obviously need to work up to this gradually with a good teacher (I recommend Iyengar system; start your search here). If you're younger and/or healthier, practice this so it is available when the need arises. It will also stave off the arthritis itself....if you don't stop practicing when it's sore (there's the rub)!
Drawback: any Iyengar yoga teacher will have their own firm advice for arm arthritis. Try their approach if you'd like, but also make sure they teach you these poses. They are working from theory and dogma, while I've developed this approach from personal experience.
FWIW, this one's called Baddha Hasta Uttanasana. Remember to breathe. I practiced it for 35 years before noticing I always hold my breath.
Step Three
This one (Parsva Urdhva Hastasana) doesn't do a ton, but it's a helpful add-on, and the easiest of all. Be particularly gentle here, though - easy moves tend to provoke carelessness.
Arms straight! If they're not either straight or intending diligently/sensitively toward straightness, you will not get benefit.
It helps to do this one in front of a mirror. Notice that you're forming your body - from the soles of your feet to the tips of your fingers - into the letter "C". If you stay cognizant of that broad arc (plus straight arms), your form will be correct.
If you've done all this stuff, congrats. Your arthritis is much better. Keep practicing twice daily to discover how good it can get. Perfection may not be possible, but if you practice diligently, you should recover a full range of motion, and even be able to sleep on the bad shoulder. Note that I have quite an advanced case (every doctor who's seen my MRI has winced in sympathetic pain).
Shoulders
The preceding healed the arthritis. Now comes structural help for your shoulders. Behold my favorite yoga pose, pincha mayurasana:
This pose might seem intimidating, but you can work up to it with a few years of yoga experience. Ideally, you'd balance freely (come up with toes against the wall, and then pull them an inch away) because the dynamic micro-corrections required for free balance provide much of the therapeutic benefit. But even with toes remaining against the wall, the position will still help your shoulders.
Practicing this twice weekly is sufficient, though more is fine. But be cautious and gentle while entering and exiting the pose, as crashing might worsen your shoulders. Proceed as if you were old and sick!
I realize this pose is a very tough sell for a rigid, elderly person with bad shoulders (though an Iyengar system teacher can coax almost any body into position using belts, chairs, and other props). But if you start working on it earlier, you'll "own" it when you need it. Just don't stop once you start. I suspect my shoulders began to calcify when I stopped after many years of daily practice.
On days when you practice pincha mayurasana, do the above arm movements afterwards....with shoulder rolls liberally added in-between.
Wrapping Up
These are all well-known moves. But nothing someone with calcific periarthritis of the shoulder would imagine doing (just as meditating is not something you'd do while suffering with a hangover, though it's magical, per this link on self-healing repeated from above). That's why no one's tried it, and that's why the idea went unknown until I stumbled upon it.
Something to bear in mind: none of this will actually repair your shoulder damage. You'll be aware of that damage by the clicks and pops you hear whenever you move your arms. But it eliminates the inflammation which causes pain and limits motion, potentially avoiding surgery.
My shoulders still cycle between good and bad, but at worst they're mildly sore (certainly no seizures!) and at best they're a joy. I enjoy full range of motion. I’ve achieved what seemed impossible, and I hope this routine helps you find relief, too.
The only relief beyond heavy painkillers is surgery requiring months-long recuperation with severe pain (my physical therapist - who's birthed two kids and worked with patients after this surgery - says the pain levels seem comparable). But that's actually an improvement. Untreated, the pain has driven me into seizure.
That low point was six months ago, and the experience focused my attention wonderfully. Necessity mothered invention, and I seem to have fixed it. Against all odds and every medical expectation, I've been nearly symptom-free for half a year (my doctors tell me it's a medical impossibility). And I'll explain my bag of tricks for any sufferers stumbling in.
I've drawn on yoga positions, but you won't find this routine in yoga books. It's a fresh solution - based on 50 years of yoga practice and working around physical challenges - to a terrifying condition. And much of it applies to any sort of shoulder or arm arthritis.
I've had many breakthroughs with self-healing (here are all postings on the topic). Decades of avid hatha yoga (the bendy/stretchy part of yoga, though I practice the rest, too) has fostered deep body awareness and a creative, intuitive approach to working around physical problems.The following is my most remarkable self-healing result. Happy to share. Maybe you'll improve on it!
Unfortunately, the better I get at self-healing, the more problems get thrown at me, like a factory worker manning a wildly accelerating assembly line. What's more, self-healing, like hatha yoga, is not one of my natural facilities. With this stuff I am slow and gluey and dumb. But as I've written, the most remarkable results seem to come from diligently plying weakness - congenital weakness, not just underdevelopment. The realms where you've never sped up and never will. Our bad sides, with courageous persistence, produce more fruitfully than our good sides.
While these poses are normally supposed to be practiced with straight arms, that part is much more important for this purpose. Focus on maximally straightening your arms....or at least intending to, which is just as therapeutic. It's the intention that counts; trying to go from a 15° bend to a 14° bend, if that's the most you can do, is an act of straightening! The following will only improve your arthritis insofar as you apply effort to keep your arms as straight as possible. Think of all these exercises as "straight arm therapy under duress". Every extra iota of straightening yields disproportionally more therapeutic effect.
Now that I've beaten this critical point to death, here are two easy tricks for quick relief before we get to the more deeply healing moves.
This provides instant but temporary and limited relief of arthritis pain in the bicep, elbow, and wrist.
Keeping (or intending to keep) your arms incredibly straight, and elbows locked (or intending them locked), extend your fingers like this:
Important: all rotation should be from the wrists, not the arms. Elbows are locked to prevent arm rotation in the shoulder socket.Now reverse the hand position. With fingers still extended, push the backs of your hands toward your arms, making/intending the opposite 90° bend. Rotate wrists, again maintaining/intending arms straight (and elbows locked) as your top priority. It's not the hand motion that helps you, it's the arm straightness.
Then flip between the two hand positions with wrists rotated this way or that. Experiment like a curious child, hunting for less comfortable (not painful) spots to work. Lock at the elbows, so you're not torquing anything near your shoulders.
This offers immediate relief which lasts for a surprisingly long while. You'd never imagine that such a simple action could have such profound effect. It will feel scary at first - it's the last thing you'd think to do with arthritis pain - but it shouldn't hurt (if you feel any sharp or alarming sensations, stop immediately).
Self-healing is always like this. It's hard to straighten your arms? The cure is to...straighten your arms! Self-healing is the move you don't want to do. You must fly into the eye of the storm - always with careful attention to your body's signals.
As you do shoulder rolls, you'll feel and hear tendons plucking against each other, like guitar strings. This is incredibly beneficial. It is more therapeutic for a tight muscle to have its associated tendons plucked than to work the actual muscle directly, and shoulder rolls pluck many tendons en masse with hardly any effort.
Do five or ten rolls forward and then an equal number backward, slowly and sensitively. Make this your warm up and warm down for any of the moves suggested below, and it's also something you can do throughout your day, especially if your shouders smart a bit. Stop if there's the slightest bit of real pain!
I'll keep saying two seemingly contradictory things: 1. all this stuff is uncomfortable - they're the actions you don't want to do with arthritis, but 2. stop at first sign of pain.Ok, onward to the heavy stuff.
The issue is with the word "pain". Distinguish between destructive pain and the mild discomfort of stretching tight parts; swollen parts; unhappy parts. Don't overthink it! Pain is like pornography: you'll know it when you see it. Take heed when your body hollers HOLY CRAP DON'T DO THAT!, but ignore minor moans and complaints. These aren't particularly fun things to do with arthritis, but trepidation is a different thing than pain. The correct mindset is one of stoic gumption.
It's best to consult with a yoga teacher to guide/check your alignment. I'm not providing instruction, essential safety info, warnings, etc. Plus, all these (stolen) photos suck and shouldn't be closely followed. They just offer a general idea. This isn't a yoga lesson, it's the key to fixing your painful condition.
If you're older and inflexible and in arthritis pain, you'll obviously need to work up to this gradually with a good teacher (I recommend Iyengar system; start your search here). If you're younger and/or healthier, practice this so it is available when the need arises. It will also stave off the arthritis itself....if you don't stop practicing when it's sore (there's the rub)!
Drawback: any Iyengar yoga teacher will have their own firm advice for arm arthritis. Try their approach if you'd like, but also make sure they teach you these poses. They are working from theory and dogma, while I've developed this approach from personal experience.
FWIW, this one's called Baddha Hasta Uttanasana. Remember to breathe. I practiced it for 35 years before noticing I always hold my breath.
Arms straight! If they're not either straight or intending diligently/sensitively toward straightness, you will not get benefit.
It helps to do this one in front of a mirror. Notice that you're forming your body - from the soles of your feet to the tips of your fingers - into the letter "C". If you stay cognizant of that broad arc (plus straight arms), your form will be correct.
If you've done all this stuff, congrats. Your arthritis is much better. Keep practicing twice daily to discover how good it can get. Perfection may not be possible, but if you practice diligently, you should recover a full range of motion, and even be able to sleep on the bad shoulder. Note that I have quite an advanced case (every doctor who's seen my MRI has winced in sympathetic pain).
The preceding healed the arthritis. Now comes structural help for your shoulders. Behold my favorite yoga pose, pincha mayurasana:
Practicing this twice weekly is sufficient, though more is fine. But be cautious and gentle while entering and exiting the pose, as crashing might worsen your shoulders. Proceed as if you were old and sick!
I realize this pose is a very tough sell for a rigid, elderly person with bad shoulders (though an Iyengar system teacher can coax almost any body into position using belts, chairs, and other props). But if you start working on it earlier, you'll "own" it when you need it. Just don't stop once you start. I suspect my shoulders began to calcify when I stopped after many years of daily practice.
On days when you practice pincha mayurasana, do the above arm movements afterwards....with shoulder rolls liberally added in-between.
Something to bear in mind: none of this will actually repair your shoulder damage. You'll be aware of that damage by the clicks and pops you hear whenever you move your arms. But it eliminates the inflammation which causes pain and limits motion, potentially avoiding surgery.
My shoulders still cycle between good and bad, but at worst they're mildly sore (certainly no seizures!) and at best they're a joy. I enjoy full range of motion. I’ve achieved what seemed impossible, and I hope this routine helps you find relief, too.
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Thrilling Food in Stupid Places, Chapter Nth
I continue to leave weekly posts on Facebook documenting my unaspirational cheap lunches in semi-anonymous joints in Setúbal, Portugal (here are links, and I've since posted this one and then this one.
There’s "unaspirational" and then there’s total collapse. This might appear to be the latter.
Setubal is host to over a dozen roast chicken specialists, four of them leading lights. All are excellent, and locals have their fierce favorites, but there's one thing everyone agrees on: never buy roast chicken at the supermarket.
You don't need to be Portuguese to know this. This is deep cultural intelligence shared in the collective unconscious of all humans. A part of our birthright as a species.
Pingo Doce is the ubiquitous chain grocer here, and it's decent though no one's idea of fancy. Especially not their prepared foods, patronized exclusively by stingy pensioners, clutching cut-out coupons and filling up for pennies. It's no place for a chowhound.
But at this one Pingo Doce (the one at Monte Bello), the chicken is improbably great. Better, even, than the leading lights.
I'm normally a blabbermouth with food tips, but I've tried to hold this one back because many people here suspect that the clueless American may actually know a thing or two about their food, and this absurdity would completely jump my shark. If he's eating roast chicken from Pingo Fricking Doce, and calling it the best in town, we obviously need to revoke his visa.
But não, people.
I have a long history of brouhahas with locals after briefly swooping into their longtime hunting grounds to insist that some blurry nothing place is great/fantastic/soulful/genius/etc. Longtime Flatbush residents still can't imagine what that idiot writer ever saw in Di Fara Pizza, which never struck any of them as heaven-sent (indeed, it was chronically deserted when I first ate there). It's a thing that happens, and it's never smooth. You'd think they'd be delighted by the tip. But não.
A few times in my life I pulled the rug out from under society en masse. For instance, I wrote in the mid-1980s about a White Castle in Astoria where the grill kid had developed a technique where he'd cook the burgers two minutes longer, until crunchy. A whole other experience! Bells and buzzers would be going off - FLIP THE MEAT! FLIP THE MEAT! - while he'd stand there steadfastly, awaiting the optimal moment.
His legend quickly grew - the customer queue was out the door - and, less than a month after he'd first appeared, he was gone. The custodians of a Machine can not; shall not; will not allow ghosts in The Machine.
Then there was the Roy Rogers on the Jersey shore where everything was eye-poppingly good. This was a bit less surreal, because Roy Rogers were pretty good to begin with. But this one was superlative.
And many food lovers remember the time I found a wonderful Thai chef hiding behind the corporate armor of a midtown Manhattan sandwich shop. Blimpie Subs & Salads, AKA Joey Thai: Thai Fast Food Restaurant was a wonder (here's my original article, scroll halfway down, explaining the grandeur, the flop sweat, the sleight of hand...everything).
Also there's my alltime favorite hustle. Want to make lots of money? Bet foodie friends they'll enjoy top-five lifetime fried chicken at a KFC, and bring them to the one in East Flatbush, Brooklyn (it's a long drive/ride, and well worth it). I've never lost the bet. KFC isn't Blimpie's or Roy Rogers or White Castle. There's wiggle room in the procedure. What's more, KFCs in black nabes get delivered spicier fixings. You don't need to ask for "spicy" (like at Popeye's), it's just automatically spicier and better. And the ebullient, friendly Caribbean workers at East Flatbush KFC know they're a centerpiece of their proud immigrant neighborhood. It's meaningful, so standards are very high (and they've mastered all the hacking options), and, to this day, I've scarcely had better fried chicken.
Cooking, like soylent green, is people. Deliciousness has nothing to do with the branding, the quality of the linen tablecloths, what you call it, or how you present it. It's a matter of talented people trying much much much much harder, working their way up the curve of declining results and obstinately refusing to shut down at "good enough". And one thing about planet Earth is that people are everywhere, and some tiny percentage of them conjure up magic, where the whole exceeds the sum of its parts.
That's how this one Pingo Doce, in a nation brimming with identical Pingo Doces, makes extraordinary roast chicken.
Cursed with self-awareness, I'm prone to self-gaslighting. Suspecting I've lost my taste (and/or mind), I devised a check. I can't help ordering other stuff to go with. Some rice, french fries, pasta salad, roast potatoes, sautéed vegetables, anything to break up the poultry monotony. And while none has been truly awful, the chicken quality ratchets my standards so high that I've never taken a second bite of any of that. It all tastes supermarket-bought, i.e. an octillion times worse than great. This, in turn, confirms the chicken's celestiality. The store's own standards reveal how vastly it excels - aw, priori.
So is the white meat consummately tender despite the golden crispiness - i.e. the standard measure of truly fancy, expert roast chicken? Nah, dude. Come on. This is supermarket chicken. But it's never dry, and will delight anyone who isn't a tight-assed dean at Le Cordon Bleu.
Setubal is host to over a dozen roast chicken specialists, four of them leading lights. All are excellent, and locals have their fierce favorites, but there's one thing everyone agrees on: never buy roast chicken at the supermarket.
You don't need to be Portuguese to know this. This is deep cultural intelligence shared in the collective unconscious of all humans. A part of our birthright as a species.
Pingo Doce is the ubiquitous chain grocer here, and it's decent though no one's idea of fancy. Especially not their prepared foods, patronized exclusively by stingy pensioners, clutching cut-out coupons and filling up for pennies. It's no place for a chowhound.
But at this one Pingo Doce (the one at Monte Bello), the chicken is improbably great. Better, even, than the leading lights.
I'm normally a blabbermouth with food tips, but I've tried to hold this one back because many people here suspect that the clueless American may actually know a thing or two about their food, and this absurdity would completely jump my shark. If he's eating roast chicken from Pingo Fricking Doce, and calling it the best in town, we obviously need to revoke his visa.
But não, people.
I have a long history of brouhahas with locals after briefly swooping into their longtime hunting grounds to insist that some blurry nothing place is great/fantastic/soulful/genius/etc. Longtime Flatbush residents still can't imagine what that idiot writer ever saw in Di Fara Pizza, which never struck any of them as heaven-sent (indeed, it was chronically deserted when I first ate there). It's a thing that happens, and it's never smooth. You'd think they'd be delighted by the tip. But não.
A few times in my life I pulled the rug out from under society en masse. For instance, I wrote in the mid-1980s about a White Castle in Astoria where the grill kid had developed a technique where he'd cook the burgers two minutes longer, until crunchy. A whole other experience! Bells and buzzers would be going off - FLIP THE MEAT! FLIP THE MEAT! - while he'd stand there steadfastly, awaiting the optimal moment.
His legend quickly grew - the customer queue was out the door - and, less than a month after he'd first appeared, he was gone. The custodians of a Machine can not; shall not; will not allow ghosts in The Machine.
Then there was the Roy Rogers on the Jersey shore where everything was eye-poppingly good. This was a bit less surreal, because Roy Rogers were pretty good to begin with. But this one was superlative.
And many food lovers remember the time I found a wonderful Thai chef hiding behind the corporate armor of a midtown Manhattan sandwich shop. Blimpie Subs & Salads, AKA Joey Thai: Thai Fast Food Restaurant was a wonder (here's my original article, scroll halfway down, explaining the grandeur, the flop sweat, the sleight of hand...everything).
Also there's my alltime favorite hustle. Want to make lots of money? Bet foodie friends they'll enjoy top-five lifetime fried chicken at a KFC, and bring them to the one in East Flatbush, Brooklyn (it's a long drive/ride, and well worth it). I've never lost the bet. KFC isn't Blimpie's or Roy Rogers or White Castle. There's wiggle room in the procedure. What's more, KFCs in black nabes get delivered spicier fixings. You don't need to ask for "spicy" (like at Popeye's), it's just automatically spicier and better. And the ebullient, friendly Caribbean workers at East Flatbush KFC know they're a centerpiece of their proud immigrant neighborhood. It's meaningful, so standards are very high (and they've mastered all the hacking options), and, to this day, I've scarcely had better fried chicken.
Cooking, like soylent green, is people. Deliciousness has nothing to do with the branding, the quality of the linen tablecloths, what you call it, or how you present it. It's a matter of talented people trying much much much much harder, working their way up the curve of declining results and obstinately refusing to shut down at "good enough". And one thing about planet Earth is that people are everywhere, and some tiny percentage of them conjure up magic, where the whole exceeds the sum of its parts.
That's how this one Pingo Doce, in a nation brimming with identical Pingo Doces, makes extraordinary roast chicken.
Cursed with self-awareness, I'm prone to self-gaslighting. Suspecting I've lost my taste (and/or mind), I devised a check. I can't help ordering other stuff to go with. Some rice, french fries, pasta salad, roast potatoes, sautéed vegetables, anything to break up the poultry monotony. And while none has been truly awful, the chicken quality ratchets my standards so high that I've never taken a second bite of any of that. It all tastes supermarket-bought, i.e. an octillion times worse than great. This, in turn, confirms the chicken's celestiality. The store's own standards reveal how vastly it excels - aw, priori.
So is the white meat consummately tender despite the golden crispiness - i.e. the standard measure of truly fancy, expert roast chicken? Nah, dude. Come on. This is supermarket chicken. But it's never dry, and will delight anyone who isn't a tight-assed dean at Le Cordon Bleu.
Monday, December 23, 2024
Friday, December 20, 2024
Winning
After a lifelong fear of missing out (FOMO), I've dropped that stuff. It started one Christmas Eve years ago as I noticed my perspective flipping between the lovely evening I was actually having and the optimal evening I was not having. Heaven and Hell chasing each other's tails, the whole enerprise absurdly needless.
"What's not happening" is empty mental torture. It's how we shave off excess joy. When we notice that we're overly happy, we draw upon the infinite fodder of "What's Not Happening" to restore our customary glum ennui. I wrote about this in "Ballasting Happiness"
All that matters - all that's real - is what is, not what's not. Playing the cards we're dealt; making lemonade from lemons; etc. Reframed to this greater sanity, depression drops away and everything begins to transform as perspective shifts.
I retain one chunk, however. No matter where I am, and no matter how well I'm eating, I'm acutely aware of what I'm missing. Here in the Portuguese boonies, it’s crippling to imagine that my annual consumption of pizza, tacos, home fries, bagels, sushi, and barbecue has dropped to mere ounces. In two years, I've had four glasses of good wine, three Chinese meals, and a mere handful of dishes prepared by trained chefs, as opposed to soulful grandmothers. I'm the biggest fan of soulful grandmothers, but once in a while a hound needs some refinement. A hound needs it all once in a while. That's the problem!
This remaining chunk is more persistant than the FOMO I've expunged, because food isn't idle caprice. The topic arises, unavoidably, several times per day, and I brim with data points and memories. So when the notion of eating pops up, there will appear a need for jerk chicken, ramen, enchiladas, etc. ad infinitum.
I've fed my diversity jones too indulgently. Having eaten so widely and so well, my yens are diverse and persistent. Feed me the best pizza in the world two meals in a row and I'll claw my way out of Naples in quest for a scrambled egg sandwich.
This makes a sleepy Portuguese fishing town an unlikely place for me to wind up in. Traditional Portuguese cooking is fantastically well-preserved. I'm eating more like a person in the 19th century than 21st. But the downside of faithful tradition (something I love and appreciate) is narrow insularity (I'm not a fan).
Via superhuman exertion, I've managed to find (or somehow conjured up???) Punjabi, Bengali, Angolan, and Moroccan chow within a 10 minute radius of my apartment, all as good as can be found anywhere. But even this oddly improbable diversity can't satisfy my fickle depravity. Hell, after living Jackson Heights for a decade, I came to view even Roosevelt Avenue (possibly the most diverse street on Earth) as limiting.
As I mentioned, I've been posting to Facebook photos of my ordinary pedestrian lunches here, sending onlookers into slobbering tizzies. So I'm eating great! And, per my Christmas Eve revelation, clarity appears as you opt out of indulgent FOMO pain. So in this clarity, I recognize that while in other respects I waver between "above" or "below" average, as an eater, I've maxed out. It's possible that no one on Earth eats better than I do. And this has been true for a long time.
There are people who live with phenomenally talented chefs, eating splendid things that would drive me insane with envy. My friend Rino enjoys the supernal gifts of the blessed Mamma Grimaldi day after day. But when he tires of her repertoire, or can't make it home for lunch, he just grabs a bite. Me, I never just grab a bite. So my overall deliciousness quotient is higher.
A billionaire can hire any chef, or hop into a private jet to satisfy any yen. But he doesn't know where to go, or what to order, like I do. He doesn't know the possibilities! And, aside from lavish sprees, he'll just grab a bite. I never just grab a bite.
While I have my gaping failures - I often curse my lousy chowhounding skills - I'm shocked to acknowledge that no one would lower their deliciousness quotient by eating in my footsteps, nor would mine rise by eating in their's.
Even in a sleepy Portuguese town.
Even sans pizza, tacos, home fries, bagels, sushi, barbecue, and refinement.
The hardest human task is to recognize when we've won. We can waste decades chasing phantoms before finally framing a "win" correctly.
You don’t need to be a grandmaster of food or whatever. Winning is in the framing. No, that’s not quite right. The anguish of not winning is in the framing. So framing away from obsessive attention to “what’s missing” is the ultimate win.
"What's not happening" is empty mental torture. It's how we shave off excess joy. When we notice that we're overly happy, we draw upon the infinite fodder of "What's Not Happening" to restore our customary glum ennui. I wrote about this in "Ballasting Happiness"
All that matters - all that's real - is what is, not what's not. Playing the cards we're dealt; making lemonade from lemons; etc. Reframed to this greater sanity, depression drops away and everything begins to transform as perspective shifts.
I retain one chunk, however. No matter where I am, and no matter how well I'm eating, I'm acutely aware of what I'm missing. Here in the Portuguese boonies, it’s crippling to imagine that my annual consumption of pizza, tacos, home fries, bagels, sushi, and barbecue has dropped to mere ounces. In two years, I've had four glasses of good wine, three Chinese meals, and a mere handful of dishes prepared by trained chefs, as opposed to soulful grandmothers. I'm the biggest fan of soulful grandmothers, but once in a while a hound needs some refinement. A hound needs it all once in a while. That's the problem!
This remaining chunk is more persistant than the FOMO I've expunged, because food isn't idle caprice. The topic arises, unavoidably, several times per day, and I brim with data points and memories. So when the notion of eating pops up, there will appear a need for jerk chicken, ramen, enchiladas, etc. ad infinitum.
I've fed my diversity jones too indulgently. Having eaten so widely and so well, my yens are diverse and persistent. Feed me the best pizza in the world two meals in a row and I'll claw my way out of Naples in quest for a scrambled egg sandwich.
This makes a sleepy Portuguese fishing town an unlikely place for me to wind up in. Traditional Portuguese cooking is fantastically well-preserved. I'm eating more like a person in the 19th century than 21st. But the downside of faithful tradition (something I love and appreciate) is narrow insularity (I'm not a fan).
Via superhuman exertion, I've managed to find (or somehow conjured up???) Punjabi, Bengali, Angolan, and Moroccan chow within a 10 minute radius of my apartment, all as good as can be found anywhere. But even this oddly improbable diversity can't satisfy my fickle depravity. Hell, after living Jackson Heights for a decade, I came to view even Roosevelt Avenue (possibly the most diverse street on Earth) as limiting.
As I mentioned, I've been posting to Facebook photos of my ordinary pedestrian lunches here, sending onlookers into slobbering tizzies. So I'm eating great! And, per my Christmas Eve revelation, clarity appears as you opt out of indulgent FOMO pain. So in this clarity, I recognize that while in other respects I waver between "above" or "below" average, as an eater, I've maxed out. It's possible that no one on Earth eats better than I do. And this has been true for a long time.
There are people who live with phenomenally talented chefs, eating splendid things that would drive me insane with envy. My friend Rino enjoys the supernal gifts of the blessed Mamma Grimaldi day after day. But when he tires of her repertoire, or can't make it home for lunch, he just grabs a bite. Me, I never just grab a bite. So my overall deliciousness quotient is higher.
A billionaire can hire any chef, or hop into a private jet to satisfy any yen. But he doesn't know where to go, or what to order, like I do. He doesn't know the possibilities! And, aside from lavish sprees, he'll just grab a bite. I never just grab a bite.
While I have my gaping failures - I often curse my lousy chowhounding skills - I'm shocked to acknowledge that no one would lower their deliciousness quotient by eating in my footsteps, nor would mine rise by eating in their's.
Even in a sleepy Portuguese town.
Even sans pizza, tacos, home fries, bagels, sushi, barbecue, and refinement.
The hardest human task is to recognize when we've won. We can waste decades chasing phantoms before finally framing a "win" correctly.
You don’t need to be a grandmaster of food or whatever. Winning is in the framing. No, that’s not quite right. The anguish of not winning is in the framing. So framing away from obsessive attention to “what’s missing” is the ultimate win.
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Cleopatra’s Pink Slip
I haven't exactly been a soaring addition to the Portuguese jazz scene. In fact, I haven't played a note outside my apartment. The best players in the country - themselves only barely okay - assure me that there's no musical interest here, an hour from Lisbon.
And how! The live music (besides fado, the hyperdramatic singing tradition which is its own thing) has been muddier than the local espresso.
But wandering around my town's center this week, I heard a guitarist struggling through a Charlie Parker song, accompanied by a play-along record. And for some reason I clicked into form, like a punchy old boxer hearing a ringing bell.
It took me a moment to locate him in an imposing nineteenth century building, which turned out to be the Musician Society. I snuck into the impressive interior, entered the salon, and effortlessly slipped behind a piano to accompany him. I was, at least, sparing him from the karaoke approach - the last resort of musicians with no one to play with.
I play professional level jazz piano. Not good professional, or top professional, like my trombone playing, but reasonably solid by New York standards, which is needle-busting for small-town Portugal (imagine a Broadway actor swapped into your kid's middle school play). In my milieu I'm merely okay, so that's how I frame myself. But everything's relative.
We played together for a few minutes, and I coaxed him into swinging a little harder, and he managed not to stumble on a few of the easier chord changes (by local standards, this constitutes jazz mastery). The song ended and he looked up at me, thoroughly unsurprised, and asked where I'm from.
I said "New York". This is like an Okinawan showing up in a Dutch karate dojo, but he wasn't visibly affected. He just coughed and told me about the jam session every Thursday which I might sign up for a week ahead if I'm aching to play. Perhaps they’ll let me, because I sound pretty good. Then he very politely and courteously told me that he needed to practice, and sent me on my way while he resumed the karaoke.
I was not terribly disappointed by the sudden end to our brief collaboration, but considering it from his perspective, it was like Cleopatra materializing in the bedroom of a frantic masturbator, and having him tell her, as she peeled off her clothes, “Not now, I’m busy.”
This happens a lot, in different realms, though polite courtesy isn't the norm. But I'm okay with it. I view the world with blithe amusement and low expectation, immune from the entitlement epidemic. Enjoy a brief montage of typically surreal experiences:
Two food obsessed guys at my gym were weighing local dining options, and I piped up, shyly, to ask if they'd heard of Chowhound. They replied, with suspicion, in the affirmative, so I introduced myself and offered tips. Without a word, they moved to treadmills at the far corner of the gym.
Upon moving to small town Connecticut, immediately after leaving CNET, I introduced myself to a neighbor, explaining that I'd founded a nationally-known web site. He told me how his nephew, Petey, had a web site selling lawnmowers he'd refurbished, and that, if I'd like, he could put me in touch, so Petey could offer me some wisdom.
There are loads more. Back at the dawn of this Slog, I wrote a posting titled "Kafkaesque", recounting other bizarre tales. It's amusing. Check it out.
A major breakthrough finally occurred some years ago when someone posted a plea for help to a general interest forum where I participated under alias. They wanted advice on launching an online community to cover a specific topic, hoping to attract a particularly expert and passionate usership. My previous replies there had seemed smart to me, but rarely rated a thumbs-up. Mostly just contemptuous snark. But for this, I was uniquely qualified. So I dove in, whipping up 500 words of pure distilled hard-won Truth…which drew nary a thumbs up (there was, however, an errant "go fuck yourself").
This time seemed different. It was a unique circumstance where I could be 100% certain the problem wasn't on my end, being pretty much The Guy for this particular query. I've always suspected that I might be far less clever than I sometimes dare to imagine, but this time my confidence was bulletproof despite having drawn the usual result.
I finally allowed myself to acknowledge the gaslighting, and to muse about how I'd been operating under a "curse" of some sort. I've written several postings trying to account for it, finally explaining it as a hairball of edge-case factors, though I've been unsure of what to do about it.
None of this depresses me. I'm pliable; comfortable being reduced to vapor in anyone's esteem. I don't need to be recognized, much less appreciated, let alone respected. As a karma yogi, I'm fully invested in what I do, not who I am. I used to live on the flip side of that, and, believe me, the weather here is much much better (in Sanskrit, it's called satchitananda).
The Curse makes it hard to feel useful - a conundrum for someone with an irrepressible helpful streak. I've resolved it by realizing that no one actually needs help. It's all aristocrats amusing themselves with theatrical exasperation over Rich People Problems, and the last thing anyone wants is for some janitor to turn up the glaring house lights, spoiling the fun. So, really, it's all going smashingly. And here I am in Portugal eagerly scarfing my nth lovely plate of codfish. Plan A!
Plan B (let's call it the "Jim Leff project") never happened, despite decades of straining to make it happen, and then coming to grips that it would never happen, and then accounting for why it never happened...and why it's perfectly okay that it never happened. All that meta work was a ridiculous Plan C, leading nowhere, so I've completely stopped Jim Leffing and embraced the cod.
See also "Seemers Always Win: Posing as Someone Like You"
And how! The live music (besides fado, the hyperdramatic singing tradition which is its own thing) has been muddier than the local espresso.
But wandering around my town's center this week, I heard a guitarist struggling through a Charlie Parker song, accompanied by a play-along record. And for some reason I clicked into form, like a punchy old boxer hearing a ringing bell.
It took me a moment to locate him in an imposing nineteenth century building, which turned out to be the Musician Society. I snuck into the impressive interior, entered the salon, and effortlessly slipped behind a piano to accompany him. I was, at least, sparing him from the karaoke approach - the last resort of musicians with no one to play with.
I play professional level jazz piano. Not good professional, or top professional, like my trombone playing, but reasonably solid by New York standards, which is needle-busting for small-town Portugal (imagine a Broadway actor swapped into your kid's middle school play). In my milieu I'm merely okay, so that's how I frame myself. But everything's relative.
We played together for a few minutes, and I coaxed him into swinging a little harder, and he managed not to stumble on a few of the easier chord changes (by local standards, this constitutes jazz mastery). The song ended and he looked up at me, thoroughly unsurprised, and asked where I'm from.
I said "New York". This is like an Okinawan showing up in a Dutch karate dojo, but he wasn't visibly affected. He just coughed and told me about the jam session every Thursday which I might sign up for a week ahead if I'm aching to play. Perhaps they’ll let me, because I sound pretty good. Then he very politely and courteously told me that he needed to practice, and sent me on my way while he resumed the karaoke.
I was not terribly disappointed by the sudden end to our brief collaboration, but considering it from his perspective, it was like Cleopatra materializing in the bedroom of a frantic masturbator, and having him tell her, as she peeled off her clothes, “Not now, I’m busy.”
This happens a lot, in different realms, though polite courtesy isn't the norm. But I'm okay with it. I view the world with blithe amusement and low expectation, immune from the entitlement epidemic. Enjoy a brief montage of typically surreal experiences:
Two food obsessed guys at my gym were weighing local dining options, and I piped up, shyly, to ask if they'd heard of Chowhound. They replied, with suspicion, in the affirmative, so I introduced myself and offered tips. Without a word, they moved to treadmills at the far corner of the gym.
Upon moving to small town Connecticut, immediately after leaving CNET, I introduced myself to a neighbor, explaining that I'd founded a nationally-known web site. He told me how his nephew, Petey, had a web site selling lawnmowers he'd refurbished, and that, if I'd like, he could put me in touch, so Petey could offer me some wisdom.
There are loads more. Back at the dawn of this Slog, I wrote a posting titled "Kafkaesque", recounting other bizarre tales. It's amusing. Check it out.
A major breakthrough finally occurred some years ago when someone posted a plea for help to a general interest forum where I participated under alias. They wanted advice on launching an online community to cover a specific topic, hoping to attract a particularly expert and passionate usership. My previous replies there had seemed smart to me, but rarely rated a thumbs-up. Mostly just contemptuous snark. But for this, I was uniquely qualified. So I dove in, whipping up 500 words of pure distilled hard-won Truth…which drew nary a thumbs up (there was, however, an errant "go fuck yourself").
This time seemed different. It was a unique circumstance where I could be 100% certain the problem wasn't on my end, being pretty much The Guy for this particular query. I've always suspected that I might be far less clever than I sometimes dare to imagine, but this time my confidence was bulletproof despite having drawn the usual result.
I finally allowed myself to acknowledge the gaslighting, and to muse about how I'd been operating under a "curse" of some sort. I've written several postings trying to account for it, finally explaining it as a hairball of edge-case factors, though I've been unsure of what to do about it.
None of this depresses me. I'm pliable; comfortable being reduced to vapor in anyone's esteem. I don't need to be recognized, much less appreciated, let alone respected. As a karma yogi, I'm fully invested in what I do, not who I am. I used to live on the flip side of that, and, believe me, the weather here is much much better (in Sanskrit, it's called satchitananda).
The Curse makes it hard to feel useful - a conundrum for someone with an irrepressible helpful streak. I've resolved it by realizing that no one actually needs help. It's all aristocrats amusing themselves with theatrical exasperation over Rich People Problems, and the last thing anyone wants is for some janitor to turn up the glaring house lights, spoiling the fun. So, really, it's all going smashingly. And here I am in Portugal eagerly scarfing my nth lovely plate of codfish. Plan A!
Plan B (let's call it the "Jim Leff project") never happened, despite decades of straining to make it happen, and then coming to grips that it would never happen, and then accounting for why it never happened...and why it's perfectly okay that it never happened. All that meta work was a ridiculous Plan C, leading nowhere, so I've completely stopped Jim Leffing and embraced the cod.
See also "Seemers Always Win: Posing as Someone Like You"
Saturday, December 14, 2024
Midnight Trains
There was an idealistic little company called "Midnight Trains" trying to create a new culture of overnight sleeper trains serving European capitals, and the founders dreamed big, envisioning a transportation utopia with greatfood and culture and affordable comfort. Environment-friendly without austerity. It was the exciting, vivacious European train system one might imagine in one's dreams.
They tried to make it happen - actually tried to buy train cars and such - and they sent around a strange and beautiful email newsletter which dreamed so vividly that one might easily conclude that the operation presently existed. Where do I buy my ticket?
In May, they shut it all down, like an enormous balloon suddenly deflated. The vividly-etched counter-reality was revealed as not only vaporous but futile. It was painful to read their farewell email, so one can only imagine how the founders felt. Months later, I caught up with the news and sent them this:
Hello, and forgive my very belated reply. Perhaps I'm getting the last word?
I myself blundered into entrepreneurship, and chose the roughest of all roads, eschewing all investment, including seed money. I built upon my own adrenal glands and nearly died.
Because it was a web company, launched at the opportune moment of 1997 (and required no investment in train hardware, etc.), and because it was really good (because my adrenal glands were ripe), it was a success. We attracted 1 million regular visitors. And I even managed to sell the thing, though not for a ton (I still fly coach).
But while this sounds like a success story, the company that bought it, naturally, wrecked it (I told the surreal tale in this series). And the spin I so doggedly worked to impart proved as ephemeral as a spritz of perfume.
Even if I had personally seen it through further growth, the writing was on the wall: heroic effort might make a thing happen, but never per the original vision. At least not for long. Mission creep (aka entropy) is the way of things, especially amid meteoric success. And I'm describing success. Ozymandias was no unicorn.
The original operation is now long gone (the brand got re-re-bought and turned into a zombie site, don't even click) and while there is fond nostalgia among many, the distinctive spin that gave it its unique edge has utterly dissipated. All lingering traces are banal, like a discarded Lego set. The "What" is remembered, but the "Why" - the actual substance - evaporated ever so swiftly.
The vision you had in your head would never have manifested, at least not for long. You might've made a buck, there might've been trains running somewhere that didn't completely suck. Or it might have grown into an enormous monster with scant resemblance to anything you were aiming for. These were always your best case scenarios.
It's the journey. Everything you did, everything you wrote, everyone you persuaded, and all the readers you delighted (certainly way more than you disappointed!) were real. None of that was offstage, in-queue, or stillborn. What you did, you DID, and if some non-sucky train ran for a while, or if you'd made a buck or birthed a monster distant from original intent, it would not have felt materially different to you. Very different to outside observers, certainly! But I have the standing and experience to authoritatively tell you how it would've seemed to you.
You actually did stuff, and the fairytale result in your imagination was always a fairy tale. Nothing's a straight line; it's all bank shots. If you'd continued - if you'd even prospered - it would have still felt like the exact same striving, but for ever-higher stakes. Perpetual striving. You never arrive. No one ever arrives, at least from their own perspective.
This means you didn't fail. You strived, and now you'll strive otherwise, and when you're old and frail, you'll recall, with satisfaction, how faithfully you strived, all along, for visions both grandly ambitious and minuscule (it doesn't matter).
Jim Leff
Founder, Chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat
They tried to make it happen - actually tried to buy train cars and such - and they sent around a strange and beautiful email newsletter which dreamed so vividly that one might easily conclude that the operation presently existed. Where do I buy my ticket?
In May, they shut it all down, like an enormous balloon suddenly deflated. The vividly-etched counter-reality was revealed as not only vaporous but futile. It was painful to read their farewell email, so one can only imagine how the founders felt. Months later, I caught up with the news and sent them this:
Hello, and forgive my very belated reply. Perhaps I'm getting the last word?
I myself blundered into entrepreneurship, and chose the roughest of all roads, eschewing all investment, including seed money. I built upon my own adrenal glands and nearly died.
Because it was a web company, launched at the opportune moment of 1997 (and required no investment in train hardware, etc.), and because it was really good (because my adrenal glands were ripe), it was a success. We attracted 1 million regular visitors. And I even managed to sell the thing, though not for a ton (I still fly coach).
But while this sounds like a success story, the company that bought it, naturally, wrecked it (I told the surreal tale in this series). And the spin I so doggedly worked to impart proved as ephemeral as a spritz of perfume.
Even if I had personally seen it through further growth, the writing was on the wall: heroic effort might make a thing happen, but never per the original vision. At least not for long. Mission creep (aka entropy) is the way of things, especially amid meteoric success. And I'm describing success. Ozymandias was no unicorn.
The original operation is now long gone (the brand got re-re-bought and turned into a zombie site, don't even click) and while there is fond nostalgia among many, the distinctive spin that gave it its unique edge has utterly dissipated. All lingering traces are banal, like a discarded Lego set. The "What" is remembered, but the "Why" - the actual substance - evaporated ever so swiftly.
The vision you had in your head would never have manifested, at least not for long. You might've made a buck, there might've been trains running somewhere that didn't completely suck. Or it might have grown into an enormous monster with scant resemblance to anything you were aiming for. These were always your best case scenarios.
It's the journey. Everything you did, everything you wrote, everyone you persuaded, and all the readers you delighted (certainly way more than you disappointed!) were real. None of that was offstage, in-queue, or stillborn. What you did, you DID, and if some non-sucky train ran for a while, or if you'd made a buck or birthed a monster distant from original intent, it would not have felt materially different to you. Very different to outside observers, certainly! But I have the standing and experience to authoritatively tell you how it would've seemed to you.
You actually did stuff, and the fairytale result in your imagination was always a fairy tale. Nothing's a straight line; it's all bank shots. If you'd continued - if you'd even prospered - it would have still felt like the exact same striving, but for ever-higher stakes. Perpetual striving. You never arrive. No one ever arrives, at least from their own perspective.
This means you didn't fail. You strived, and now you'll strive otherwise, and when you're old and frail, you'll recall, with satisfaction, how faithfully you strived, all along, for visions both grandly ambitious and minuscule (it doesn't matter).
Jim Leff
Founder, Chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat
Thursday, December 12, 2024
Possible Medical Breakthrough
Slog technical advisor Pierre, who does not normally get excited about science news (understatement alert), notes that scientists have transformed ubiquitous skin bacterium into a topical vaccine.
No needles and no side effects...at least for mice. They've apparently identified a bacterial species that naturally produces a super-adjuvant that works for all antigens via mere topical application. It's a very long way away, but if it works in humans, Pierre, who seriously does not talk this way, says it's "instant Nobel".
No needles and no side effects...at least for mice. They've apparently identified a bacterial species that naturally produces a super-adjuvant that works for all antigens via mere topical application. It's a very long way away, but if it works in humans, Pierre, who seriously does not talk this way, says it's "instant Nobel".
Wealth and Blandness
Tying together two major Slog themes:
1. We have, comparatively recently, become wealthier and more comforted and entertained than the most ambitious dreams of our forebears - and we don't notice because we're spoiled princesses increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas.
2. We've grown blander and blander. When I was a kid, most people rolled their eyes at uptight corporate speech patterns. Since then, HR-speak has become normal in most workplaces, and is now the prevalent mode even for social conversation (for just one example, constant pained effort to avoid giving offense has - per the mattress peas - made everyone increasingly sensitive to nano-offense). When I was younger, a number of people you'd describe as "characters" showed passion, personality, and discernible life signs. I haven't heard that term in ages. Now we are dominated by puddy pudpuds; corporate creatures through and through, and the average American could not pass a Turing Test. G.F.S.P.!
But, back in the 70s, when spontaneous characters roamed the earth, it was a wilder, more un-tamed place. Workplaces were less efficient because people didn't behave like obedient cogs. The 1977 hit "Take This Job and Shove It" struck a chord, whereas one imagines a contemporary American furrowing her brow:
The messy, wild, untamed nature of 1975 left money on the table. Everyone dropping dead of emphysema and inhaling leaded gas fumes and being dehydrated most of the time (no bottled water) and enjoying three martini lunches and plenty of fun non-stigmatized recreational drug use and defiantly failing to assimilate into team values did not foster optimally efficient profit-making.
We're wealthier now because we're blander. HR won.
1. We have, comparatively recently, become wealthier and more comforted and entertained than the most ambitious dreams of our forebears - and we don't notice because we're spoiled princesses increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas.
2. We've grown blander and blander. When I was a kid, most people rolled their eyes at uptight corporate speech patterns. Since then, HR-speak has become normal in most workplaces, and is now the prevalent mode even for social conversation (for just one example, constant pained effort to avoid giving offense has - per the mattress peas - made everyone increasingly sensitive to nano-offense). When I was younger, a number of people you'd describe as "characters" showed passion, personality, and discernible life signs. I haven't heard that term in ages. Now we are dominated by puddy pudpuds; corporate creatures through and through, and the average American could not pass a Turing Test. G.F.S.P.!
But, back in the 70s, when spontaneous characters roamed the earth, it was a wilder, more un-tamed place. Workplaces were less efficient because people didn't behave like obedient cogs. The 1977 hit "Take This Job and Shove It" struck a chord, whereas one imagines a contemporary American furrowing her brow:
"Eek. While any employment situation certainly has its challenges, and many workers might prefer, at a given moment, to be pursuing personal interests, such language and sentiment are highly inappropriate for the workplace. This individual clearly has only themselves to blame for their failure to assimilate team values."Let's integrate the two observations.
The messy, wild, untamed nature of 1975 left money on the table. Everyone dropping dead of emphysema and inhaling leaded gas fumes and being dehydrated most of the time (no bottled water) and enjoying three martini lunches and plenty of fun non-stigmatized recreational drug use and defiantly failing to assimilate into team values did not foster optimally efficient profit-making.
We're wealthier now because we're blander. HR won.
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Bad Writers and German Shepherds
While the crowd delightedly enjoys a puppet show, puppeteers in the audience peer critically at the strings. It's not the most enjoyable approach, but they can't help it. And it's the same for writers. Today I spotted this:
The writing is bad, and the editor should be fired. Both seem satisfied with mere cleverishness. Ox carts stuck in snow! What a life, what a world! Henrietta, won’t you fetch me another cognac, darling? My piece for the New Yorker is coming along splendidly.
Much, much worse, this introduces an essay on the nineteenth century Donner family's tragic migration west, possibly involving cannibalism. The perfect context for wry detachment. I showed it to ChatGPT and asked which magazine it seemed like. Beautifully skilled in spotting patterns, it immediately guessed, correctly - The New Yorker - barely suppressing a "duh".
For the New Yorker this wasn't a bug, nor even a feature, but their proud signature. The editor, declining to blast this to smithereens, beheld the hollow pretention and approved. "This writer gets us!"
Calvin Trillin once wrote a piece about me and Chowhound for the New Yorker. It was laced with condescension. A friend remarked that he'd shown me no more respect than the ticktacktoe-playing chicken he'd profiled the year before. My favorite food writer, John Thorne, offered this magnificent advice: "Never let yourself be profiled by someone more famous than you."
But I can hardly demand more sober treatment than the Donner family, catastrophically lost in all that ironic snowy snow - which, if we took a moment to contemplate, might throw us off our cognac, or else compel, per my wont, six or seven more!
The Trillin piece was useful to my "career", such as it was, but was not a pleasant experience. And today, bombarded by New Yorker memories and associations, I find myself wondering how JD Salinger, the grand exemplar of phony-haters, ever wound up in such a place.
As a musician, I suppose I do understand. It was a gig. He took the gig. And his apocalyptic exit wasn't exactly unpredictable. He didn’t just leave The New Yorker, he blasted off so hard he reached galactic escape velocity, leaving public life entirely.
Perhaps Salinger wouldn’t have self-ejected so spectacularly if he hadn’t planted himself in the belly of the beast in the first place. It’s like the woman with the nightmare boyfriend who finally breaks up and immediately finds a girlfriend to hook up with. Long accommodation coils the spring tightly.
Note that this writing wasn't from Dana Goodyear's thoughtful article. It was penned by a staffer to introduce that article.
See my earlier thoughts on Salinger
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, heavy storms buried multiple U.S. states in snow, paralyzing traffic and making it an especially good time, one imagines, not to be travelling by ox-drawn wagon.I asked myself, incredulously, what "one imagines" is doing there. It adds nothing to an overstuffed sentence. Cramming it in was an indulgence, compounding the indulgence of the aside itself. Its only purpose is to establish the writer's wry detachment, like a German shepherd marking its scent. We, the readers, serve as hydrant.
The writing is bad, and the editor should be fired. Both seem satisfied with mere cleverishness. Ox carts stuck in snow! What a life, what a world! Henrietta, won’t you fetch me another cognac, darling? My piece for the New Yorker is coming along splendidly.
Much, much worse, this introduces an essay on the nineteenth century Donner family's tragic migration west, possibly involving cannibalism. The perfect context for wry detachment. I showed it to ChatGPT and asked which magazine it seemed like. Beautifully skilled in spotting patterns, it immediately guessed, correctly - The New Yorker - barely suppressing a "duh".
For the New Yorker this wasn't a bug, nor even a feature, but their proud signature. The editor, declining to blast this to smithereens, beheld the hollow pretention and approved. "This writer gets us!"
Calvin Trillin once wrote a piece about me and Chowhound for the New Yorker. It was laced with condescension. A friend remarked that he'd shown me no more respect than the ticktacktoe-playing chicken he'd profiled the year before. My favorite food writer, John Thorne, offered this magnificent advice: "Never let yourself be profiled by someone more famous than you."
But I can hardly demand more sober treatment than the Donner family, catastrophically lost in all that ironic snowy snow - which, if we took a moment to contemplate, might throw us off our cognac, or else compel, per my wont, six or seven more!
The Trillin piece was useful to my "career", such as it was, but was not a pleasant experience. And today, bombarded by New Yorker memories and associations, I find myself wondering how JD Salinger, the grand exemplar of phony-haters, ever wound up in such a place.
As a musician, I suppose I do understand. It was a gig. He took the gig. And his apocalyptic exit wasn't exactly unpredictable. He didn’t just leave The New Yorker, he blasted off so hard he reached galactic escape velocity, leaving public life entirely.
Perhaps Salinger wouldn’t have self-ejected so spectacularly if he hadn’t planted himself in the belly of the beast in the first place. It’s like the woman with the nightmare boyfriend who finally breaks up and immediately finds a girlfriend to hook up with. Long accommodation coils the spring tightly.
Note that this writing wasn't from Dana Goodyear's thoughtful article. It was penned by a staffer to introduce that article.
See my earlier thoughts on Salinger
Saturday, December 7, 2024
Shaving a Trope
I'm wandering through the holiday fair in downtown Setúbal and hear a brass band in the distance. As I get closer, I realize, to my horror, that they're playing "YMCA."
Are these guys MAGA? Has some vestige of Salazar-era authoritarianism arisen to align with the Trump cultural circus? Do these guys realize the current implications and associations of this song?
But then I recalled similar anomalies encountered in foreign lands. I keep endlessly relearning that transported tropes seldom retain context.
I've previously told the story of flying to Japan to perform with a (nearly) all-black big band, and the fat cat Japanese producer who paid for it all welcomed the band with a huge spread of fresh watermelon.
As my colleagues dug in nonchalantly (musicians on tour are like locusts; never knowing when you'll be fed again, you ask no questions), I parsed out the situation.
The producer genuinely respected us. He'd gone to great effort and expense to fly us over. He was certainly not looking to insult us.
Moreover, I knew that off-season watermelon in Japan costs $100 per melon (my bandmates would have choked if they'd known). So, again, this was not what it seemed. It was a gesture of respect, horribly bungled.
I finally understood that the situation was so simple that I'd failed to consider it: he'd heard somewhere that black people like watermelon. Not in any sneering way, but just as a data point. So he was being gracious. Like having frozen vodka ready for Russian visitors.
No other context was applicable. Just a data point he'd picked up from the ether (as we acquire most of the things we know). It took effort for me to shave off the layers of context and recognize the simplicity.
There's a Jewish restaurant in Krakow, Poland serving Jewish soul food cooked by gentiles in a restaurant festooned with the most vile caricatures of huge-nosed, money grubbing, grubby-bearded, well, Jews.
I didn't notice all at once. It was a slow burn as I tackled the greasy fare, peering around the room while chewing. My initial thought was: What exactly am I supporting here? Was this like striding into Auschwitz' gift shop circa 1944 to buy a commemorative "I took a shower!" yarmulka and lend support to the important work being done there?
Again, I pondered. The owners needed to brand; to convey that this was not Chinese or Italian or French food, but Jewish. So they sought out the most Jewish-seeming decor they could find. And, hoo boy, they'd found it! But there was no intention to offend; as with the Japanese producer, the whole enterprise was intended as respectful tribute. Not being Berkeley sociology grad students, they weren't trained in the art of tonal adjustment - e.g. the meticulous insertion of "sadly", "unfortunately", and "tragically" before all verbs - nor had they recognized the need to avoid cartoons of greedy, dirty rabbis. That's all!
Once again, shorn of context, a trope can be utterly without spin. The malignance is only in the interpretation.
Finally, back to Japan again. I was walking down the sidewalk as a gang of punks with mohawks and spikes and studs and crazy piercings approached with menacing expressions. My impulse was to dash to the other side of the street, but a tiny wizened grandma happened to be walking near me, and I paused to considered whether she was in danger.
She kept shuffling forward obliviously, a sweet smile on her face, having a nice walk on a lovely day. And, as they passed, the punks paused to bow with deep respect to their elder before recomposing themselves and moving on.
Even having left Kansas, you often must remind yourself you're not in Kansas anymore.
The band was just playing the damned song. Yeah, it might have entered their playlist because they've been hearing it on the news, but they're not bringing political baggage along with it.
On my end, I might consider the musicians terribly naive, and figure they ought to pay closer attention to implications. Or, I might acknowledge that they're just nice guys playing a fun song everybody kinda likes, and the only problem in all of this is me clutching at my pearls.
I lean toward the latter interpretation.
This, btw, is why boredom is never appropriate. The tedious tediousness of existence is only at the surface. Travel widely or observe deeply, and there's lots more going on. Also: less!
Friday, December 6, 2024
Zeal
I never understood competitiveness. Just do your best! Who cares what other people do?
The problem is that most people can't summon an iota of zeal without an ego tie-in; without some tangible what's-in-it-for-me. The dogs won't run the track without a crappy mechanical rabbit zooming down the railing.
I was shocked speechless to learn from an early girlfriend that most guys required assistance rising to the occasion, so to speak, even beholding her dazzling naked splendor.
This world is largely populated by N.P.C.s. It's really hard to grasp the listlessness - yet another aristocratic trait widely acquired as society grew unimaginably rich and comfortable.
The problem is that most people can't summon an iota of zeal without an ego tie-in; without some tangible what's-in-it-for-me. The dogs won't run the track without a crappy mechanical rabbit zooming down the railing.
I was shocked speechless to learn from an early girlfriend that most guys required assistance rising to the occasion, so to speak, even beholding her dazzling naked splendor.
This world is largely populated by N.P.C.s. It's really hard to grasp the listlessness - yet another aristocratic trait widely acquired as society grew unimaginably rich and comfortable.
Monday, December 2, 2024
Sliding Scales
Overlooking the sins of your own tribe because the other tribe is so very sinful is how Israeli/Palestinian-style uber-stalemates foment.
Right and wrong are not sliding scales. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions, but its exit ramps get blocked with “But they’re so much worse!!”
I watched professional tennis as a kid. Once, I saw an umpire call a shot "out of bounds" though the opposing player (and viewing audience at home) clearly knew it was inside the line. The camera zoomed in on the player’s face, which betrayed the slightest pinch of tightly constrained discomfort. Conflicting forces, impulses, and rationales were at play, and while the ones favoring justice, fair play, and sportsmanship were stifled, at least it wasn't entirely comfortable for him.
I realized that I'd spotted a saving grace. Though I very much wanted to see the player explode with indignation over the bad call - the same sort of angry response he'd have offered if a bad call went against him - at least I could spot his stomach lining eroding a little; his hair greying a little; his cells anti-oxidizing a little; and his mortal soul desiccating a little. There were at least some subtle consequences (see Brazilian Bus Driver Syndrome).
My two reactions: 1. I stopped watching professional tennis, and 2. I realized how hopefully close humanity was to a moral threshold. Yeah, we often chose to do the bad thing, but our saving grace was our tinge of teetery ambivalence.
That was back in the 1970's. Since then, we've clenched back from that ambivalence and toward greater comfort with our bad behavior and that of our cohorts (while becoming exquisitely fine-tuned to bad behavior by The Other; we’re paragons in judgement and pragmatists in action). But I maintain hope. The crossover point was visible in my short lifetime, so it's not inaccessible.
We can go first! We can risk nonconformity by leading, rather than following, the crowd! By being less extreme and rigid and awful. By insisting on smart calls and level standards. By standing for justice, fair play, and sportsmanship for everyone, even our despised opponents.
Or...we can keep blocking the exits from the highway to hell (hey, at least our intentions are super good, right?).
Greetings from sunny Portugal.
Right and wrong are not sliding scales. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions, but its exit ramps get blocked with “But they’re so much worse!!”
I watched professional tennis as a kid. Once, I saw an umpire call a shot "out of bounds" though the opposing player (and viewing audience at home) clearly knew it was inside the line. The camera zoomed in on the player’s face, which betrayed the slightest pinch of tightly constrained discomfort. Conflicting forces, impulses, and rationales were at play, and while the ones favoring justice, fair play, and sportsmanship were stifled, at least it wasn't entirely comfortable for him.
I realized that I'd spotted a saving grace. Though I very much wanted to see the player explode with indignation over the bad call - the same sort of angry response he'd have offered if a bad call went against him - at least I could spot his stomach lining eroding a little; his hair greying a little; his cells anti-oxidizing a little; and his mortal soul desiccating a little. There were at least some subtle consequences (see Brazilian Bus Driver Syndrome).
My two reactions: 1. I stopped watching professional tennis, and 2. I realized how hopefully close humanity was to a moral threshold. Yeah, we often chose to do the bad thing, but our saving grace was our tinge of teetery ambivalence.
That was back in the 1970's. Since then, we've clenched back from that ambivalence and toward greater comfort with our bad behavior and that of our cohorts (while becoming exquisitely fine-tuned to bad behavior by The Other; we’re paragons in judgement and pragmatists in action). But I maintain hope. The crossover point was visible in my short lifetime, so it's not inaccessible.
We can go first! We can risk nonconformity by leading, rather than following, the crowd! By being less extreme and rigid and awful. By insisting on smart calls and level standards. By standing for justice, fair play, and sportsmanship for everyone, even our despised opponents.
Or...we can keep blocking the exits from the highway to hell (hey, at least our intentions are super good, right?).
Greetings from sunny Portugal.
Sunday, December 1, 2024
I've Cruelly Deprived You of Food Porn
I've been posting an ongoing series on Facebook: photo essays of nothing-special, non-aspirational neighborhood meals in Setúbal, Portugal - with a strong emphasis on baked apples. It's pretty much "What Jim Had For Lunch Last Week", with wry running commentary. Catch up via links below.
October 18, 2025
October 25, 2025
November 3, 2025
November 12, 2025
November 13, 2025
December 1, 2025
Why am I posting this stuff there and not here? To explain, I need to tell a story of heights I cannot scale.
In a previous century, I wrote (as part of a weekly diary for Slate) about the closing week of wonderful Bo restaurant, a labor-of-love operated single-handedly by a feisty super-talented Korean woman named Maria who'd worked in fancy restaurants as a pastry chef but wanted to serve traditional Korean food in a cozy Queens storefront. She was the darling of food critics and of Chowhound's early years, but hardly anyone showed up.
I've experienced the death throes of thousands of restaurants. Normally, they turn glum and hapless. You'd think they'd be glad to see a customer, but, as you enter the dining room, you can feel the mental calculation: "This makes no real difference." Food goes downhill and servers bare their fangs. You lose your enthusiasm and stop coming as the circle turns vicious.
Maria, however, ran through the tape. The more hopeless it got, the better she cooked, and her gratitude to her small cadre of loyal customers only increased. As recounted in the link above, she walked me out to my car after my final meal on her final night, consoling me in my disconsolation. That's strength.
This Slog has been an abject failure, for a variety of reasons I've offered over the years. I have a long acquaintanceship with rejection (Chowhound's brief acclaim was a fluke), so I'm no stranger to the impulse to keep improving in the face of shunning (even when it's counterproductive because the problem all along was that you were too far ahead). I once explained the mindset:
So that part was good, I guess, but, ultimately I've proven to lack Maria's strength of character. I haven't run through the tape; haven't shown diehards proper gratitude. I know many of you are here for the sporadic food content, but I've been posting it to Facebook without bothering to copy it over here for the tiny clique of readers who, in many cases, have followed me for years. I am the bitter idiot waiter who scowls at the good guys because there aren't enough of them. I am, alas, no Maria.
I have, though, at least turned out to be a Walter, despite lack of appreciation for the bubblegum (come to think of it, most of the kids just grabbed the gum and sullenly walked back to their seats, oblivious to the gesture and effort from this sweet old guy).
October 18, 2025
October 25, 2025
November 3, 2025
November 12, 2025
November 13, 2025
December 1, 2025
Why am I posting this stuff there and not here? To explain, I need to tell a story of heights I cannot scale.
In a previous century, I wrote (as part of a weekly diary for Slate) about the closing week of wonderful Bo restaurant, a labor-of-love operated single-handedly by a feisty super-talented Korean woman named Maria who'd worked in fancy restaurants as a pastry chef but wanted to serve traditional Korean food in a cozy Queens storefront. She was the darling of food critics and of Chowhound's early years, but hardly anyone showed up.
I've experienced the death throes of thousands of restaurants. Normally, they turn glum and hapless. You'd think they'd be glad to see a customer, but, as you enter the dining room, you can feel the mental calculation: "This makes no real difference." Food goes downhill and servers bare their fangs. You lose your enthusiasm and stop coming as the circle turns vicious.
Maria, however, ran through the tape. The more hopeless it got, the better she cooked, and her gratitude to her small cadre of loyal customers only increased. As recounted in the link above, she walked me out to my car after my final meal on her final night, consoling me in my disconsolation. That's strength.
This Slog has been an abject failure, for a variety of reasons I've offered over the years. I have a long acquaintanceship with rejection (Chowhound's brief acclaim was a fluke), so I'm no stranger to the impulse to keep improving in the face of shunning (even when it's counterproductive because the problem all along was that you were too far ahead). I once explained the mindset:
However good you are now, get way way better, and then, when you're certain you're good enough, get way way better still. And then get better. Finally, realize you absolutely suck and triple it.A vicious circle of rejection can thus provoke a virtuous circle of improvement. In the spirit of The Red Shoes, geometric progression can hoist things so far up the curve of declining results that a dimwitted trombonist/food critic might somehow (I can't take credit because it was mostly epiphany) conjure up fresh and credible explanations for most of the long-standing mysteries (human happiness, theology, cosmology, art, creativity, messiahs, god, autism, addiction, depression (here and here) spirituality, self-destructiveness, art, etc).
So that part was good, I guess, but, ultimately I've proven to lack Maria's strength of character. I haven't run through the tape; haven't shown diehards proper gratitude. I know many of you are here for the sporadic food content, but I've been posting it to Facebook without bothering to copy it over here for the tiny clique of readers who, in many cases, have followed me for years. I am the bitter idiot waiter who scowls at the good guys because there aren't enough of them. I am, alas, no Maria.
I have, though, at least turned out to be a Walter, despite lack of appreciation for the bubblegum (come to think of it, most of the kids just grabbed the gum and sullenly walked back to their seats, oblivious to the gesture and effort from this sweet old guy).
Thursday, November 28, 2024
Blame Fred
I blame Fred Rogers for the most pernicious American affliction. With the best of intentions, he convinced several generations of children that they're special just because they're them.
And now, sure enough, we have a society of people who feel special for being just them. And it's killing us. Fred broke everything.
I keep meeting Americans with nothing to offer. They aren't funny or smart or charming or kind or helpful or interesting. Lacking a personality, they speak only tribal talking points. They're extraordinarily bored - and thus extraordinarily boring - and utterly empty.
In a recent posting about moving to Portugal, I wrote:
They're all just sort of...there. They self-present - "Here I am!" - and await fueling. And it's fine, really, except for their unshakeable conviction that this suffices. Convinced to their very marrow that they are special just for being them, they don't need to try. Nobody tries.
And now, sure enough, we have a society of people who feel special for being just them. And it's killing us. Fred broke everything.
I keep meeting Americans with nothing to offer. They aren't funny or smart or charming or kind or helpful or interesting. Lacking a personality, they speak only tribal talking points. They're extraordinarily bored - and thus extraordinarily boring - and utterly empty.
In a recent posting about moving to Portugal, I wrote:
Ideally by adulthood a person has passions and pursuits. And/or some ability to kindle social engagement. If you have none of those things - if you're a passive, undeveloped blob of weepy hope - stay in Long Beach or Tacoma.They move to Portugal hoping it will invest them with...something. Anything. Like flaccid puppets, they imagine a new locale will pull their strings and conjure a show for them to star in. It's a level of shameless passivity normally seen only in the most frothy aristocracies - the ones immediately preceding reigns of terror.
They're all just sort of...there. They self-present - "Here I am!" - and await fueling. And it's fine, really, except for their unshakeable conviction that this suffices. Convinced to their very marrow that they are special just for being them, they don't need to try. Nobody tries.
Even if they did, there's no "there" there; nothing solid to draw from. It takes decades to develop usefulness.Fred Rogers never meant to create a society filled with people born on third base who feel like the only real player on the field. But that's precisely what he did, and now it's not such a beautiful day in the neighborhood!
Friday, November 22, 2024
The Problem Solver's Dilemma
The pipes burst in your house. It's a disaster. Your possessions are soaked, floor boards are failing, and the forces of mold are gleefully standing by. You call a plumber who rushes over, but you don't let him get to work. Instead, you insist that he listen to your tale of the trauma you've been experiencing...while water continues to gush.I've resorted to a pretty extreme example to land my point about what we are devolving into. And even so, it doesn't read as oddly as it would have only ten years ago. Ten years forward from now, the average American will assume the story's ending was cut off. So what happened?
The craziest thing is that we yearn for a Messiah to come and make it all better when we work so staggeringly hard to stoke and flaunt our pain, and to suppress any intrusion of the clarity that might dispel it. We didn't nail up the last one due to misapprehension. It was our signature move. This world is, above all, a Messiah trap.
Further reading:
Solving Problem Solving
Waiting for David Copperfield
You Can Be The Messiah
Saturday, November 16, 2024
My One Single Post-Election Digestion News Link
My approach to political news has been a gradual tuning out. I stopped listening to MAGA ages ago, because I found it 100% performative bad-faith horseshit. And around the 30,000th time I endured an MSNBC panel discussion of whether Trump's racist or not (spoiler: he is), I realized I was getting zero nutritional value from that sort of thing. As a child of the 70s, I was conditioned to accepting non-nutritive TV. I've probably seen every episode of F Troop twelve times. But I've been forcing mysel to learn - late in life! - to resist media stupors.
I do stay up on what's happening, but I've opted out of "Can you believe this????" media-coached digestion. Yes, I believe it. I don't need help processing the obvious, nor do I need to be spun up any angrier. Even the stuff I agree with starts to feel so tediously repetitive that it feels like hypnosis. Hard pass.
I stay on top of headines - which I catch once, without coached digestion (unless I need help understanding implications, which is often available via a brief quote or tweet or soundbite - the Must-Read Twitter list I curate usually does a good job of contextualizing news) - plus I'll pay attention to anything that seems like it might be both smart and surprising.
Virtually nothing fits that description, unfortunately. But this does:
The segment offers a number of fresh facts and framings. The big one: Trump has not only hollowed out and zombified the Republican party, but he's done so with the Democrat party, as well, though the mainstream hasn't noticed yet.
It starts a bit slow (where they indulge the clickbait fury - which I find hypnotic, not fresh - conveyed in the title), but is only a 15 minute commitment, and it's entertaining.
I do stay up on what's happening, but I've opted out of "Can you believe this????" media-coached digestion. Yes, I believe it. I don't need help processing the obvious, nor do I need to be spun up any angrier. Even the stuff I agree with starts to feel so tediously repetitive that it feels like hypnosis. Hard pass.
I stay on top of headines - which I catch once, without coached digestion (unless I need help understanding implications, which is often available via a brief quote or tweet or soundbite - the Must-Read Twitter list I curate usually does a good job of contextualizing news) - plus I'll pay attention to anything that seems like it might be both smart and surprising.
Virtually nothing fits that description, unfortunately. But this does:
The segment offers a number of fresh facts and framings. The big one: Trump has not only hollowed out and zombified the Republican party, but he's done so with the Democrat party, as well, though the mainstream hasn't noticed yet.
It starts a bit slow (where they indulge the clickbait fury - which I find hypnotic, not fresh - conveyed in the title), but is only a 15 minute commitment, and it's entertaining.
Thursday, November 14, 2024
Jealousy, Redux
My observation a few weeks ago that jealousy appears long before praise (the other girls will detest you for your beauty even if you can't score a prom date) was true. But my explanation was unnecessarily convoluted.
Jealousy arrives long before acclamation because the world is not set up to acclaim. Unless you're a competitive swimmer or office-leading linoleum salesman, don't expect medals or certificates, or even kind words. Praise comes only to those with little use for it, the monkey-see/monkey-do machine having identified them as praisees, a positioning with little to do with talent or other tangible bona fides.
Jealousy is much more tightly pinned to bona fides. The jealous scan their perimeters 24/7, with sublime sensitivity and hair trigger responsiveness. They notice early, along with the paranoid and the manipulative. Those with a vested stake in spotting exceptionality stand alertly ready to slash away.
And that's the world’s only scanning system. Most people are not wired to detect (much less celebrate) the exceptional, because it’s all about them. Fully occupied with their own fantasies of exceptionality, they are your competitors in the marketplace for recognition. When actual talent does get spotlit, it's a bank shot. Acclaim happens despite talent, not because of it, as an outgassing of tribal flocking hormonal magnetism, normally kindled via cynical tactics.
Your neighbor's German shephard barks though you never considered breaking in. He parses your innate threat before you imagine yourself in such terms. To the barking German shephard, you seem a formidable foe, even though your friends barely suppress yawns.
It was ghastly to be envied, even by old friends, for my seeming Chowhound success while I struggled to pay bills and devoted 16 hours per day, 365 days per year, to repelling online psychos and shills alone in my claustrophobic apartment endlessly awaiting download of gigantic log files because I couldn't afford broadband (full tale told here).
I desperately needed someone to feed me a doughnut or to take me for a walk and reassure me that I deserved my share of the world's sunlight and oxygen, but most everyone assumed I'd ascended to some rarified position, wanting for nothing, and I was hated for it. I have not recovered from this.
Jealousy arrives long before acclamation because the world is not set up to acclaim. Unless you're a competitive swimmer or office-leading linoleum salesman, don't expect medals or certificates, or even kind words. Praise comes only to those with little use for it, the monkey-see/monkey-do machine having identified them as praisees, a positioning with little to do with talent or other tangible bona fides.
Jealousy is much more tightly pinned to bona fides. The jealous scan their perimeters 24/7, with sublime sensitivity and hair trigger responsiveness. They notice early, along with the paranoid and the manipulative. Those with a vested stake in spotting exceptionality stand alertly ready to slash away.
And that's the world’s only scanning system. Most people are not wired to detect (much less celebrate) the exceptional, because it’s all about them. Fully occupied with their own fantasies of exceptionality, they are your competitors in the marketplace for recognition. When actual talent does get spotlit, it's a bank shot. Acclaim happens despite talent, not because of it, as an outgassing of tribal flocking hormonal magnetism, normally kindled via cynical tactics.
Your neighbor's German shephard barks though you never considered breaking in. He parses your innate threat before you imagine yourself in such terms. To the barking German shephard, you seem a formidable foe, even though your friends barely suppress yawns.
It was ghastly to be envied, even by old friends, for my seeming Chowhound success while I struggled to pay bills and devoted 16 hours per day, 365 days per year, to repelling online psychos and shills alone in my claustrophobic apartment endlessly awaiting download of gigantic log files because I couldn't afford broadband (full tale told here).
I desperately needed someone to feed me a doughnut or to take me for a walk and reassure me that I deserved my share of the world's sunlight and oxygen, but most everyone assumed I'd ascended to some rarified position, wanting for nothing, and I was hated for it. I have not recovered from this.
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Roy Haynes Meets Mr. Raucous
I despair at the task of making you understand what drummer Roy Haynes, who just died, meant to jazz. You need to really understand jazz and jazz history to fathom the impossible sweep and significance and miracle of who he was and what he accomplished.
This was not just jazz hero #600 dropping dead. Not "he played so well." Not a "long and storied career". Not "beloved the world over." Let me try to explain Roy Haynes via analogy to a realm you probably know better: writing.
Say Roy Haynes anonymously wrote Beowulf. And, as a cohort of Chaucer, composed one of the Canterbury Tales. Say he was an important member of the Continental Congress helping Jefferson revise the Declaration of Independence, and a pioneering author of wicked Victorian political satire who'd given Oscar Wilde his first break. Say he went on to write Emmy-winning screenplays for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and sip absinthe with Hemingway (who looked up to him like a hero) in Key West. Then say, at age 90, you found him writing fiendishly intricate postmodern novels as vibrantly modern as any of the young leading lights. Better, even.
Say he did all this not like some crafty operator making strategic pivots - donning a bunch of wigs and making superficial course changes - but that every single step was brilliant and right and slick and AHEAD of the curve. He sounded not just like twelve different guys from twelve different eras, but like the BEST guy from each of twelve different eras.
It seems ridiculous. Nobody ever did that. Nobody ever could do that. It sounds like I'm exaggerating. But Roy Haynes, who'd played easy, lyrical swing with Lester Young and frantic bebop with Charlie Parker and Blues Rock with the Allman Brothers and modern jazz with Chick Corea and fiendishly complex late-stage intellectuality with the smuggest recent youngsters, truly was that guy. Nobody else in jazz ever did anything remotely like this. Nobody in any field of endeavor that I'm aware of ever did anything remotely like this.
Also, there was my minuscule cameo appearance.
One night Roy walked into my weekly blues gig - my first steady work out of school - in a trashy little gin mill in the ghetto of Roosevelt Long Island where Eddie Murphy, just a couple years prior, had done his first standup (there was an 8x10 glossy in the manager's office made out "To Mr. Hicks' Place, where I lost my comedy virginity, from Eddie") and Roy was, as always, dressed like a million bucks and had his slick sports car parked out front, and I wasn't the least bit surprised to see him there because Roy Haynes was everywhere and into everything and knew everyone (the garrulous bartender at Skylark Lounge where I hung out when not gigging was Roy's best friend because of course he was), and I, a cocky lad compensating for deep shyness and insecurity, especially here in this ghetto bar at the height of a dangerous crack epidemic, overcompensated by rocking the joint with trombone so raucous and funky that our band's guitarist, Bo Diddly Junior (no relation), who played his axe with every part of his body including his crotch, occasionally took me aside to suggest I tone it down a notch, and on this night Roy was joking around in the back room with the club's manager and a small entourage as I ducked in on a break to make sure my horn was out of everybody's way when conversation suddenly stopped and I immediately began to sweat buckets, sensing that I was about to take some focus, and, sure enough, Roy said "Hey man sound good out there" and I froze. Absolutely froze. I couldn't respond, I couldn't acknowledge, I couldn't even let myself imagine that it was me he was addressing. Must be anyone else.
No more Mr. Cocky, just an awkward white suburban kid right out of school feeling mortified that Haynes, a subtle, poetic musician with a sublimely light touch, had walked in to hear me playing the most raucous fatback and collard greens trombone, and, at age 24, I wasn't wise enough to realize that he bloody well knew I was simply playing the gig as it needed to be played - anything but subtle! - and furthermore heard the poetry latently beneath it all, but I was committed to my embarrassment at being caught with my pants down, so to speak, despite the seemingly solid counter-evidence of "Hey man sound good out there", which only confused me further - was he addressing Mr. Raucous? - leaving me unable to respond or look up or breathe or move or live.
I went on to exist in the periphery of a lot of Roy Haynes stuff. That bartender was my buddy, too, though we never hung together with Roy. I was friends with many of the young players Roy hired to play in his band. I caught a bunch of his gigs, marveling at his pliancy and otherworldly, Faust-bargain-level touch and finesse. As he climbed through his 70s, 80s, and 90s, Roy never failed to sound far more modern and youthfully, nimbly energetic than anyone from my generation.
I never exchanged a word with him. I'd botched my chance, but was quietly present in his world, popping up in the little hood joints unknown to fans or jazz writers where Roy let his hair down between concert tours. Part of that furniture. And it never bothered me much, because there are far worse things than being comfortable furniture for Roy Haynes. If you're gonna Zelig, that's how you Zelig.
Insiders knew that Roy Hayne's favorite record of his was "Out of the Afternoon." It was my favorite even before I learned this. I invite you to download it now and listen. It's remarkable. The blind saxophonist Roland Kirk, who is featured, was important to me, though I never got to meet him. At the same time I was blasting the paint off the gin mill in Roosevelt, I was also seeking out Kirk's surviving sidemen, wherever they were, and befriending and playing with them, poetically and subtly. Roy never stopped into any of those gigs, alas (though those farflung clubs were certainly on his radar, because nothing wasn't on Roy's radar for, christ, literally 99 years), so I never got to be Mr. Poetry for Roy Haynes.
So check this out. This guy 1. is EIGHTY SIX YEARS OLD, and 2. started out with Lester Young, who was one generation removed from "When the Saints Go Marching In”:
This was not just jazz hero #600 dropping dead. Not "he played so well." Not a "long and storied career". Not "beloved the world over." Let me try to explain Roy Haynes via analogy to a realm you probably know better: writing.
Say Roy Haynes anonymously wrote Beowulf. And, as a cohort of Chaucer, composed one of the Canterbury Tales. Say he was an important member of the Continental Congress helping Jefferson revise the Declaration of Independence, and a pioneering author of wicked Victorian political satire who'd given Oscar Wilde his first break. Say he went on to write Emmy-winning screenplays for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and sip absinthe with Hemingway (who looked up to him like a hero) in Key West. Then say, at age 90, you found him writing fiendishly intricate postmodern novels as vibrantly modern as any of the young leading lights. Better, even.
Say he did all this not like some crafty operator making strategic pivots - donning a bunch of wigs and making superficial course changes - but that every single step was brilliant and right and slick and AHEAD of the curve. He sounded not just like twelve different guys from twelve different eras, but like the BEST guy from each of twelve different eras.
It seems ridiculous. Nobody ever did that. Nobody ever could do that. It sounds like I'm exaggerating. But Roy Haynes, who'd played easy, lyrical swing with Lester Young and frantic bebop with Charlie Parker and Blues Rock with the Allman Brothers and modern jazz with Chick Corea and fiendishly complex late-stage intellectuality with the smuggest recent youngsters, truly was that guy. Nobody else in jazz ever did anything remotely like this. Nobody in any field of endeavor that I'm aware of ever did anything remotely like this.
Also, there was my minuscule cameo appearance.
No more Mr. Cocky, just an awkward white suburban kid right out of school feeling mortified that Haynes, a subtle, poetic musician with a sublimely light touch, had walked in to hear me playing the most raucous fatback and collard greens trombone, and, at age 24, I wasn't wise enough to realize that he bloody well knew I was simply playing the gig as it needed to be played - anything but subtle! - and furthermore heard the poetry latently beneath it all, but I was committed to my embarrassment at being caught with my pants down, so to speak, despite the seemingly solid counter-evidence of "Hey man sound good out there", which only confused me further - was he addressing Mr. Raucous? - leaving me unable to respond or look up or breathe or move or live.
I went on to exist in the periphery of a lot of Roy Haynes stuff. That bartender was my buddy, too, though we never hung together with Roy. I was friends with many of the young players Roy hired to play in his band. I caught a bunch of his gigs, marveling at his pliancy and otherworldly, Faust-bargain-level touch and finesse. As he climbed through his 70s, 80s, and 90s, Roy never failed to sound far more modern and youthfully, nimbly energetic than anyone from my generation.
I never exchanged a word with him. I'd botched my chance, but was quietly present in his world, popping up in the little hood joints unknown to fans or jazz writers where Roy let his hair down between concert tours. Part of that furniture. And it never bothered me much, because there are far worse things than being comfortable furniture for Roy Haynes. If you're gonna Zelig, that's how you Zelig.
Insiders knew that Roy Hayne's favorite record of his was "Out of the Afternoon." It was my favorite even before I learned this. I invite you to download it now and listen. It's remarkable. The blind saxophonist Roland Kirk, who is featured, was important to me, though I never got to meet him. At the same time I was blasting the paint off the gin mill in Roosevelt, I was also seeking out Kirk's surviving sidemen, wherever they were, and befriending and playing with them, poetically and subtly. Roy never stopped into any of those gigs, alas (though those farflung clubs were certainly on his radar, because nothing wasn't on Roy's radar for, christ, literally 99 years), so I never got to be Mr. Poetry for Roy Haynes.
So check this out. This guy 1. is EIGHTY SIX YEARS OLD, and 2. started out with Lester Young, who was one generation removed from "When the Saints Go Marching In”:
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
The Pitch
Eight billion people on a planet assuredly proclaiming "I've got this!" while hilariously bungling absolutely everything.
It's pure comedy gold. Not as metaphor. Not a wry aside about the greater human condition. I mean it quite literally. That's what this all is. Not joking. Not being cute.
As a child, I had the inescapable feeling of being trapped in a comedy movie for the entertainment of some invisible party. Maybe "God" or whatever, idunno - I was never a big name dropper.
Decent insight for a kid, but it's a whole other thing to reverse engineer the full proposition of a farce in which one is trapped. It took me a bunch of decades.
I realize that there’s vast juicy goodness to be gained by reconsidering absolutely everything from this framing. So if you just chuckle and move on to your next bookmark, you'll miss out on tons of potential integration and explanation now that the entire predicament has finally been nicely framed for you.
But you will miss out. You'll consider it for no more than 17 seconds. Why?
A greater conviction that you've got this.
Thanks to the great Bill Monk for planting the seed. A few years ago when Red Ventures shut down Chowhound, I submitted a few smart requests and suggestions, and they answered me condescendingly, just like every feckless, cocky product manager since the day I sold out.
Bill noted how remarkable it was that I was still hearing “Yeah thanks but we got this” even as they were literally shutting the thing down.
"We got this," I realize now, is an absolute monster.
It's pure comedy gold. Not as metaphor. Not a wry aside about the greater human condition. I mean it quite literally. That's what this all is. Not joking. Not being cute.
As a child, I had the inescapable feeling of being trapped in a comedy movie for the entertainment of some invisible party. Maybe "God" or whatever, idunno - I was never a big name dropper.
Decent insight for a kid, but it's a whole other thing to reverse engineer the full proposition of a farce in which one is trapped. It took me a bunch of decades.
I realize that there’s vast juicy goodness to be gained by reconsidering absolutely everything from this framing. So if you just chuckle and move on to your next bookmark, you'll miss out on tons of potential integration and explanation now that the entire predicament has finally been nicely framed for you.
But you will miss out. You'll consider it for no more than 17 seconds. Why?
A greater conviction that you've got this.
Thanks to the great Bill Monk for planting the seed. A few years ago when Red Ventures shut down Chowhound, I submitted a few smart requests and suggestions, and they answered me condescendingly, just like every feckless, cocky product manager since the day I sold out.
Bill noted how remarkable it was that I was still hearing “Yeah thanks but we got this” even as they were literally shutting the thing down.
"We got this," I realize now, is an absolute monster.
Monday, November 11, 2024
Flipping Solicitude
A few weeks ago I indexed some useful flips of perspective to better understand this mystifying world. "Selfish people feel overly generous, while the generous feel terribly selfish." That sort of thing.
But I forgot one. It's something I've mentioned here before, but I want to boil it down and tie it in to that index:
Helpful people never flamboyantly offer to be helpful. It would never cross their mind to do so.
So whenever someone emphatically tells you to feel free to ask questions, that's always a pose. An empty gesture. You'll be granted one, perhaps two, grudging replies, and they won’t be well-crafted.
Helpful people never declare solicitude. They’re just solicitous. So they craft the bejesus out of their answers.
I craft the bejesus out of my postings here, though no one's forcing me/paying me. I'm just trying to be helpful (and am not the least bit vested in seeming helpful).
But I forgot one. It's something I've mentioned here before, but I want to boil it down and tie it in to that index:
Helpful people never flamboyantly offer to be helpful. It would never cross their mind to do so.
So whenever someone emphatically tells you to feel free to ask questions, that's always a pose. An empty gesture. You'll be granted one, perhaps two, grudging replies, and they won’t be well-crafted.
Helpful people never declare solicitude. They’re just solicitous. So they craft the bejesus out of their answers.
I craft the bejesus out of my postings here, though no one's forcing me/paying me. I'm just trying to be helpful (and am not the least bit vested in seeming helpful).
Friday, November 8, 2024
The Vance Stock Bump
I'd finally broken up with a deeply damaged - and damaging - girlfriend who'd inflicted real torture. I had put up with it not because I dig that sort of thing, but because I'm someone who can fall in love with a ham sandwich (literally, now that I consider the statement!). And love, alas, is love.
She chased me some. A few weeks after the breakup, I mentioned on Chowhound that I had trouble finding good butterscotch, and she sent me a fancy little package of the stuff. My cinematic move would have been to violently throw the package in the trash with a vicious snarl. Set it on fire. Donate it to hungry children. Anything but eat this tainted butterscotch from a person who'd worked tirelessly to make me miserable for the sin of loving her.
But I don't play out cinematic scenes. In fact, that's the only reason I'm still alive.
This week, because finance bros are feeling exuberant about the upcoming reign of President Vance and Vice President Musk, my savings have gone up by a ton. And I don't feel an iota of petulance about it.
I'm still very upset about the election, and rueful about what's to come, but I don't do cinematic petulance. Not once have I violently swept objects off a desk or table while hollering madly. I'm not pretending to star in a movie. I'm real.
So I'm eating the butterscotch! Not bitterly. Blithely happy with the gain. Why not? I mean, of course it will sink back down as kakistocracy has its real world effect. But for now, I'll enjoy it. I don't need to tie together all strands of my Emotional Journey into some Grander, Bigger Story, because a story is just a story, while a tin of butterscotch or a little extra money are concrete and enjoyable.
I'm not "playing along". I certainly haven't been "bought out". I'd do anything legal to remove these m-f'ers from power, regardless of its short-term impact on my finances. The money doesn't make me appreciate Trump any more than the butterscotch stoked fond feelings for my ex. But even a stupid poodle understands what to do when kibble lands in its dish.
Regarding the millions of Trump-voters who don't have savings, and have not reaped this reward - and won't reap much else in the next four years: I don't gloat at them, nor does my heart bleed. I earnestly hope their situation improves...while I blithely and non-petulantly scarf the butterscotch.
She chased me some. A few weeks after the breakup, I mentioned on Chowhound that I had trouble finding good butterscotch, and she sent me a fancy little package of the stuff. My cinematic move would have been to violently throw the package in the trash with a vicious snarl. Set it on fire. Donate it to hungry children. Anything but eat this tainted butterscotch from a person who'd worked tirelessly to make me miserable for the sin of loving her.
But I don't play out cinematic scenes. In fact, that's the only reason I'm still alive.
Once, a long time ago, I was feeling severely suicidal, and it was patently clear what comes next in the movie scene. "THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU JUMP OFF THE CLIFF OR TOSS ALL THE PILLS DOWN YOUR THROAT!" But I don't mindlessly follow tropes. I don't stay on-script. I'm thoughtful - which, in this grand Idiocracy, makes me seem shmart, but only in the sense of a one-eyed man in the land of the blind.I didn't need to think much. I scarfed the butterscotch, enjoying every last pellet. I didn't relate it back to my ex in any way, for better or for worse. I just ate the butterscotch. Yum!
It seemed plainly evident that I had no beef whatsoever with my body. That wasn't even an issue, so it wasn't the move. So I simply let go of my pain and anguish en masse, which, I instantly discovered, is exactly what a suicidal urge really urges (read the tale here).
This week, because finance bros are feeling exuberant about the upcoming reign of President Vance and Vice President Musk, my savings have gone up by a ton. And I don't feel an iota of petulance about it.
I'm still very upset about the election, and rueful about what's to come, but I don't do cinematic petulance. Not once have I violently swept objects off a desk or table while hollering madly. I'm not pretending to star in a movie. I'm real.
So I'm eating the butterscotch! Not bitterly. Blithely happy with the gain. Why not? I mean, of course it will sink back down as kakistocracy has its real world effect. But for now, I'll enjoy it. I don't need to tie together all strands of my Emotional Journey into some Grander, Bigger Story, because a story is just a story, while a tin of butterscotch or a little extra money are concrete and enjoyable.
I'm not "playing along". I certainly haven't been "bought out". I'd do anything legal to remove these m-f'ers from power, regardless of its short-term impact on my finances. The money doesn't make me appreciate Trump any more than the butterscotch stoked fond feelings for my ex. But even a stupid poodle understands what to do when kibble lands in its dish.
Regarding the millions of Trump-voters who don't have savings, and have not reaped this reward - and won't reap much else in the next four years: I don't gloat at them, nor does my heart bleed. I earnestly hope their situation improves...while I blithely and non-petulantly scarf the butterscotch.
Thursday, November 7, 2024
On Moving to Portugal
Oddly, I wrote this before the election.
Since recent events place this in an entirely diferent context, I'll add links to part 1 and part 2 of my explanation of how I originally construed my move ("How to Plan an Alternative Timeline While Remaining Momentarily Complacent"). They were written a few years ago now, and land differently now. But the following is my perspective two years into my move, and has nothing to do with politics.
Old friends often ask whether I'm "happy in Portugal."
The question presupposes that one's dramatic trajectory slopes toward winning or losing as one goes here or there and does this or that. "How's your arc today, Sally?" "I dyed my hair last week and I'm up six points, Mary!"
Real life is not a two-dimensional vignette, there's no dramatic payoff, and channel changes don't deliver happy-ever-afters. I once noted that "This is not a film. We're raindrops slowly working down windows, not heroic protagonists." So when people make big moves imagining it will feel like a big move, they nearly always wind up deeply disappointed, because it didn't change everything. Or even much of anything. Because wherever you go, there you are.
Here (in cinematic terms because most people can't escape that perspective) is what a move like this actually changes: it swaps in a fresh backdrop. The stuff you do in front of the backdrop remains largely unaffected.
Wherever you go, there you are!
I'm beyond being surprised by this. I’m able to learn lessons after the trillionth repetition, and the world is an elaborate contrivance to patiently teach us this fundamental truth. So with that in mind, here’s realistic advice on moving to some distant shore.
If you have inertia - passions, projects, and interests which bring you a satisfying sense of meaning - you'll thrive pursuing those things in front of a snazzy new backdrop. I take responsibility for my life experience. I write, play, ponder, walk, cook, eat, travel, help, scheme, optimize, learn, meditate, and generally enthuse, all in similar fashion to before, but in a sunnier place where the prevalent narcissism feels somewhat less familiar.
If you lack inertia, and need the external world to prod and delight you and supply your sense of meaning, you'll be fine so long as you're able to create and sustain those conditions at your destination. If you expect the new place to provide those services while you remain passive, you will be sorely disappointed, because the world absolutely does not give a fuck about you.
If that observation upsets you, don't move, because it will grow starkly evident when you go elsewhere expecting something different. Back home, you can lose yourself in fury over your neighbor's political yard signs and other petty trivialities.
Ideally by adulthood a person has passions and pursuits. And/or some ability to kindle social engagement. If you have none of those things - if you're a passive, undeveloped blob of weepy hope - stay in Long Beach or Tacoma and develop passions or social stirring skills. Learn to make your world interesting (the introvert move)...or to make yourself interesting (the extrovert move). And then - and only then - find a snazzy backdrop to do that in front of.
Or else accept the path of least resistance, remaining in situ, doing what you can to stave off the torpor which is never not your responsibility. Whether you sit in a Venetian gondola or a La-Z-Boy recliner, that part is entirely on you. Without the ability to inhabit a foreground, shifting backdrops can only depress you.
Boredom is not a sucking action from a vapid universe. It's a thrusting push from vapid you.
If you're bored in Tampa, you'll be bored anywhere. That said, if you can find equanimity being bored in front of a new backdrop - shrugging off your non-delight with only mild bitterness - that's not so bad, though you might have saved yourself the trouble. But if you find life interesting while at the DMV or on line at the drug store, you'll find it differently interesting after a move. And that's a delight, so, by all means, go for it!
Since recent events place this in an entirely diferent context, I'll add links to part 1 and part 2 of my explanation of how I originally construed my move ("How to Plan an Alternative Timeline While Remaining Momentarily Complacent"). They were written a few years ago now, and land differently now. But the following is my perspective two years into my move, and has nothing to do with politics.
Old friends often ask whether I'm "happy in Portugal."
The question presupposes that one's dramatic trajectory slopes toward winning or losing as one goes here or there and does this or that. "How's your arc today, Sally?" "I dyed my hair last week and I'm up six points, Mary!"
Real life is not a two-dimensional vignette, there's no dramatic payoff, and channel changes don't deliver happy-ever-afters. I once noted that "This is not a film. We're raindrops slowly working down windows, not heroic protagonists." So when people make big moves imagining it will feel like a big move, they nearly always wind up deeply disappointed, because it didn't change everything. Or even much of anything. Because wherever you go, there you are.
Here (in cinematic terms because most people can't escape that perspective) is what a move like this actually changes: it swaps in a fresh backdrop. The stuff you do in front of the backdrop remains largely unaffected.
Wherever you go, there you are!
I'm beyond being surprised by this. I’m able to learn lessons after the trillionth repetition, and the world is an elaborate contrivance to patiently teach us this fundamental truth. So with that in mind, here’s realistic advice on moving to some distant shore.
If you have inertia - passions, projects, and interests which bring you a satisfying sense of meaning - you'll thrive pursuing those things in front of a snazzy new backdrop. I take responsibility for my life experience. I write, play, ponder, walk, cook, eat, travel, help, scheme, optimize, learn, meditate, and generally enthuse, all in similar fashion to before, but in a sunnier place where the prevalent narcissism feels somewhat less familiar.
No life-changing pivot. No plot development leaving our protagonist happy ever after - or gnashing his teeth in fraught regret. Just an agreeable new backdrop swapped in behind the continuity. When I leave my apartment to take a walk, I like how it smells. Are you getting the idea?
If you lack inertia, and need the external world to prod and delight you and supply your sense of meaning, you'll be fine so long as you're able to create and sustain those conditions at your destination. If you expect the new place to provide those services while you remain passive, you will be sorely disappointed, because the world absolutely does not give a fuck about you.
If that observation upsets you, don't move, because it will grow starkly evident when you go elsewhere expecting something different. Back home, you can lose yourself in fury over your neighbor's political yard signs and other petty trivialities.
Ideally by adulthood a person has passions and pursuits. And/or some ability to kindle social engagement. If you have none of those things - if you're a passive, undeveloped blob of weepy hope - stay in Long Beach or Tacoma and develop passions or social stirring skills. Learn to make your world interesting (the introvert move)...or to make yourself interesting (the extrovert move). And then - and only then - find a snazzy backdrop to do that in front of.
Or else accept the path of least resistance, remaining in situ, doing what you can to stave off the torpor which is never not your responsibility. Whether you sit in a Venetian gondola or a La-Z-Boy recliner, that part is entirely on you. Without the ability to inhabit a foreground, shifting backdrops can only depress you.
Boredom is not a sucking action from a vapid universe. It's a thrusting push from vapid you.
If you're bored in Tampa, you'll be bored anywhere. That said, if you can find equanimity being bored in front of a new backdrop - shrugging off your non-delight with only mild bitterness - that's not so bad, though you might have saved yourself the trouble. But if you find life interesting while at the DMV or on line at the drug store, you'll find it differently interesting after a move. And that's a delight, so, by all means, go for it!
Today is Not a Bad Day
I posted this (as well as my brief acknowledgement that *I* had been misframing Democracy, which you should probably read first) to Facebook yesterday. I'm throwing it up here as well:
This is not a bad day. This is a day when the risk of future bad days elevated substantially. That's a different thing from a bad day.
I’ve trained myself not to pre-suffer, because it needlessly makes good days bad. That strikes me as the goofiest, stupidest thing a person can do. Just for one thing, it delegitimizes any professed desire for good days.
What's more, good/bad is a simplistic and childish concept. Innocent children would have gotten cancer under Harris, and joy will exist under Trump (unless we deliberately inhibit ourselves out of pique). The sun came up this morning and my toast smells nice. My desired outcome did not occur, but I've lost my sense of entitlement to desired outcomes, just as I've lost any impulse to inhibit joy out of pique.
This is not a bad day. This is a day when the risk of future bad days elevated substantially. That's a different thing from a bad day.
I’ve trained myself not to pre-suffer, because it needlessly makes good days bad. That strikes me as the goofiest, stupidest thing a person can do. Just for one thing, it delegitimizes any professed desire for good days.
What's more, good/bad is a simplistic and childish concept. Innocent children would have gotten cancer under Harris, and joy will exist under Trump (unless we deliberately inhibit ourselves out of pique). The sun came up this morning and my toast smells nice. My desired outcome did not occur, but I've lost my sense of entitlement to desired outcomes, just as I've lost any impulse to inhibit joy out of pique.
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Democracy
Democracy means every contingent has its shot. Power is sequentially shared.
Democracy doesn’t mean the politicians I prefer get to lock in. That’s not the optimal state of democracy, that’s autocracy. If I’m for that, I’m no more democratic than the people I describe as autocratic.
Insisting that my side is the only tolerable victor, while waving the flag of glorious patriotic democracy, is the exact move I/we claim to loathe.
Check Your Tailwind
I added this TL;DR ( "too long; didn't read") atop my recent posting "The Banality of Two Prominent Miracles":
The remarkable thing about declining to generate a 900mph headwind
is that you find yourself riding a 900mph tailwind.
And that's cause for enjoyment,
but not glory-basking.
The remarkable thing about declining to generate a 900mph headwind
is that you find yourself riding a 900mph tailwind.
And that's cause for enjoyment,
but not glory-basking.
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Modesty
"Check out the glorious stuff I've done!"
"I am humbled to invite you to check out the glorious stuff I've done!"
"I may have done a thing or two!"
"I'm just a simple pizza deliveryman!" [said with a wink]
Levels 1A, 1B, and 1C are backtrack. More prideful than Level 1, not less. Glory is further augmented by a glorious display of modesty. Awareness of pride stokes pride of awareness!
"I'm just a simple pizza deliveryman." [said without a wink]
At this point, you're viscerally letting go of your own legend. This surrender, paradoxically, stokes (as explained here) greater accomplishment...which is more challenging to let go of. In an immense circle of hilarious irony, the universe shoves accomplishment down the throats of modest people.
It brings to mind an old saw about politics: "The people most eager to hold power are often the least qualified to wield it." Draw down deeper for a less eager, more qualified candidate, and, nine times out of ten, they'll "grow into the role" and shmuckify.
Per that same dynamic, when the modest earn their power-ups, most revert straight to Level 1. "Check out the glorious stuff I've done!" But for the few able to swim against the swelling tide, two levels of further modesty remain:
"I'll erase my tracks so no one calls me glorious!"
A remarkable guy named Maurice Friedman had hidden but pivotal impact on a wide range of twentieth century issues and institutions, but we'll never know about most of them because, being a bit of a saint (seriously), he laboriously erased his own tracks.
David Godman, a skillful researcher and talented writer, has reconstructed some of it (I highly recommend this interview with Godman, and and this article by him).
The problem is that tracks-erasing is just another form of glorification. Why work so eagerly to erase glory if it's not glorious? If it really didn't matter, you wouldn't waste the precious time/effort. We blithely flush our shit down the toilet; we don't launch it into space or zap it with lasers, and we certainly don't seek out and expunge third party accounts of our ever having stepped into a bathroom.
Self tracks-erasers protest too much!
"I'm an ant"
As I once wrote,
I'm like an ant. I'll very contentedly reconstruct a smashed anthill, one grain at a time, even amid multiple re-smashings.
To human beings, I suppose this seems sad. Humans aspire to grander dreams than endless drudging anthill reconstruction. They're taught to rage at the smashing.
But to ants, human beings - who grow ever more crippled and demoralized with every inevitable reversal, and who only with great weighty effort manage to soldier on - are the sad ones.
This is the essense of karma yoga, which I've written about extensively. Head down. Stay in the flow. Do the thing. And refrain from sniffing your own farts. Appraise only insofar as it spurs you to invest still greater love, care, effort, and nuance. Don't misuse your appraisal engine to conjure tales of attainment.
Zen Buddhism, which describes an ultimate goal of "chop wood, carry water", frames the most ant-like end point, while karma yogis are loosely imagined to go out in some blaze of glory, comically missing the point of the whole thing.
I understood the ironic circle as a child, and worried that if I managed to become truly ant-like (i.e. fully locked into flow and invested in love, care, effort, and nuance) I'd be disturbed by people reassuring me that I'm certainly no ant.
It's turned out not to be a problem.
Previous postings on pride and modesty:
Modesty, Heroes, God, and Singers
Going All the Way in One's Shmuckery
Modesty, Arrogance, and Political Correctness
Kafkaesque
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)