Context, context, context

I encourage you to put this question to your friends, relatives, and acquaintances: Are there any words that one should never speak or write? My answer is no, there are no such words. There is always a context in which even the most shunned words are unobjectionable. I expect most of those you ask will agree, assuming you don’t confine your survey to a Southern Baptist convention. However, you’ll find the yea-sayers will constitute a respectable minority. I’ve done some web hopping and discovered a few sites that are unequivocally opposed to taboo speech and a slew that are dedicated to helping cursers overcome their irreverent habit.

The anti-cursing sites usually don’t offer reasons for their absolutist line, but when they do, the reasons are generally shallow or simply silly. For example, “real men don’t cuss.” Real manhood apparently is a state of piety, character, and virtue that disappears at the utterance of curse words. I learned that George Washington, the American apotheosis of virtue, despaired that foul talk among his men would deprive them of “the Blessings of Heaven on our Arms.” I read that “foul language drags us down” — to the gutter, probably — “and undermines mutual respect, as when a college professor curses in front of the class.”

This last example shows how oblivious anti-cursers are to context. Suppose we assume most of the students are in their late teens or twenties. Reasonable, I think. The studies I’ve seen say young people are more comfortable about hearing and using curse words than any other age group, so long as the words aren’t used excessively. Perhaps a teacher at a night school for older adults is what anti-cursers have in mind.

Let’s go further and suppose that the class is about the etymology of taboo words. In this case, the words are like specimens pinned to a board. They’re studied in the objective context of historical linguistics. In this frame, who could object to speaking the words fuck or nigger? Or are we to forgo such studies and resign ourselves to ignorance?

We don’t even have to resort to an academic context to remove the stain from fuck and nigger. If our context is dramatic verisimilitude, our use of these and other taboo words is blameless — and, what’s more, necessary. Think of the movies The Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas, and The Big Lebowski, all considered classics, and imagine that fuck was struck from the scripts of all three. That would amount to 569 deletions, 300 deletions, and 281 deletions, respectively. Would the movies be more credible for it? Of course not. The realism of the characters and dramatic ambience would be destroyed.

The same is true of the novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, and their use of nigger. In Huck Finn, Pap rants about a free nigger in Ohio who has the right to vote. He vows he’ll never vote again if there’s a nigger anywhere who’s permitted to vote. In Mockingbird, Scout’s father, Atticus, is disparaged as a nigger-lover because he commits himself to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. By choosing nigger, Mark Twain and Harper Lee show us an America where it was common for Whites to regard Blacks as subhuman, but not as a dog or a cat is subhuman. A nigger was more like a draft horse, to be whipped and abused if its work is poorly done. So naturally, Pap won’t vote if a draft horse can. Why participate in a farce? And why would Atticus go out of his way to save a draft horse accused of bestiality? Atticus must also be depraved.

What about people who aren’t creating credible drama or literature, or teaching about taboo words? That is, what about the rest of us? What’s our justification for cursing? The answer, again, is contextual. If the context is a confrontation, calling the other guy a fucking moron is a poor justification. One or both of you will regret it. But suppose you stub your toe, spill coffee on yourself, or get a bill for something you already paid for? These are examples of the maddening mishaps of everyday life, and in such instances, I say that cursing is not only justified but called for.

There’s actually a word for cursing at moments of stress or frustration — lalochezia. It’s from the Greek lalia (speech) and chezo (to get relief). Studies have found that relief by cursing improves endurance. Try cursing when you work out at the gym, and you’ll do more reps than ever before. Or try putting a bare arm into a bucket of ice water. Letting fly with a long string of curses will raise your heart rate and help you bear the pain. One study actually found that cursing can make you a safer driver! If someone cuts you off on the highway, a healthy string of lalochezia will moderate your frustration. Better that than following the bastard to his destination with mayhem on your mind.

Even cursing on the job has its rewards. It helps you bond with your coworkers, and can lighten the day if you’re a longshoreman, baggage handler, or construction worker. Just don’t curse in front of your boss, unless they curse first.

If you’re still squeamish about cursing in front of others, you need to find curse substitutes. No one is capable of avoiding both. (If there are such people, may I never meet them.) The problem with most substitutes, is that they’re humiliating. I watched one video where the host’s substitute for shit was sugar shack! What a pussy! And who could bear to say fiddlesticks or fudge? What’s worse, what do you do about the adjective fucking, as in, “She’s just a fucking cunt.” I suppose you could say, “She’s just a fudgy vagina,” but I don’t recommend it.

A solution to the substitutes dilemma is to borrow substitutes from British English or from foreign languages.” It can be a treat to say “Merde!” or “Scheisse!” or, better, “Scheissdreck!“¹ Also good are, “Bugger off!” or “Sod off, you bloody bugger!” And that’s just the top of a long list. It’s worth the effort to do a little research.

My favorite source of substitutes is Yiddish. It offers a smorgasbord of phonically lovely choices. Suppose you want to call someone a dick or a prick. You have shmuck, putz, or shlong at your disposal. Shmuck also means a detestable person. Putz also means a fool. Shlong also means a snake. Pick whichever has the ring and connotations you favor.

Or maybe you want to label someone as a fuck up. Your choices are legion. Try shlemiel if your target is an inept or incompetent person. Sadly, the condition is a life sentence. This is also the case if your’e a shlimazel. You’re as pitiful as a shlemiel, but you’re the victim of the shlemiels of the world; their mess-ups become your misfortunes. Then there’s the shnook, a person who’s easily fooled, a dupe. He’s the person who donates $10,000 to a charity scam. Last, there’s the shmendrik. Like the shnook, he’s a fool, but with a twist. He devises schemes to succeed in life based on absurd premises and inevitably faces disaster.² I’ve known many schmendriks and was once perilously close to becoming one.³

The virtue of substitutes is that they add variety to your vocabulary and save you from the fate of overcursing. Overcursers don’t care about context. They’ll force curse words into any context because of the force such words inject into their speech. They thereby project more power and sucker others into adopting the habit. Overcursers and their mimics are themselves a curse.

But please don’t conclude that it’s best to always use substitutes, if only as a guard against overcursing. To do that is to live without enjoying one of life’s greatest visceral pleasures. For example, you’ll never be able to experience the rapture of bellowing, “Trump is just a motherfucking criminal!”

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¹If you’re willing to watch this brief German lesson, you’ll triple your knowledge of German substitutes.

²These Yiddish words are also dear to me: gonif, khazer, mashugana, momzer, nudnik, oysshteler, pisher, shlump, shmegegge, shnorrer (certainly not Captain Spaulding!), and vantz.

³Those were the days when I thought I could make a fortune by betting on the ponies.

Attention entrepreneurs!

Remember the collectible Trump Cards, the ultimate case of hucksterism and self-aggrandizement? Each of them sold for $99, and you didn’t even get a physical card. Only a certifiable fool would buy one, yet to no one’s surprise, they sold out! Go ahead and click here. Laugh again.

I’m reminding you of his cards as a point of reference, so you can contrast them to another set of cards that doesn’t yet exist but should before the year’s out. I think of them as the “Trump Disgrace Cards.” I see them as scenes from Trump’s fall from glory, ranging from his soon-to-come perp walk in Manhattan to a picture of a hulking brute molesting him in prison. Of course, the collection would not be complete without mugshots and pictures of his face at each of his sentencing hearings. If a photo of him in an orange jumpsuit holding a mop is obtainable, it would be the prize of the collection. (Although some might favor the one of Trump getting buggered.)

As a bonus, the Disgrace Cards could include the faces of his many toadies and suck-ups when they get the news of a fresh conviction. And by all means Melania and his children should be included in this group.

These should be linen cards, like the best poker cards but somewhat larger. The price of a card should be the production and distribution cost plus a profit of no more than 20%. Every effort should be made to ensure that something so desirable is affordable.

So step up, those of you with some risk capital. It’s your chance to clean up!

Entertain me, dammit!

It seems likely that entertainment and religion were once inextricably linked. Furthermore, the priest, the poet, and the chanter were likely one and the same person. Chanters would in time become what we recognize as singers. They added a musical accompaniment, at first only percussion. Then ritual dance joined in. These enhancements made the bond between entertainment and religion even stronger.

At some point, we realized that worship must engage eyes as well as ears. The visual arts were needed to give shape and color to shrines and representations of the divine. This was yet another form of entertainment. It had the mark of all that we call entertaining: the power to command our notice, evoke emotion, and give us an inexplicable sense of enrichment.

It was comedy that first made us think of entertainment as an independent phenomenon. There is nothing funny about religion. To laugh, someone’s dignity has to be punctured. It’s a minimum requirement. We can’t have gods tripping on banana peels, but if a proud hunter catches a spear in his ass, that might be hilarious. We noticed as well the artistic similarity between a heroic narrative and a comedic narrative. The droll story became an art form unto itself.

Entertainment evolved further when we realized how much in love we were with ourselves. Our flaws had given birth to tragedy and comedy. Might our opposite qualities, excellence of the mind and body, also be entertaining? Yes, in fact. Watching a savant compute the cube root of 53,582,633 or recall the box score of a baseball game on a given date makes us gasp at the magic of the mind. Watching jugglers and acrobats at work or a running back breaking tackle after tackle has a similar awe-inspiring effect. We love being amazed by ourselves.

Civilization had barely begun when entertainment, like Aphrodite emerging from sea foam, bubbled forth from the womb of religion. It seemed a gift from the gods, ready to be shaped into myriad wonders. But as I thought back across the intervening millennia, I felt the need to judge. Had entertainment kept its ancient promise to bring us a mirthful demeanor, a rich sense of the beautiful, a deep comprehension of our humanity, and the wisdom to know what is within our grasp and what is beyond it? The answer had to be complicated. Perhaps it could be derived from a broad survey of entertainment sources. I volunteered myself for this task. I turned on my TV, which is equipped with Roku, a device that gives access to dozens of streaming services. After sampling exhaustively, I compiled the following report about the state of today’s entertainment, broken out by contemporary genres.¹

Awash in testosterone

The leading characters in this genre are always muscle men who are invincible in combat. They can knock out, maim, or outright kill a gang of vicious thugs set against them. They have no super powers (that’s another genre), but their skill in the martial arts is so exquisite that they’ve become a force of nature. We can stream them in the Bruce Lee movies; the Jean-Claude Van Damme movies; the Steven Seagal movies; the Kung Fu TV series; the Walker, Texas Ranger TV series; the Rambo movies; the Jack Reacher movies, where undersized Tom Cruise laughably plays the linebacker-sized Reacher; and the Reacher TV series, where the casting is less funny.

None of these men has a personality; it’s all bad guys versus a meat grinder. The only exception that comes to mind is Matt Damon’s rendering of Jason Bourne. Robert Ludlum gives us a backstory with considerable insight into who Bourne is, and it makes all the difference.

Deductive genius

Here it’s the brainiacs who entertain, and they all seem to do it in the same way — they pay preternatural attention to details. They are the heroes and heroines of murder mysteries. The benchmark for this genre is, of course, Sherlock Holmes, which is the same as saying Arthur Conan Doyle is the benchmark for mystery writers. The closest approach to his genius is the TV series Columbo, created by the gifted screenwriters William Link and Richard Levinson. The much revered and overrated Agatha Christie doesn’t match their standard, nor have any writers since. I had some hope for the TV series Poker Face, about a woman who can always sense a lie told in conversation. After a promising start, it’s quality has faded.

Masters of this genre will no doubt come again, but the wait may be a generation or more.

Fantasy run amok

All success breeds excess. Evidence of that is plentiful in the entertainment industry.² It isn’t enough to amaze and delight with tales of physical and mental prodigies. To sell millions of tickets, you have to engage in fantasy. And I’m not talking about a boy who finds a magic lamp. That’s a simple, coherent fantasy. I’m talking about a character who commands thunder and lightning and travels between dimensions — Thor. Or communicates telepathically with marine life — Aquaman. Or deflects bullets with wrist bracelets — Wonder Woman. Or overcomes obstacles through sheer will power — the Green Lantern. Or exceeds the speed of light just by running! — Flash. Or regenerates his body so quickly he is virtually immortal — Captain America.

You might ask how such super powers are acquired. Turns out, the answers are just as fantastic as the powers themselves. The X-men, all mutants, are the result of aliens coming to earth a million years ago and experimenting with the DNA of proto-humanity. Aquaman got his powers directly from Poseidon so that he might take Atlantis back from an invading dimension. Captain America was infused with Super-Soldier serum. Batman was infused with, well, … inherited wealth, which he uses to buy a funny costume, a souped-up car, and an assortment of crime-fighting gadgets. And, of course, Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider.

In 2009, Disney bought Marvel Studios for $4.24 billion. It then owned the rights to nearly all the Marvel characters, which number in the dozens.³ Ever since, they’ve mixed and matched Marvel characters in adventures to save the Earth, the galaxy, and the universe. There’s now no end to the inanity and bad taste they’re prepared to bring to the movies and TV. I foresee a blockbuster in which Jiminy Cricket, Han Solo, Buzz Lightyear, Thor, Mulan, and Peter Pan embark on a voyage into the past to stop Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens from flying into a winter storm, thereby saving rock music.

Bankable ugliness

There are two emotions, both ugly, that audiences can’t get enough of. One is revenge, which has deep roots in ancient Greek drama. What today’s filmmakers have that the Greeks didn’t is the technology of special effects. Now audiences can immerse themselves in the deaths of the innocent and guilty alike, with mutilation and gore never presented to previous generations. The deranged thinking of the principals is also on display. It’s certain that there are members in every audience who are nursing a deep grievance, real or imagined. I cringe to think of the psychological effects that murderous thoughts and scenes have on bitter minds.⁴

The other ugly emotion is horror. The thrill of it lies in the anticipation of gore and its realization. A horror story differs from a revenge story in that the second thrill, the retribution, is absent. The antagonist may survive, be subdued, or be killed; it doesn’t matter so long as the horror has ended. The audience is grateful for the thrill of briefly escaping from their humdrum, predictable lives. I see this only as a failure to find joy in the humdrum and predictable.

Pop music

When we speak of musical entertainment today, it’s generally understood that we mean music for a mass audience, and hence music that is commercially successful. It’s usually vocal music with an instrumental accompaniment — often guitars and percussion. More often than not, it’s rhythmic, loud, and even raucous. The words are insistent but can be barely discernible because of amplification. The subject rarely deviates from sexual obsession, be it infatuation, yearning, aggrieved love, or in-your-face fornication. If you want music that’s socially meaningful or cerebral or imaginative or deeply affective, you’re a musical pariah. Look for a Broadway show or a venue for classical music.

To sample the depths to which pop music has sunk, you can do no better than look at Super Bowl halftime shows. It’s here you’ll see musical performances that the world’s biggest audiences crave most. Here’s a link — dive in!

If you’re a glutton for punishment, carry on. Here’s a recent selection from the US Top 40.

How did we reach these depths? I’ve found a couple of credible answers. Look here or here.

Laughter

Where do you look for a good laugh? I’m partial to stand-up comedy and topical humor. I don’t go to comedy clubs, so I rely on TV shows and YouTube videos. Trevor Noah is a stand-out; I can’t imagine The Daily Show without him. Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are generally good for a laugh. John Oliver is more informative than funny. If only he would dial down the gratuitous vulgarity. Bill Maher is more funny than informative and has the same problem with the vulgarity dial. That said, his closing sermons on Real Time are often gems. Jimmy Fallon of The Tonight Show is the worst of the bunch. His expertise is schmoozing with celebrities, who show up only to promote a movie or a book. This drivel infects the other late night shows but to a lesser degree.

I rarely enjoy sitcoms. The ones about families — traditional, mixed, minority, whatever — range from awful to tedious. Once I got my Leave It to Beaver inoculation, I was done with lovable kids. Of course, I enjoyed Cheers, Taxi, and Frasier (all by the same production company) because the writing was brilliant and the comedy resided in the characters, not in the situation. If the characters have no edges, no situation can make them funny.

Romcoms are just as disappointing. Almost all are formulaic and rely on the celebrity of the he and she to create sparks. Producers speculate continually about the possible chemistry between Stud Muffin X and Sex Goddess Y. Seldom do you see a romcom in which the principals are well crafted and completely incompatible, yet fated to get their minds reshaped. A rare genius can pull this off, as we see in The Goodbye Girl, Groundhog Day, and You’ve Got Mail, three of my favorite movies. We’ll have to wait for the likes of Neil Simon, Harold Ramis, and Nora Ephron to grace our lives again.

Porn

The ancients didn’t have porn as theater, so far as I know. It would have made for a thrilling sideshow to, say, a slave market or a brothel. I’m sure they read pornographic stories. I read Ovid’s Metamorphoses in college. He hoped it would make his name immortal, and he’s still in the running.

Porn blossomed only when it leapt from novels, paintings, and photographs to film, and I cheer for its progress. I find it a legitimate and welcome form of entertainment. What I lament about it is the same lamentation I have about other forms of entertainment: it’s so damn easy to do it badly. What I see too often in porn is the objectification of women in heterosexual sex. The man becomes a beast. He slaps the woman’s breasts and buttocks. He lays hands on her throat. He uses bondage. He forces her into impossible contortions … and she enjoys it! Then there are the contrived scenes of 2-on-1 or 3-on-2 or full-blown orgies. I call this Rube Goldberg sex. It’s just stupid.

The only thing I demand from porn is not to model perverse love making. I’ve found that the only porn makers who reliably follow this requirement are women!

Virtual reality

I haven’t sampled this form entertainment; it’s still in its infancy. Nevertheless, its power will soon be upon us, so speculation is imperative.

Obviously, we’ll want VR to create mind spaces where we can fulfill our deepest desires. Some will take rapturous vacations in Fiji. Some will walk on the moon and search for golf balls. Some, like the Trump brothers, will hunt big game and fill up trophy rooms. Most, I’ll wager, will use VR to create porn fantasies. The most glorious VR achievement will be a technology that can mine memories and interpret brain waves. It will then be able to customize dreamstuff and maximize pleasure.

At that point, we’ll be ready to ask the ultimate question about entertaining ourselves: Is it the goal of human life to replace reality with entertainment?

________________________

¹You won’t see Reading in this sampling because I rarely find it entertaining. I read mainly to gather information. I prefer to say that reading, at best, is “gratifying.”

²Yes, industry. Entertainments are now products made for and distributed to mass audiences. Such products require a collaboration of businesses, an industry. One could speculate on how industrialization affects artistic minds, but this isn’t the time.

³This diagram shows which characters Disney owns and which they share with other enterprises.

⁴Revenge movies are often notable successes at the box office. See a list.

Not enough data

I like data, gobs and gobs of data. I like gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes, and whatever comes next. I’m particularly fond of data about groups — their preferences, predilections, penchants, partialities, and politics. Yes, I’m aware of the tyrants and lowlifes who use data destructively to abuse people and amass power. This is a drawback that powerful things — like corporations, nuclear power plants, the wired world, gene editing, artificial intelligence — have in common. We need them, but they can be dangerous. The answer is regulation, not rejection.

I like to imagine the topology of data, the hills and valleys of data we have about every subject that we’ve deemed fit to study. There are some subjects — say, the global distribution of Formosan subterranean termites — that can boast a ton of data. Conversely, there are subjects, many that are keenly important, with a dearth of data. One such subject is comparative cultural values. We need a set of metrics that tells us how close (or far apart) the values of any two cultures are. If we had a way to reliably measure cultural distance, we’d have a tool that could show where cultural collisions might occur. Forearmed, we could use the science of mediation to find the roots of our value differences and work at reconciling them.

Fortunately, there are prototypes for such a tool that we can refine into better measuring instruments. One that I know of is called The Political Compass. It’s produced by an enterprise whose roots are deliberately mysterious. I suppose the owners don’t want their political views known for fear that a political agenda might be attributed to them.

Their test has 60 multiple choice statements that you can strongly agree with, agree with, disagree with, or strongly disagree with. Your responses are digested by a secret algorithm. Its output is a point on a graph whose x-axis is an “economic scale,” from politically left to politically right, and whose y-axis is a “social scale,” from authoritarian to libertarian. Thus the point, your score, can fall in any or four quadrants. Here’s the graphical score of a left-winger whom I persuaded to take the test:

The test isn’t strictly political. Statements about such subjects as abstract art, astrology, mental illness, the source of morality, keeping to our own kind, racial supremacy, the legalization of marijuana, and the basic function of education have a tenuous connection to politics. I’d prefer to call the test The Cultural Compass. Also, I’m uneasy with an axis labeled Authoitarian-Libertarian. To my mind, libertarianism is a dogma. I’d name this axis Dogmatic-Permissive. (If we lived in a pure libertarian society, we would quickly sort ourselves out into Givers and Takers. The Takers would become oligarchs and use their power to keep economic regulation nonexistent. In America, we are not far from that point now.)

I have another reason for wanting a cultural differentiation test. Presumably, it could not only quantify the cultural distance between countries, but also the distance between subcultures within a country. Every American knows there is a cultural chasm between Blue America and Red America, but we can only wonder at its breadth and depth. I think it’s enormous — as huge as the chasm between Blue America and, say, Hungary or Turkey. I’m convinced of it, and I hope these bits of data will convince you:

• There are more guns than people in America. [CHECK]
• 3% of American adults own 50% of the guns. [CHECK]
• All 50 states allow the concealed carrying of handguns but differ on giving permits to nonresidents. [CHECK]
• 31 states allow the open carrying of handguns without a permit or license. 44 states allow the open carrying of long guns, although 3 of these states require the long guns to be unloaded. [CHECK]
• The #1 killer of American children and teens isn’t car accidents or disease; it’s gunshot wounds. [CHECK]
• Over 95% of American K-12 schools conduct active shooter drills. [CHECK]
• 61% of Trump voters agree that “a group of people in this country are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants and people of color who share their political views.” [CHECK]
• In 2020, 55% of all the perpetrators of hate crimes in America were white. [CHECK]
• The number of teenage reports of hate speech on American social media doubled between 2018 and 2020. [CHECK]
• More than 40% of Americans do not believe Biden’s 2020 victory was legitimate. [CHECK]
• Last year, 24 new laws were passed in 14 states that allow state legislatures to interfere in the outcome of elections. [CHECK]
• 46% of Americans think a future civil war is likely. [CHECK]
• More than 50% of Americans see right-wing militia groups as a threat to the U.S.; a third say they pose an “immediate and serious threat.” [CHECK]
• 13 states have abortion “trigger laws.” These are laws that ban abortion if the Supreme Court overturns the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. [CHECK]
• 30% of white Americans believe nothing about racial inequality should be taught in public schools. [CHECK]
• In the past 9 months, nearly 1,586 books have been banned in school libraries, up from 483 in 2018. 41% of these feature characters who are people of color. 33% have LGBTQ themes, protagonists, or strong secondary characters. [CHECK]
• 34% of Americans are “not worried” about global warming. 30% say natural change, not human activity, is causing global warming. [CHECK]

This isn’t tongue-clucking data. It’s goosebumps data. It’s data that should call forth fear and rage. But those emotions are never on display from our leading Democrats. When Biden really gets up a head of steam, all you hear is the indignant yapping of a puppy. We desperately need leaders who talk like Chris Murphy. Such people are our real leaders, and we need to arm them with data that cries out like a siren and shakes us awake from our tepid discomfort.

Semper paratus

I’ll turn 79 this month. A decade of septuagenarian existence is creaking to a close. Every actuary worth their salt knows the tracks run out not far ahead. This is not like being 69 and peering into one’s 70s. Not in the least. This is peering into the abyss.

Maybe you’re one of those who says, “Just say screw it! Stay planted in the present. Live in the moment, not in a shadow. That’s the only way to get a full measure of joy out of whatever time you have.” To which I say, “You’re talking through your hat. As if people have the option to flip a switch and ‘poof’, all awareness of mortality vanishes. There aren’t enough hallucinogens and hallelujahs in this world for me to pull that off.” Living with an awareness of terminal frailties is baked into the pie. What we do with that awareness defines us as much as anything else in our lives.

I’ve always lived three-fourths of my life in my head, so the way forward for me is to give myself a thought assignment: Devise a plan that will make senescence as agreeable as possible. (Notice the “as possible.” I harbor no delusion that I can summon up a cheery farewell.)

I’ve already begun working on my plan and, surprisingly, it’s not as hard as I first thought. The guiding precept is almost self-evident: Make a list of things that make you happy, and give more time to them. I’d like to share my list with you, not because it’s a model or exemplary in any way. I think it might be helpful to show you what one looks like. So, here we go …

Learning something new. I get energized when a question springs to mind with a “this is urgent” flag attached. I often have no idea why a question gets flagged; I just know that the need for an answer can get quite uncomfortable. For example, one evening I was watching TV and a medical commercial came on. It was for a drug that was presumably indispensable for people with tardive dyskinesia. Now, I hadn’t the slightest idea what this condition was, and the ad was none too clear about it. But the words sounded magical. They were rhythmic and damn near tuneful. I had to know what this malady was, and quickly. Blessings on the pioneers who put together the internet! (No, you’ll have to look it up for yourselves.)

It would be awful to die with a huge backlog of open questions. I mustn’t let this happen. I’ll have to get over the awkwardness of saying, “Hold that thought. There’s something I have to look up.”

Looking for new challenges. I don’t mean this as broadly as it might sound. Downhill skiing is out of the question, as is animal husbandry and earning a law degree. What I have in mind are interests that looked like they might blossom in years past that instead dwindled away. Roads not taken. I was once a pretty good math and science student, and I’m regretful about the vast regions I never touched. The same is true of history. This is bigger than learning something new, like the meaning of blockchain. This is what you might call a “quest for expertise.”

Studying the human riddle. Forget about Rubik’s cube and Fermat’s last theorem. Is there any puzzle more engrossing than the human race? Let me explain. I imagine a large 3-dimensional cork board — a cork cube, if you will — and I name it Personality. I can stick pins on its surface and even in its interior! I stick a pin in it that represents Mother Teresa. Then I pick up a pin that represents Jeffrey Dahmer. For obvious reasons, I stick it far away from the Mother Teresa pin. I also have Bernie Sanders and Marjorie Taylor Greene pins. Where do I stick them? How about the Meryl Streep, Einstein, and Elvis pins? And that’s just the beginning. I’ve got pins for thousands of people, living and dead, including pins for Genghis Kahn and my handyman. I quickly realize I have no criteria for placing pins. The entire Personality space is a mystery. I don’t know what its coordinates are. I’m not even sure how many dimensions I need!

Yet I’m happy to blunder on, even though my imagined space collapses into 2 dimensions all too often. Even though my working coordinates are no better nuanced than Good-Evil and Smart-Stupid. I see the whole business as a healthful stretching exercise. In this bitter, antagonistic world, the merest sign of progress will be immensely gratifying.

Making my front yard speak of me. I saved the most conceited and absurd for last. Nevertheless, it stays on the list. It’s tied to a fantasy I have wherein a friend from years past drives hundreds of miles in an effort to connect again. He knows what city I live in, and he knows the name of my street. He even knows which block my house is on, but he doesn’t have an address. His task is to drive slowly, take a good look at each front yard, and infer which house is mine. I want him to succeed. I want him to take one look at my house and say, “Well, of course.”

My old friend will succeed because he knows how much I love color. He’s seen the photos of my travels and my extensive collection of animal and plant photos, particularly those of butterflies and flowers. Almost all are a celebration of color. He also knows how much I respect intelligent design. I can appreciate an English garden, but not nearly as much as a French one.

After Linda and I are gone, the house will pass through the hands of many owners. Inevitably, a family of Philistines will be among them. They’ll say to the realtor, “We’ll take it — it’s very homey. But our first job will be to rip out the front yard. What an eyesore!” Then the last of me will vanish.

A memorable meal

I’m vaccinated, Linda is vaccinated, and it’s spring — time for a wildflower excursion. But maybe not. We’re in a drought; California is bleached out. So I turned to my main spring resource, the California Wildflower Tipline on Facebook. It features lovely splashes of color that excite wild cravings — “I want that picture, too!” I was cautiously hopeful, and there it was, a post showing carpets of wildflowers near the American River, on the outskirts of Sacramento. Wonderful, because I could also visit with my cousin Steve and his lovely wife, Gretchen. They live in Sacramento. I found a place to stay within 20 minutes of their house, and we were off.

The drive from San Jose to Sacramento doesn’t get dicey until you’re ready to enter Sacramento. There you’ll find a maze of highway signs that has baffled Google Maps. The signs show Highway 50 branching east out of Interstate 80 as you approach Sacramento. Google Maps disagrees. They show Intrastate 80 as the eastern branch. Frantically, I looked for the invisible Intrastate 80 sign. Nearly an hour later, we arrived at our lodgings.

Our “hotel” — a very generous a word — was “SureStay Plus Hotel by Best Western.” It consists of a lobby and adjoining restaurant in front of two rows of cell blocks … er, rooms. The facade is dreary and unwelcoming. No shrubs or flowers separate the blacktop from the lobby. I wouldn’t call it ugly, just a couple of clicks above shabby. Inside, the receptionist sat behind a plate of clear plastic. She seemed safe from our exhalations. We got our room keys and a few vague words about its location. When we opened the door, Linda saw it was a hollow steel plate, which I found consoling. If an axe wielder were to strike our door, he’d be foiled long enough for help to arrive.

After a long car trip, we’re in the habit of choosing the restaurant closest to where we’re staying. In this case, the adjoining restaurant was the obvious choice. It’s called the Haveli Grill and labels its cuisine as Afghan-Indian. Not the sort of food I crave, but tolerable in a pinch. I was sure the menu had a niche for me.

It was almost 6:30 when we went in for dinner, yet the restaurant was empty. The hostess-waitress seated us and gave us menus. I was right — I found edible offerings, but …

“What can I get you?” the waitress asked.

“Well, I think I’d like a lemonade.”

“I’m sorry, we’re out of lemonade. Can I get you an orange Fanta instead?”

“Oh… OK, I’ll have the Fanta. And the Greek salad. Is that a large salad?”

“Yes, but there’s no more Greek salad.”

“Hmm, no Greek salad, either.”

“No, but I can bring you a garden salad.”

“Is that also large, and with tomatoes?”

“Yes.”

“Uh, can I split that with you, Hon?” (Linda nods.) “Good, and I’d like the lamb kabobs with basmati rice.”

“I’m sorry, we’re out of lamb, but I can get you beef kabobs.”

“Hmm … OK … that will have to do.”

Linda asked for water and ordered their chicken tikka marsala with naan. The waitress retreated, and at least a half-hour passed before I heard her voice again. She was handling a takeout call and ended with, “You can pick that up in 15 minutes.” I blinked and lost it. “What the hell! We’ve waited an eon, but a caller can get food in 15 minutes? I’m ready to walk out of here. I’d rather go hungry than continue this farce.”

My anger was on a short leash when the waitress appeared with a can of Fanta and a bottle of water. No entrees, no glasses. I glared and asked for a glass. We both knew that no more pleasantries would be exchanged.

10 minutes more passed before the waitress returned with our entrees, but we’d have to start on them without the salad, rice, and naan.

I gawked at my kabobs. I expected chucks of beef and vegetables on skewers, but no such luck. The beef had been ground up, mixed with spices, and molded into two unappetizing 6-inch sausages. This ptomaine pit had ignored a rule as old as cooked meat: Without a skewer, there is no kabob. I didn’t know what this dish actually was, but a kabob it was not.

I poked at one of the sausages, broke off a bit of one end, and ventured a taste. It was a touch fiery from the spices. I tried to neutralize the heat with the Fanta and followed up wit a gulp of Linda’s water. My stomach doesn’t do well with spices; this meal was going to be a challenge. Every bite of meat would have to be met with something cold or bland.

I was relieved when the salad, rice, and naan arrived. They might help to smother the fire, and the salad would be cooling. I looked for something to make the salad tastier and saw there was no dressing.

“Waitress, could you bring the dressings?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, and brought a small jar of ranch dressing.

I winced. To my taste buds, salad and ranch dressing are incompatible.

“Where are the other dressings?” I asked.

“There are no other dressings.”

“But … I thought I’d have a choice.”

“You do have a choice.” She pushed the dressing toward me. “Your choice is ranch dressing!”

Her rudeness was telling. She must have abandoned any hope of a tip early on and concluded that she now had nothing more to lose.

I worked the food — a bite of sausage, a forkful of salad, a forkful of rice, a piece of naan. I had finished an entire sausage and a quarter of the second one when I declared an end to the misery. I sat quietly and waited for my stomach’s verdict. Would it withstand the abuse? I could feel it musing. Then came a few sharp notes of rebellion and the start of an upsurge. I clapped a hand over my mouth. My quick-thinking wife pushed the rice “boat,” now empty, toward me. I bent over it and filled it with several heaves of what looked like dark vegetable soup. Jackson Pollock would have admired my work.

Linda signed the credit card bill, and we walked out. I felt relieved, happy, and more than a little self-satisfied.

Now a week has passed, and a conviction has grown that the occasion needs to be memorialized in some way. I might even acknowledge it on my tombstone. It would bear the words “KENNETH MARKS LIES HERE, THE INVENTOR OF THE WET TIP.”

If I ruled the world

Don’t take the title of this post seriously. It’s a preposterous notion and would certainly be a catastrophe for me, if not for the entire world. It’s merely the title of a verbal party game I invented last week.

Unlike “Truth or Dare,” you won’t experience the discomfort of being caught between a rock and a hard place. When your turn comes, you simply reveal how you would (or wouldn’t) use dictatorial power. If you decline to play, the only penalty is being labeled a party pooper.

The game is also perfect for a first date. If I were still dating, it would help me decide whether there’d be a second date. If my date didn’t want me to know her better, why go on?

It’s possible, maybe likely, that players will give “beauty pageant” accounts of themselves. For example: “If I ruled the world, there would be no war or hate. People would greet each other cordially and smile. We’d realize that what unites us is far more than what separates us. We’d love our children unconditionally because they are the future of humankind.” It may seem that such speakers frustrate the purpose of the game, but I think the opposite is true. They actually say a great deal about themselves.

At this point, it might be helpful to give my response, should I ever be asked to play. Hopefully, that will convey how specificity leads to more enjoyable and informative results.

If I ruled the world:

• “Republican political ideology” would be given a medical name and added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Treatment would be fully covered by worldwide Medicare for All.
  
• An International Historical Society would be founded. In an annual televised ceremony, it would induct infamous figures, living and dead, into the Hall of Human Garbage. Induction of living figures would mean the loss of any pensions, allowances, and honors. Humanity must have its villains as well as its heroes.
  
• Ted Cruz would be sent to a science station at the South Pole to work as a janitor.
  
• The use of political exile and public shaming would again be in vogue.
  
• Billions would be spent annually to further the development of a 3D printer that prints food.
  
• Trillions would be spent annually on the deployment of molten salt reactors.
  
• A universal basic income would be instituted.
  
• Billionaires would pay a wealth tax; religious institutions would pay a property tax.
  
• Daylight Saving Time, titles of nobility, pledges of allegiance, and circumcision would be abolished.
  
• Creationism could be taught in schools but only as a discredited delusion.
  
• Women, being more intelligent than men, would occupy the most consequential government positions.
  
• The practice of haute couture would become a criminal offense.
  
• Hamburgers would no longer contain beef; sausages would no longer contain pork.
  
• All green vegetables would taste like Gummy Bears. 
  
• All pop music would be accompanied by this sound track.
  
• All superhero movies would come with this sound track.
  
• Olympic athletes would represent only themselves. No national anthem would be played at medal ceremonies — just this song (without air-siren accompaniment).
  
• Language Arts classes in public schools would include lessons on profanity.
  
• The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts would award merit badges for swearing artfully.
  
• Anya Taylor-Joy would reprise her role as Beth Harmon in a series titled “Beth’s Chess Adventures.”
  
• Thoroughbred horse racing would become the international pastime.
  
• Government credits would be sent to everyone monthly for the purchase of ice cream.

I see now that this recitation has served a second purpose. After 7+ years of blogging, I’ve finally introduced myself properly to my readers!

A case of ambivalence

Words With Friends (WWF) is a Scrabble knockoff that can be played on a variety of computer platforms. I play mostly on my Macbook and infrequently on my iPhone. You can also play it on PCs, Android phones, and God knows what else. I can’t recall when I started playing — maybe 7 years ago? You could say that anyone who plays a game for 7 years must love it, and I do. But I also hate it.

It diverges from Scrabble in many important respects. For example, it’s undergirded by a different master dictionary, one that strives to offend no one. If you try to play profane words, you strike out. WWF knows nothing of their existence. The goody-two-shoes facade is a bow to Facebook, which offers WWF on its interface. Facebook wants only good, clean fun. (Disinformation and disparagement are OK, so long as you don’t cuss or badmouth someone’s mother.)

WWF knows it’s a buzzkill if your opponent is clobbering you, so it’s happy to offer a helping hand, just so long as you’ve got enough coins to pay for the favor. (You earn coins as you play, or you can buy them with real money.) When the board gets tight, you can pay to see where there are openings for your letters. In fact, on an iPhone you can pay to see the best place to play a word. If you’ve got a load of vowels or none at all, you can pay to throw the lot back into the letter bag, draw a fresh bunch, and not even forfeit your turn! Moreover, your opponent gets no notice of this ploy. For all they know, you’re playing a disciplined game. This nonsense makes skillful play almost beside the point, but what the hell — remove challenges from the game and everyone can play on merrily and enjoy the, uh … camaraderie.

Note: WWF won’t outright tell you what to play, but it might as well. There’s a website for lowdown skunks that lists all the words your tiles can make. Possibly one of the words will contain all your tiles and earn you 35 bonus points. But be advised: if you use this site, you will burn in hell! I’ve matched words with about a dozen players who are damned. How can I tell? When an opponent uses a word like GHERAO or INDULIN or OCTROI, I ask where they’ve seen the word before. The answers are always entertaining. One woman said she came by her amazing vocabulary from playing against her genius grandfather, and besides, she found it by reading the Scrabble dictionary.

WWF is more tolerant of short words than Scrabble is. For example, try playing EE, FI, IO, JA, JE, OO, OU, VU, or YI in Scrabble. You’ll be shot down, but WWF has no complaints about them. Actually, I think this is a good thing. Some of the highest scores you can get in either game come from playing a word alongside an already played word, making a number of 2-letter intersections. For instance, look at the word MOANING when it’s played alongside OBTUSE:

You’ve also played the words OM, BO, TA, UN, SI, and EN, and you get credit for each of them, adding 21 points to your score. OBTUSE MOANING (like crying over spilled milk?) is worth a total of 70 points! It takes a good player to see that such a play is possible. I don’t mind that some permissible 2-letter words, like EE and VU, are nonsense. I see them as “hooks” that I can use to my advantage. They add richness to the game.

Sadly, there’s a fly in the ointment. Zynga, the producer of WWF, doesn’t have a single master dictionary — it has at least three! On my iPhone, for example, JE is recognized as a word; on my Macbook, it is not. And when I ask Google if FU is a valid word in WWF, the answer is yes, yet FU isn’t valid on either my iPhone or Macbook.

Whatever platform allows FU is probably Zynga’s flagship platform. If you play on a different one, you’re playing at a disadvantage. The fact is, Zynga is simply a slouch when it comes to maintenance. Their motto must be: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

WWF has become a haven for mediocre players and cheats. It might have been a challenging site for word game lovers, but Zynga took a pass, and WWF evolved into a hookup site, a place for giggles and flirting.

If your profile picture is in the pleasant-to-attractive range, you’re bound to get game requests from members of the opposite sex. Whenever I post a picture of myself that won’t frighten children, I’m hit on, not constantly but every so often. At first, I thought it was funny, but eventually my annoyance grew. These people would play a few words, see that I’m playing in earnest, and go days without putting a word down. Eventually, they’d resign or default after a 2-week silence, never to be heard from again.

These days, I use a standard line of chat that’s a guaranteed flirtation killer. Here’s a recent example:

Me: Hi Ava.

Ava: I’m not Ava. I gave WWF a fake name.

Me: Oh, so what’s your real name?

Ava: It’s really Peggy.

Me: Good. I’ll call you Edna.

Ava: Haha. Is your name really Ken?

Me: Yes.

Ava: Glad to meet you, Ken. Are you married? [The game killer.]

Me: Yes, happily.

Ava: That’s nice.

Me: I’m also old, frail, and hard to look at.

Ava: What do you do?

Me: Nothing. My wife and I live on our Social Security.

Disconnect. Game over.

The developers at Zynga are certain to continue their campaign against skillful play. That’s what they’re paid to do. WWF critics are asking, “What outrage is next?” One of them has sarcastically predicted a Request Letter button. Click it and you’d be prompted for a letter you want added to your rack. Imagine you’re holding UIZ and could cover a Triple Word Score square if only you had a Q. The Request Letter button is made for you! Without it, you’d have have to figure out how to manage a UIZ holding. That could be tough, especially late in the game.

I’m drawing a line in the sand. One more skill-leveling “feature” and I’m gone.

The past

Can you feel it — the stupefying weight that’s bending your back and forcing your nose to the ground? I have to ask because — you won’t believe this — most people have no idea that they’re carrying the past on their shoulders, much as Atlas was said to have carried the world. Don’t ask me how people can be that unconscious! I go slack-jawed whenever I see the viciousness and idiocy of the past given an honored place in the present. Religion and superstition, for example. Patriotic bullshit, for example. Racial and tribal superiority, for example.

One of my life’s memorable moments came on an evening when my father and I watched “Fiddler on the Roof.” Tevye told us about “Tradition!” and my father was overcome with pride. I’m sorry, Dad, but the real subject of the song is oblivious existence and the bliss of living without reflection or imagination.

Perhaps the worst justification for any action is the argumentum ad antiquitatum, the appeal to antiquity. In law, this is called “arguing from precedence.” Such and such is right because we’ve always done it that way. It’s an exemplary way to escape the bothersome act of thinking. “Am I a Methodist, Mom?” “Yes, Jimmy, the Beaverhausens have always been Methodists.” “I’m joining the Army, Dad.” “Like hell! We Schmeckpeppers are Navy men!”

The past not only controls the underpinnings of our lives, it dictates the details as well. Take the months of the year. Please, someone tell me how the month of February got its name. Why do we have months named after Julius Caesar and Augustus? Haven’t they been dead for quite a while? Why are our last four months named after Latin numbers? And none of them is in the correct numeric sequence! It’s simply idiotic, but we don’t give it a thought.

It’s no better when we consider the days of the week. The order of the days boggles me. The first is Sunday and the last is Saturday. Shouldn’t the weekend come at the end of the week?

The names of the days is all about the worship of ancient gods. Sunday derives from pre-Christian Germanic tribes, who worshipped the sun. Monday from the Norse personification of the moon. Tuesday from Tyr, the one-handed Norse god of dueling. (I like my gods ambidextrous.) Wednesday from Wodin (Odin), the Norse supreme deity. (That makes two supreme deities in the week!) Thursday from Thor, the Norse god of thunder. Friday from Frigg, Wodin’s wife. (Some say her name is actually Freya, but I’ll stick with Frigg.) And Saturday from Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and periodic renewal. If a Martian were to visit Earth, he’d conclude that five-sevenths of all English speakers were Norse pagans.

If we’re ever going to escape the yoke of the past, it’s probably wise to begin modestly. I would therefore start by simply renaming the days of the week. The French had a go at this about 230 years ago, but they didn’t do it modestly. In fact, they lost their freaking minds. First, they made their weeks 10 days long. Second, they made all their months 30 days long. Third, they weren’t satisfied to coin 10 new weekday names; they coined a different name for every day of their 360-day year! I have a theory that to every great civilization there comes at least one era of insanity. The French had theirs way back then.

But back to my new weekday names …. I’m a bird lover, and so I’d give the name of a bird to each day of the week. Don’t snicker; it makes a lot of sense, as I’ll explain later. Here are the new names …

“Monday” becomes “Loon”

There he is, with a fuzzy loonlet aboard. Apparently, he’s just taken a dip. Beads of water cover his head.

I chose the name to preserve the day’s association with the moon. It can drive us mad, you know. On the first workday of the week, I think we can benefit from a little lunacy, just to show some contempt for the rat race.

By the way, note that the name isn’t “Loonday.” Everyone will know it’s a reference to a day. Why be tiresome?

“Tuesday” becomes “Toucan”

His disproportionate beak, painted like a child’s toy, makes him look ridiculous, but this is the source of his charm and whimsy. Loon was a nutty kickoff for the week; now Toucan takes the fun further. By now we’re well fortified against the demands of the new week.

“Wednesday” becomes “Wren”

In fact, this is a cactus wren. Life pricks him, but he doesn’t lose sight of the flower.

“Thursday” becomes “Thrush”

This is a white-crested laughing thrush. He can’t help himself. He knows life is absurd and that cracks him up.

“Friday” becomes “Finch”

The finch is small but proud, a fitting symbol for anyone who’s survived the workweek. On this day, the masses will raise a glass and cry out, “Thank Got it’s Finch!”

“Saturday” becomes “Starling”

The starling strikes a mood. There is moonglow on his chest, starlight on his crown and wings. To me, he suggests romance and self-indulgence. He says, “Enjoy — you’ve earned it!”

“Sunday” becomes “Sunbird”

What better way to finish than with a burst of color, a celebratory fireworks show? We lie back, review the week, and pick out the moments of greatest satisfaction.

I have an erstwhile friend — she’s a Trumpist — who likes to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” She’d want to know what’s broken about the weekday names we have now. They’re functional, aren’t they? Yes, they are. But “functional” is faint praise if praise at all. Our civilization is light-years removed from the worship of pagan gods. We’re standing at the doorway of exploiting reusable energy, sealing the cracks in our genome, and deploying quantum computers. We’re dreaming of terraforming Mars and mining the asteroids. Isn’t it time to put our own stamp on our lives? Away with the dreary, witless, and irrelevant; onward to references that are meaningful, alive, and expressive.

Yes, I realize that I’m charging up a hill with no one behind me. But that’s your loss as well as mine. You will never live to hear someone exclaim, “Thank God it’s Finch!”

Meditations on meditation

When I was in high school, I thought “meditation” was a simple word. It meant thinking deeply, pondering. It was mostly what Einstein did to reimagine Newton’s conception of gravity. But when I got to college, I learned that meditation also had a vague, somewhat mystical meaning. It was a process through which one became more self-enlightened, mentally clear, and emotionally calm. But there was no agreement on the process itself. Some practitioners called for focusing on an object or a mental image, on uttering a mantra, or on awareness of one’s breathing. Others favored just the opposite, striving to focus on nothing and dismissing any thought or image that formed in the mind.

I was dismayed to discover that meditation often had religious or cultural trappings. Proponents differed in their advice about when to do it, in what posture, in what ambience, and with which accoutrements. Was it permissible to meditate in the shower or in a concert hall? Apparently not.

I concluded that the whole subject needed to be turned on its head. If self-enlightenment, serenity, and clarity were worthy goals — and they were — why not resolve to do the things that plausibly moved us toward those goals? If we chose to call those things “meditation,” fine. The term could hardly get more muddled than it already was.

That was Step One. Step Two was to brainstorm about activities that usually generated feelings of serenity and clarity. I figured that if my mind were serene and clear more often, then enlightenment might gradually follow. Certainly, one can’t become more enlightened when serenity and clarity are diminished. They are prerequisites.

After I had a list of goal-directed activities, I was ready for Step Three, which is posing a critical question: What, if anything, did the listed activities have in common? Happily, I found that there was a commonality. Every one produced a phenomenon I called “distancing from the self.” That is, I became two people, one doing the activity and another observing the activity with a kind of beguiled bliss.

Here, in order from least to most effective, are activities that I’ve used to distance from myself. They may work for you, too:

Adopt “earworms.” An earworm is a catchy musical theme that gets stuck in your head. It plays over and over in your mind’s ear. Some people fight the monotony, which shows that they’re acting from a position outside their minds. This is a mistake. Accept an earworm as your mantra for the moment. Enjoy the fun of it.

Earworms can come from anywhere. I like this one from pop music and this motif from Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto.

Play a solitary game. The most obvious of which is … Solitaire. Watch yourself exercise the simple strategies for winning. Or step up to Sudoku. It requires a wider palette of techniques. Enjoy the satisfaction of applying them. Or go all the way with computer games. You can marvel as your doppelganger masters higher and higher levels of reflexive competence.

Watch formula movies. Of course, almost all movies are formula movies. The term is practically a redundancy. Two genres, rom-coms and whodunits, are the most formulaic of all. The dramatic stages of a  rom-com are well known: boy meets girls, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl for good. All the rest is context. Find an original one with a good script, like Groundhog Day, and you’ve got something resembling a miracle.

Whodunits have an absurd formula. Someone of questionable character is murdered. There are numerous suspects, each of whom loathed the victim. The police are baffled. Enter the genius sleuth, a lovable pest with no end of idiosyncrasies. A number of suspects emerge in turn as the probable murderer, but each is shown to be innocent, much to the exasperation of the authorities. Finally, the genius sleuth demonstrates conclusively that an obscure character, masquerading as a guileless nebbish, is in fact a fiend with a perverse grudge. You’re denied the pleasure of saying, “I figured it out!” but you delight in the fact that the conclusion is contrived and ridiculous.

All movies offer something invaluable: we can watch them again and again and know exactly what’s going to happen next. It’s like experiencing an enormous earworm, and eyeworm! You can stand aside and experience it as a director or critic would. If you’ve ever watched Mystery Science Theater 3000, you know this pleasure very well.

Perform a “procedure.” This sounds cryptic, but all it means is enacting a series of steps — sometimes simple, sometimes sophisticated — with such proficiency that they appear to be (and are) second nature. In a sense, all the activities I’ve described so far — “hearing” earworms, playing solitary games, watching movies — are procedures. They’re just simple, straightforward ones.

In Zen Buddhist communities, there is a concept called samu. It’s simple communal work assigned by a nun or monk. It might be cutting vegetables, cleaning toilets, stacking firewood, weeding a garden, or minor carpentry —  simple procedural tasks. The Zen Buddhists perform the tasks attentively and devotedly as a means of achieving serenity. They say, “There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.”

Beyond these elementary procedures are those I classify as craftsmanship. For example, there are the crafts of painting and photography. There is image editing, something I love to do. No muse is involved; they are procedural. Our genetic gifts often play a role, but still these tasks proceed in semi-conscious steps. It’s the same with creative design, woodworking, serious writing, musical composition, sculpture, and innumerable other crafts. Michelangelo famously said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” I can see Michelangelo carving away, bit by bit, always knowing where to put the chisel and how to strike it, while he simultaneously stands aside and appraises his progress.

Perhaps the greatest paradox in life is that in losing ourselves, we find ourselves.