Monthly Archives: May 2016

Day 133: the catch

The younger was peeved because the elder had a play date and she didn’t. But it wasn’t just that. The kids had just returned from a camping trip with HWMBP, who, you will recall, Must Be Preserved precisely because of his ability to survive in the wilderness when the Zombie Apocalypse comes.

The younger was dirty, tired, and cranky, and she wanted company, just not my company. She didn’t want to play; she didn’t want to read. I tried in vain to set up a play date. I looked at the clock. HWMBP was taking them to a Memorial Day barbecue at 5. What could we do to kill an hour?

“Why don’t we walk to get frozen yogurt?” I suggested, brightly.

“Mo-ommmmmm,” the younger fumed, at this obviously odious proposition.

“I don’t want to do anything that involves eating,” she declared.

I opened my mouth to make another suggestion.

“Or walking,” she added. I closed my mouth.

Spoken like a true Angeleno, I thought.

“OK,” I said. “What do you want to do then?” I did not expect her to be ready with a suggestion but she was.

“Why can’t we just, just, just go get our nails polished together?” she pleaded. “We’ve never even done that before,” she protested, as if it was something she’d been nagging me to do for years although, in fact, this was only the second time she’d ever mentioned the idea.

Although I paint the younger’s nails all the time (and she paints mine, generally against my will), it is true that we had never been to a nail salon together. I was about to say, “we don’t have time,” but then I reconsidered. It really doesn’t take all that long to get your nails painted. I called the nearest nail place. They could take us immediately. It was decided.

The younger was ecstatic.

When we got there (she conceded to walking), we chose our colors: light pink for her and navy blue for me.

“Light pink and dark blue go well together, don’t they, Mom?” she observed in her husky voice, extremely pleased by our choices.

As we both sank into our comfy chairs, I let out a big sigh and thought, oooh, this really was a good idea.

 A couple, a man and woman in their late fifties or sixties, were sitting opposite us getting their nails done. The woman couldn’t take her eyes off the younger.

“What a great-looking kid,” she murmured, beaming.

I laughed: I thought I knew what she meant: there was something arresting about the sight of the tangle-haired little girl in the mud-stained sweater reclining on the plump cushions with her hands held out regally.

The woman continued to gaze at the younger, transfixed, until her own treatment was finished. Before getting up she turned to me.

“Our [gesturing to her husband] daughter is 29 now. But I remember when she was just about this one’s age, bringing her in for her first manicure.”

I smiled, thinking of how my own first professional manicure had most definitely been when I was an adult. If there had been any mother-daughter nail polishing ritual, it was much much later, when I took my mother for her first manicure—probably in LA, come to think of it.

As the woman got up from her seat, she gave the younger one last tender look.

“It’s such a sacred moment,” she declared, before walking off.

I had to stifle, I admit, a huge guffaw, at this solemn pronouncement. A five-year old girl getting her first manicure is a sacred moment?

Maybe my repressed guffaw was out of place. If I were a foreigner anywhere else, would I so sneeringly mock the cherished rites of passage of the local culture? Of course not! No, I would probably extol them as fascinating traditions.

Still. I don’t think it was a sacred moment. But it was … a lovely experience. The younger looked so blissed out after her manicure I thought she was going to fall asleep. To be attended to with care and ceremony can be extremely soothing; it can also be unexpectedly moving. I thought about this as the woman who was performing my manicure massaged my arms and hands. There’s something so intimate about another human caressing your hand and clasping it tightly. I felt tears prick slightly in my eyes when she intertwined her fingers with mine.

Last week in therapy, Dr F. pressed me to articulate my feelings more precisely without using a generic term like “lonely” or “sad” or “longing.”

I thought for a long time in silence. All I could think of was a gesture.

“It’s like I’m reaching out,” I said. “It’s like I’m reaching out my hand,” I continued, and I think I may even have physically extended my hand as I spoke, as if trying to catch the feeling.

“I’m reaching out my hand and I’m expecting someone to take it, and then I feel this, this sense of absence when they don’t.”

“Reaching out,” she asked, “like you’re on the flying trapeze?”

It wasn’t what I’d had in mind, but I loved the image.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, exactly. But my timing is always off. I reach too far or too early, so I always miss the catch.”

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Day 132: sexpectation

This morning I invented a new word, inspired by Dr. Lake, who described my life over the past 72 hours or so as a “sex expectation rollercoaster.”

Note (and this is important) that she did not say a “sex rollercoaster.” She said a “sex expectation rollercoaster.” Now, I don’t know exactly what a “sex rollercoaster” would entail, precisely, but presumably it would involve actual sex. Presumably, it would be some kind of wild sex ride. The sex expectation rollercoaster, by contrast, involves no sex whatsoever. None.

The portmanteau sexpectation refers (duh), to the expectation that one is to have sex.

Now, one could take the Freudian approach and argue that sexpectation is the ur form of expectation. In this account, all expectation is simply a sublimated form of sexpectation. Sexpectation would be to expectation as sexual desire is to narrative desire; it is the presumption that the reader’s avid page-turning operates on the same erotic principle as sexual longing that underlies literary theories such as Peter Brooks’s in Reading for the Plot.

But if sexpectation and desire are parallel concepts, they are not, I maintain, synonymous. Sexpectation is not a drive. It is not so much about longing but rather an epistemological orientation, more about anticipation, which might be either pleasurable or not.

Is expectation is a sublimated form of sexpectation or is sexpectation a sexualized version of expectation? Who knows? What I’m interested in is the extent to which some people, namely, me, experience both erotic and non-erotic forms of expectation with a painfully visceral intensity.

Let’s take non-erotic examples first.

  • Despite smugly considering itself to be something of a critical thinker, the duck-rabbit is extraordinarily gullible. If you say something outlandish to it while maintaining a completely deadpan expression, its likely response will not be to roll its eyes knowingly but rather to gasp, clap its paw-wing over its mouth and then exclaim, “Really????!!!!” The duck-rabbit moves very quickly from hearing someone propose an idea to anticipating its actualization. This, I’ve been told, is what makes the duck-rabbit so fun to tease.
  • The duck-rabbit is so ticklish that it cannot bear even the remotest suggestion that someone might tickle it. It breaks down in helpless hysterical laughter and curls up into a self-protective ball if someone so much as makes a plausible tickling gesture with their hand, especially if it is directed at its downy neck, from across the room. (And, yes, the duck-rabbit’s children know this about it and exploit this vulnerability mercilessly.) As in the gullibility scenario, the duck-rabbit anticipatorily reacts to the actualization of the proposed action before it has even happened.
  • When the duck-rabbit discovers a song that makes it want to dance, it listens to it over and over, either dancing to it or, more pathetically, fantasizing about dancing to it, including, yes, choreographing particular sequences in its mind. Recently it’s been “Come Get it Bae,” (and on the word “bae,” see here), which is earwormingly catchy. But the duck-rabbit’s enjoyment of it has nothing to do with the melody, and certainly not the lyrics (which involve a hackneyed come-ride-my-motorcycle-baby ifyouknowwhatImean-conceit). No, the appeal of the song is its dancability, which is something the song’s producers clearly understand, because the video, which the duck-rabbit must have watched a half dozen times in the last week, is of a group of gorgeous women having a grand old time dancing to it. Pharrell Williams, who is surely one of the most uncharismatic popstars in the history of pop, is utterly redundant in the video; you just wish he would get out the way. Even more redundant is Miley Cyrus, who pops up in a manner oddly evocative of Dawn French in one of the French & Saunders music video parodies halfway through. Anyway. I’m digressing. The point is that when the duck-rabbit hears this song, all it can do is dance in its head.

Do you see the pattern? You tell the outrageous story – I’m already aghast. You wiggle your fingers – I’m already hysterical; you play the music – I’m already dancing. All of this doubtless has something to do with the embodied simulation hypothesis. But let’s not go down that duck-rabbit hole.

Now, I expect that everyone experiences some degree of sexpectation, but I also suspect that some people experience it more viscerally than others, just like some people anticipate being tickled more viscerally. Although the two are closely linked, by sexpectation I don’t mean arousal; or, at least, I mean the element of arousal that is the vertiginous feeling of falling before you kiss someone. That can be an exciting feeling if there is someone there to kiss you back, but if there isn’t, and you’re in this vertiginous state for a sustained period of time, it’s more akin to motion-sickness, hence the aptness of the roller-coaster metaphor.

Because I know I’m highly susceptible to this affliction, if I’m in a state of heightened sexpectation, I try very hard to distract myself. This weekend, alone, I threw a dinner party; I went to dance class three days in a row; I cycled everywhere as fast as I possibly could; I went to the farmers market, twice; I even cleaned my bloody apartment; I did three loads of laundry; I took a lot of showers. I ended up very well exercised, very clean, and very tired, but very much still unravished.

My sexpectations thus remained pitifully unfulfilled this week; on the upside, my dancing fantasies were gloriously, spectacularly fulfilled. Mere hours after I’d been watching “Come Get it Bae” for the fifth or sixth time, I went to dance class and, for the first time since I’ve been dancing at this studio, they played the song. And we all danced to it with big silly grins on our faces. It wasn’t remotely anticlimactic. On the contrary, it was everything I could have wished for. Sometimes dreams really do come true.

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Day 131: Stuff I would have posted this week if I were still on facebook

  • Did Alexander Pope go by Alex, Xander, or the full Alexander? Or … wait … Al? Lexy? I need an answer, people.
  • In response to a post titled “how to build a charcuterie board,” that appeared in a lifetstyle blog I’ve been reading since leaving facebook (in between writing my second book and re-reading the Iliad, obvs.) one reader responded excitedly in the comments section: “excited to make a vegan version of this for parties! There are so many delicious options out there now that do not include animal products.” Veganism: yes. Vegan charcuterie board: no. Just: no. [1] 
  • Why is ghosting (the practice of ceasing all communication with someone you’re dating) called ghosting when the agent of said “ghosting” disappears? An apparition is, precisely, an appearance. Yes, it is true that an apparition is, as Jayne puts it in Air’s Appearance, “seeming without being,” but that is still exactly the opposite of the experience the term “ghosting” denotes. When you are “ghosted” it is precisely the knowledge that the person’s being persists, presumably, out there in the world, even as their representation vanishes, that is the most uncanny and, frankly, galling, aspect of the experience. Not that I would know.

 

Notes

[1] Wouldn’t it be amazing if a post titled “how to build a charcuterie board” on a blog aimed at women was ACTUALLY about woodworking your own chopping board? Also, that totally WOULD be vegan, right?

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Day 130: shake it up

Some mornings, you wake up early, you drink your coffee, you banter with your children, you take your flipping meds, you read the younger child The BF blooming G, which is surely the silliest book you can possibly read, you get out in the sodding sunshine, you listen to Pharrell bloody Williams, which is surely the fizziest pop music you can possibly listen to, and you STILL end up sobbing in the parking lot, to the clear discomfort of the woman unlucky enough to be parked in the car facing yours.

What a spectacle, a great Anatid-leporid like you, crying in such undignified fashion! [1]

Fighting pain with sweetness and light was clearly highly ineffective. By this afternoon, I had a plan B: fighting pain with more pain.

What happened in the interim to inspire this strategy? I went to listen to two undergraduates talk about their theses at our annual honors thesis showcase, in which seniors who have written a thesis present their research to their peers and faculty.

One of these students had visited my undergraduate seminar last week, after I sent out a last-minute plea for former thesis-writers to come share their wisdom and experiences with my students, who are all in the beginning stages of researching their theses.

She walked into the room during our mid-seminar break, quietly introduced herself to me, and slipped into the seat next to me. She was quite strikingly dressed: most noticeable, at first glance, was her pale pink hijab, which was made of a very fine linen, and was elegantly arrayed. She also wore a quite lovely blue wool blazer, which I immediately coveted, black skinny jeans, and leather ankle boots. When she spoke, she immediately commanded the room’s attention. Her thesis was about capitalism, violence, and temporality in a recent and critically acclaimed television series. It became clear to me, and I think, to the room, pretty quickly, that this was not your average thesis. Her argument was complex and profound, and her learning was deep. She talked about the challenges of writing the thesis—both intellectual: struggling to get to grips with Fredric Jameson—and practical: struggling to find the motivation to keep writing when she felt stuck.

“How did you make it through?” one of my students asked her. Love the pain, she answered, laughing but also serious. She got up at 5am to write, she explained. And she wrote while listening to music, the bleaker the better (she recommended Radiohead specifically for this purpose).

When she stopped talking the room was silent for a couple of seconds, still spellbound. Then one student broke the silence: “by any chance are you this year’s commencement speaker?” she asked, in a star struck tone. “Because you could be.”

Seeing this same extraordinarily self-possessed student speak again this morning reminded me of her mantra, love the pain. When I got home, still unable to stop crying, I went out to run. Not for fun. Please! No, I ran for the pain. I ran hard, at a pace I knew full well I could not sustain, until my heart thumped painfully in my chest, until I was going fast enough that I was flying across the cracks in the sidewalk like the BFG leaping across hedgerows, until my breathing was loud and ragged, until I felt nauseous. I stopped and caught my breath. And then I ran again. I was probably only outside for 15 minutes – the elder was coming home from school and I needed to get back. When I unlocked the door, panting, and stretched in my living room, sweat stung my eyes as it poured down my face.

So: did it work? Yes, it did. It feels like I took myself and quite sternly and severely gave myself a good shake. And afterwards, everything, all the cells and feelings and gunk, to use the technical term, had been sort of re-distributed. I didn’t shake anything off; rather, I shook everything up, in the manner of a snow globe, or, I suppose, a well-mixed vesper.

Like a vesper, it’s only a temporary fix; but it’ll do for now.

 

Notes

[1] N.B. Wikipedia tells me that anatids are generally “monogamous breeders” whereas leporids are “typically polygynandrous.” IS THIS THE KEY TO ALL THAT AILS ME???

 

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Day 129: vespers

Vespers, Vespas.

Ester’s, Aestus.

In my accent, each member of this pair is pronounced identically; to my ear, the four words rhyme perfectly.

It’s a mystical correspondence, if ever there was one.

A beloved colleague bought me my first vesper at a bar in Santa Monica called Ester’s a couple of months ago. When she told me that it was a drink devised by Ian Fleming and named for the character of Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, I was immediately intrigued and, also, surprised that I’d never heard of it.

I read a lot of Ian Fleming as a teenager; I also adored the David Niven / Peter Sellars / Woody Allen Casino Royale when I was a teenager; in that exuberantly silly Bond parody, Ursula Andress vamps it up as Vesper Lynd – but I don’t believe that there is any mention of the cocktail. In the 2006 version, Eva Green plays Vesper Lynd with stunning elegance. That version of Casino Royale features the cocktail prominently, but I’d forgotten all about it.

I always loved both the character and, especially, the name “Vesper,” which, with its echo of both viper and whisper, perfectly captures Ms. Lynd’s ability to so gently yet devastatingly get under 007’s skin.

Obviously, then, I was smitten with the vesper before I even had the chance to put the glass to my lips.

While I was nursing my first vesper at Ester’s, my colleague mentioned to me that there was one other bar in Santa Monica that had a vesper on the menu: Aestus.

I’d been to Aestus, but I’d never ordered their vesper. We decided there and then that we must make a pilgrimage to Aestus together to compare vespers.

Cut to today. I text my colleague, “we must plan a time for our vespas!” only realizing later when she sends out an email with the subject line: vespers, that I had confused the cocktail with the Italian motorcycle. My colleague ventured that it was the James Bond association that had triggered my confusion. That seemed right: there really ought to be a chase scene in a Bond film through Rome with 007 on a vespa, oughtn’t there? In my mind I have totally seen this sequence (I can just see the girl on the back of the vespa and the upset fruit cart that they surely crash into, leaving an irate Italian fruit seller in their wake). And yet, I’m not sure that there is such a chase scene in the Bond oeuvre. (Let me know if you can think of one …)

The plot to drink vespers at Aestus was hatched. And for some reason the very long thread of emails with the subject line: vespers, and the lengthy discussion of just which evening would suit, amused me because it brought to mind the idea that we might easily be nuns in The Sound of Music making plans to attend Vespers.

We are told in the novel of Casino Royale that Vesper Lynd is named for the Latin for evening – so the name of the cocktail and the religious service is, in fact, the same word.

That led me to think: the cocktail hour is, is it not, a kind of secular evening prayer? With that in mind, I hereby move that the “cocktail hour” be renamed, simply, “Vespers,” with “see you at Vespers” synonymous with, “see you at happy hour.”

After much to-ing and fro-ing, our plan for vespers at Aestus was finally made. But, alas! Perfidious fate intervened. Aestus, befitting its Latin name (passion, agitation, seething) had, doubtless in some fit of fury, elected to close this very Sunday, i.e. tomorrow, dear readers – close, that is, forever!

I very much regret to say that I shan’t be able to visit Aestus before Sunday. It feels grossly unfair that I will be denied the chance to compare Aestus’ vespers with Ester’s. More selflessly, it seems extremely thoughtless of Aestus to close its doors mere weeks before both KJ Rabbit and Dr. Lake are due to grace Santa Monica with their presence.

But: so be it. Aestus may close its doors forever this Sunday, but I will commemorate its vespers (undrunk as they are: tasted cocktails are sweet, but those untasted are sweeter, etc.) in my evensong chant that I think of as a blasphemous hybrid of One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and Psalm 51, and which I shall l recite devotedly evermore:

Vespers, Vespas, Ester’s, Aestus;

Oh, Lord, open thou our lips;

And our mouths shall sing thy praises,

In between our grateful sips.

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Day 128: with expression

My neighbor came over for a drink earlier this evening. She is a single mom and has a seven-year-old daughter who goes to the same school as my eldest. When my children are at my house (they are at their father’s this evening) they play with this girl, let’s call her Gigi, constantly.

My neighbor and I drank rosé and ate cheese. Gigi ate cherries and talked excitedly about her upcoming birthday party, asking eagerly if my son would be coming. At one point she observed that she sometimes says hello to my son—let’s call him Milo—at school.

“I’ll say, ‘Hi Milo!’ but then he doesn’t always say hello to me,” she explained. “He acts kind of weird.”

“Hmmm.” I said. “Weird how?”

“Like the other day, I passed him in the yard, and I said, ‘Hi, Milo!’ and he said, ‘Oh. Hello, Gigi.’ And then he just kept walking.”

“Huh,” I said.

She continued. “And I said, ‘Hi, Milo!’”—here she paused to find the right words—“I said ‘Hi, Milo,’ like, with expression. And he just said [putting on a frosty voice], ‘Oh. Hello, Gigi.’”

She looks to me for an explanation for this odd behavior.

I sigh.

Then I catch my neighbor’s eye and we both start cracking up.

“They don’t change, honey. They just get older,” my neighbor says to her daughter, dryly.

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Day 127: f-words

Not the F-word; F-words.

I noticed idly, the other day, because I happened to be updating my c.v., that a lot of my published works contain f-words in the title. For example: forging, figures, flimsy, fiction. I also noticed that the concepts denoted by those words have something in common. They all denote something insubstantial.

Once I had noticed that, I kept thinking of more f-words in the same vein.

Fillip, flippant, folly, floss, flotsam, flight, float, feign, factitious, frivolous, fussy, flibbertigibbet, fallacious, fake, false, fantastic, fancy, fluff, feint, faint, fart, flake, flatulent, fabulous, froth, fairy, fizz, film, fop, flap, frill, filigree, fly, fan, felicitous, and perhaps my favorite of all, faff.

Another f-word is fun.

It’s a word I hear a lot in a particular context. Quite often, when I tell people about my second book project, they declare, warmly, “that sounds fun!” My second book is about the metaphors that eighteenth and early nineteenth-century writers associate with absorptive reading. The figures I focus on are admittedly whimsical; one of them, for example, is the flying carpet.

It would be rather perverse of me to insist, I realize, that flying carpets, as a subject, are not fun. Fun you say? No fun to be found here. Very serious business, flying carpets.

But still, whenever I hear that particular f-word being applied to my research, what I hear happening is a variation of the dynamic I’m interested in in my book. The flying carpet chapter, for example, is about how even as realist fiction disavows enchanted transport as narrative content, criticism embraces enchanted transport as a conceit for describing narrative effects. In other words, flying carpets aren’t in eighteenth-century novels, but they are in the language that critics use to describe the experience of reading them.

Likewise, when people say my topic sounds fun, I think what they mean is that they imagine that the subject of the book attaches to the labor of studying them. I am genuinely not sure if this is true. Is searching for representations of flying castles actually more fun that searching for instances of, I don’t know, representations of paving stones, or some other more pedestrian kind of object? On the one hand, it might seem obvious that the answer is “yes!” On the other hand, as a scholar, my favorite parts of Robinson Crusoe are the “boring” bits! (With apologies to Paul K. Anonymous for calling any part of Crusoe boring.)

On the other, third, hand, it’s not as though content is irrelevant to what makes something fun. For example, one of my ideas of fun is to look up rude words in the OED. The reason why it’s fun is definitely because of the contrast between the juvenile, transgressive language, and the sometimes prim, always deadpan lexicographical commentary. This statement for example, precedes the entry for “fart”: Not in decent use.

Of course, not all f-words are arty-farty-airy-fairy; funicular, for example. That’s a good solid word.

And, of course, there are words beginning with different letters that belong in this semantic field: in the first place, I hear you, dear reader, protesting, “but duck-rabbit, where there is flotsam there is also jetsam!” And you are right! And of course there are many other non f-words in the same vein: silly; dream; gossamer; wisp, and so on and on and on.

But here’s my question: is it actually more likely that f-words will denote these sorts of ideas, and if so, why is it?

I have a vague and probably preposterous theory. My theory is that the f-sound is inherently airy.

Take the expression, “phew!” It is imitative, as the OED notes in its entry for phew, of “the action of puffing or blowing away with the lips.” So could it be that f-sounds naturally attach to actions or things culturally marked as figuratively “airy”?

Or is this just a fuckload of fuckwind? [1]

 

Notes

[1] So, “fuckwind” is, in fact, a real word. Implausibly, it’s the name of a bird. (???). My preferred etymology would be that it is a term of abuse for a person given to a baroque flights of fancy, and that it is inspired by a story about an epic monologue by Byron that ended with the infamous words, “on my honour, I will fuck the wind tonight, that whore!” But the real origin of the word is almost equally appealing. The OED says, “Origin uncertain; perhaps fuck v. + wind n.” Gee, thanks OED! A compound of fuck and wind! Genius, that! But then, the entry goes on to say—and I can’t explain why this is funny, I can only affirm that it is—“Compare earlier windfucker n. and discussion in W. B. Lockwood Oxford Dictionary of British Bird Names (1993) at windfucker n.”

 

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Day 126: Up the Amazon

A couple of months ago, I went on a date. It was a good date but, sadly for me, my suitor was due to leave the country very soon after we first met, and there was no opportunity for a second rendezvous before he left.

He was (and still is unless he has perished, heroically, in the twenty-four hours or so since I last heard from him) part of a documentary team making a film about remote communities in the Peruvian Amazon. The title of the documentary they are making (they are still in Peru) has the word “uncontacted” in it.

At first, when he told me about this project, I was quite perturbed by the concept. Wot, you’re just gonna turn up with a camera crew on their doorstep and make a documentary about what ensues, I asked, with deep skepticism. Isn’t that super anthropologically incorrect?

He assured me that this was not the case. The film was not about contacting so-called “uncontacted” communities, it was about documenting the effects of these remote communities’ recent exposure to wider cultural influences. Still, I protested, surely the very act of making the documentary would itself constitute an instance of the very “contact” it sought to document, would it not? That is to say, would not the very act of observation change the nature of the findings observed? [1]

Anyway, I digress. The point is that my intrepid explorer and I, we had a lot in common. Because I have, you see, these past few months, been conducting my own anthropological investigation into remote communities. These communities do not live in the Amazon. No, they (shhh, don’t tell anyone, they’ll be besieged) live among us.

They call themselves “men.”

Just as my date’s documentary team journeyed to Peru with the aim of “connecting with the indigenous communities living along the border of the zone of contact,” so too have I, in the past several months, sought to connect with these local indigenous populations. Certainly, it’s too early to draw definitive conclusions; further research is necessary, to be sure. However, the results thus far have been fascinating if somewhat scattered due to the subject’s inherent elusiveness.

I’ve done my level best to employ best practices, remaining respectful of the mens’ cultural norms and traditions. Because the men occupy the border of the zone of contact, it’s absolutely crucial to respect their boundaries, or else they will, in all probability, bid a hasty retreat, often under cover of darkness.

What’s required is a “softly softly” approach. Allow them to determine how much contact they’re comfortable with. Maintain a significant distance at all times or else they will swiftly feel threatened and retreat altogether from the zone of contact.

Even if you adhere closely to these guidelines, there is no guarantee that you will be welcomed into the zone of contact. Indeed, quite frequently, you will be in the zone of contact, like, truly and unequivocally in the zone of contact only to awaken the next morning and discover that the zone has shifted while you were sleeping. You were in the zone of contact but you are now, in fact, in the zone of highly infrequent and sporadic contact or, more often than not, no contact whatsoever.

It’s crucial to be aware of one’s own cultural biases in interacting with the mens. Their language is variegated and nuanced despite upon first appearance seeming fairly limited in scope. These apparent limitations are in fact crucial to its spare beauty; simple temporal phrases like “next week” or “tomorrow night” that to the foreign observer appear quite specific in fact carry an extraordinarily wide range of meanings depending upon an almost infinite range of factors.

Likewise, the vocabulary associated with acts of assent, in particular, is vastly capacious in its range of meanings. For example, in response to an invitation to participate in a social gathering, the words “yeah” or “sure” might seem to indicate assent, but in fact evince a strong reluctance.

In addition to the richness of individual words and phrases, mens’ language patterns more generally are highly complex. While at first their communicative mode superficially resembles the regular back-and-forth cadence characteristic of conversation, upon further observation it becomes clear that this resemblance is illusory. By contrast with the values enshrined in conversation—interchange, reciprocity, mutual exchange, etc.—the mens’ communicative mode values ellipsis, irregularity, and asymmetry. While at first this arrhythmy can be disconcerting, one may, surely, eventually come to appreciate its spasmodic lurches between speechifying and silence.

While this arrhythmical aesthetic makes it challenging to identify patterns as such, one general tendency does seem clear, even at this preliminary stage of research: mens’ speech acts become progressively more minimal in direct correlation to the duration of their acquaintance with the participant-observer.

This practice of gradually decreasing both the length and frequency of utterances can be deeply dispiriting for the intrepid ethnologist. However, the important thing to keep in mind is that these are deeply fragile populations. Electronic communication, with its promise of untrammeled access to family, friends, and lovers, threatens to encroach upon the mens’ traditional way of life. It is only natural that they should be terse, laconic, and downright rude. The mens are very vulnerable right now. They are under a lot of strain. It’s not you, it’s them. I mean, it’s also you. You were probably too chatty. Like, way. Too. Chatty.

But, again, I digress.

A couple of final observations. Although I am loath to generalize from such a brief time in the field, I think I can say at this point with some confidence that the observations presented here apply to all men everywhere across time and space, with the exception of Eric. Eric aside, the findings presented here are trans-historic, trans-cultural truths. Moreover, the communication patterns observed here also—and this conclusion disproves my original hypothesis before I began my fieldwork—obtain regardless of the nature of the participant-observer’s relationship to the subject. That is to say, I originally speculated that these communications patterns might solely manifest in the context of courtship rituals. However, although the patterns are certainly especially pronounced in such a context, they may be observed in all manner of other social relationships.

There is a certain irony to the fact that of all the mens I have encountered this year, it is the man who is, literally, up the Amazon, a place where he went because of its remoteness and exclusion from modern communication networks, who has thus far been the most consistent communicator I’ve encountered this year.

What do we make of this, noble readers? Is it perhaps the case that men need to, literally, be up the Amazon in order to be motivated to communicate regularly with women?

I think that this really might be true.

As further evidence in support of this thesis, consider the following, a passage from the British naturalist Henry Walter Bates’s 1863 account of his expedition to the Amazon. Towards the end of the book, Bates reflects,

“I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels of books and periodicals, and towards the latter part of my residence from ill health arising from bad and insufficient food. The want of intellectual society, and of the varied excitement of European life, was also felt most acutely, and this, instead of becoming deadened over time, increased until it became almost insupportable. I was obliged, at last, to come to the conclusion that the contemplation of Nature alone is not sufficient to fill the human heart and mind.” (Henry Walter Bates, from The Naturalist on the River Amazon, 1910)

You see?? He had to spend years in the Amazon before realizing, eventually, that communicating with people added to his quality of life.

If it is indeed the case that men must be up the Amazon in order to develop a basic understanding of Western modernity’s communication protocols, then how can we, as ethnographers in the field, use this intelligence to better understand and interact with this community? We can’t send them all to the Amazon. (Can we???) But even if we could, I don’t think this is necessary. I think, rather, that we might use various techniques to induce a sense of figurative up-the-Amazon-ness in local mens, thereby coaxing them into more sustained communications with those of us who remain committed to fieldwork in this area. What kind of techniques do I have in mind? I’ll end with three simple recommendations.

  • Resist the temptation to send parcels of books or periodicals more than once every four months, or every two months at the most. If possible, send all items by steamer.
  • The Peruvian Amazon has very high humidity. If at all possible, always engage men in a suitably humid environment. (Hot yoga classes are everywhere).
  • During his voyage to the Amazon, Bates suffers an “ague,” the most specific symptom of which is “damped enthusiasm.” He successfully treats the ague with “a small phial of quinine.” Ergo, to treat the mens’ congenital listlessness and lack of enthusiasm, dose with gin and tonic at regular intervals.

BONUS technique: make the subject watch all the Carry On films. There isn’t actually a Carry On film called Carry on up the Amazon, but there totally should be. And most people who are not British and of a certain generation find them deeply estranging, which is just the effect you want to produce.

 

Notes

[1] If I did not harbor a strong suspicion that If HWMBP will read this, then I would proceed to draw a parallel here with quantum mechanics; but I know that that would piss him off royally for sound intellectual reasons, and so I will refrain from doing so.

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Day 125: going for a run, the duck-rabbit method.

One day, the duck-rabbit will publish a whole series of handbooks, and The Duck-Rabbit’s Guide to Running will be one of them.

There will also be The Duck-Rabbit’s Guide to Writing a Book, The Duck-Rabbit’s Guide to Parenting, and so on and so forth. The premise of each of these invaluable handbooks will be that in order to get anything done other than lolling around all day, you have to overcome an epic struggle between the short-term-pleasure focused, lazy part of you (that would be the duck) and the long-term-achievement focused, ambitious part of you (that would be the rabbit).

The duck-rabbit experiences this struggle more or less any time it strives to do anything that involves arising from the sofa upon which it currently reclines. According to anecdotal evidence, not everyone experiences this daily struggle: some blessed individuals decide they want to do something and then they simply do it. Quite extraordinary!

Obviously, these handbooks will be of little use to such individuals. But for persons who do experience this constant push-pull between short-term pleasure and long-term goals, the duck-rabbit’s series of (handy, pocket-sized) guides will prove indispensable. The key is using the rabbit to trick the duck. This isn’t all that hard, because the duck isn’t much of a thinker, let’s be honest. Still, it does involve a certain degree of subterfuge on the rabbit’s part. Consider the following dialogue as a case study. [1]

Rabbit: We’re going for a walk, just to clear the head, get some fresh air.

Duck: Sure, whatevs.

Rabbit: All right, so let’s get our gear on.

Duck: “Our gear”?

[Pause during which the rabbit patiently retrieves all of the various pieces of exercise clothing—the shorts, the sports bra, the running top, the visor, the running socks, the running shoes—plus all the other necessary accouterments—the sunblock, the headphones, etc.—and garbs (and in the case of sunblock, slathers) the duck-rabbit with said items.]

Duck: Bloody hell.

Rabbit: [testily] What?

Duck: I just don’t get why, if we’re just going for a walk to clear our head, we need all this brightly colored spandex.

Rabbit: Well, it’s a warm day.

Duck: And?

Rabbit: This is special moisture-wicking fabric. We’ll be much more comfortable.

Duck: I dunno. It just looks like we’re trying really hard to be athletic or something. And we’re just going for a walk!

Rabbit: Look, let’s just go, we’re all spandexed and sunblocked now, we might as well go outside.

Duck: Oh, fine.

[They walk out into the bright sunshiny afternoon. It’s a lovely day with a cool breeze. They happily stroll along together singing along to Amy Winehouse on their iPhone.]

Rabbit: Ooh, this is a quite a bouncy song, don’t you think.

Duck: Not really. Actually, it’s a bit depressing, when you think about it.

[They walk for a few more minutes. Another song comes on.]

Rabbit: D’you fancy to running to this one?

Duck: Not really.

Rabbit: Let’s try, just for this one song.

Duck: Oh, fine.

[The duck-rabbit breaks into a modest trot for most but not the entirety of the song, which turns out to be quite a bit longer than it expected.]

Duck: [doubled-over with a stitch] Fuck, are you trying to kill me!

Rabbit: There, don’t you feel invigorated!

Duck: If by “invigorated,” you mean winded and clammy, then, yes.

[They walk for five more minutes.]

Rabbit: You know, it’s been over half an hour since we left the house.

Duck: Uh-huh.

Rabbit: Wouldn’t you like to get home soon and lie on the sofa?

Duck: [Perking up]: yeah, why, shall we Uber?

Rabbit: No, I was thinking we could run home.

Duck: Ha! No thanks.

Rabbit: Why not? Think about it. We already have our running clothing on. We have to get home anyway. It will be quicker if we run. And there’s some Britney Spears coming up on the playlist, it’s going to be awesome.

Duck: You are such a fucker.

Rabbit: [innocently] I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Duck: You tricked me!

Rabbit: You are so paranoid!

Duck: Your proposal that we “go for a walk” was a ruse to make me go running, which you knew I would never agree to otherwise.

Rabbit: Hey, I’m not making you do anything. I’m just proposing running as the quickest and most efficient way to get back to the sofa. [Coaxingly] You do want to get back to the sofa, don’t you?

Duck: Stop saying the word sofa. [Blocking its ears with its wings] rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, I can’t hear anything you’re saying.

Rabbit: [Chanting] So-fa! So-fa! So-fa! So-fa!

Duck: [Unblocking its ears] Look, what I object to, less than the running—

Rabbit: So you don’t object to the running?

Duck: [Ignoring Rabbit]: What I object to, is the deception. You propose a lovely walk and then you ambush me halfway through with this [disgusted tone] running.

Rabbit: Not to be a pedant, but I’m not sure that, technically, one can ambush oneself.

Duck: Oh, but one can! Because one just did!

Rabbit: But how can you possibly say you didn’t see this coming? We ran 26. 2 miles because I told you we were just going with Marissa to lend moral support while she signed up to run a marathon.

Duck: I’m tired of arguing. I just want this outdoors portion of the day to be over as soon as possible, and the quickest way to make that happen is to run home as fast as we can.

Rabbit: You said it not me.

Duck: [Starts running, cursing under breath the whole time] You are such a cunt. And I am such a tool. [Picks up pace so as to bounce along in time to Britney.]

Rabbit: [Whispering to itself] Well played, Rabbit. Well played.

 

Notes

[1] I was originally going to write this in the first person; however, I watched Zootopia last night and was so charmed by the banter between the two main characters—bunny and fox—that I decided to revive the duck-rabbit dialogue.

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