Eating like wolves

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At a certain point this week, we generated a bit of discussion by posting a 2300 year old quote:

Before looking for something to eat and drink, we should look for someone to eat and drink with, for to dine alone is to lead the life of a lion or wolf.
—Epicurus

Several of you neither mind eating alone, nor mind the comparison to the lion or the wolf. Woad Toad—who prefers misanthropic to antisocial—points

out that both lions and wolves are pack animals—social, that is; toads and polar bears eat alone (and are majestic creatures).
This was an interesting point. I live with a misanthropic (and rather smelly) Cairn terrier who refuses to eat alone. Although his food bowl is there all day, he refuses to eat without somebody nearby. I often end my days standing in the kitchen keeping him company, just so he will finish his meal.
I don’t mind; it’s a small price to pay for another creature’s well-being and happiness, isn’t it?

In case you were wondering, Epicurus was a Greek PhilosopherGreece-Delphi-Oracle-202 who lived from 341 BC to 271 BC, give or take. He was a thoroughgoing materialist—an atomist, really. He taught that the key to happiness was pleasure, but that we must learn to distinguish between healthy pleasures and destructive cravings. He taught that the most gratifying pleasures were simple, constructive ones—simple but good food, maybe a little cheese, conversation with friends, quiet time in one’s library, time to enjoy nature, etc.
But, yes, he taught that time spent with friends was a necessary to a good life and as nourishing as food and drink.
In fact, he bought a big enough house that he could always have his friends nearby.

Life, in general, is made better by having friends. Of course, we are all aware of how important it is to have friends in a crisis—that lost job, failed marriage, lost child, crappy day at work, diss’ by boyfriend, or even just rain. Yet even good experiences are made better when shared—it seems even more fun when done together. In fact, one of the reasons so many people text or upload pictures is in order to pretend that they have Pastis at Les Deux Garconsfriends who are there.

Food is also improved by company—you can talk about how good it is (or bad, if that, and laugh), and the joy of good company adds to the joy of good food, as good food adds to the joy of company.  To sit around a table, unhurried, and eat slowly, and talk for hours is a joy like no other. Companionship multiplies itself—you say something funny, one of your companions says something funny, and that prompts you to say something even funnier you would not have thought of alone. All the while, you are enjoying the closeness of each other, the warmth of the place, and the pleasant sensations of good food.
What could be better?

Of course, my lion friends—such as Kirsten and Rachel Beautiful Living(longtime friends of the Bistro, each)—maintain that it is pleasant to eat quietly, by oneself, perhaps in the company of a book. I’ve realized that I do this a lot—in fact, I eat more meals alone than I do with company. When one works with the public, it is often pleasant, and sometimes necessary, to be quiet and alone. Solitude is not the same thing as loneliness—in fact, if you are with a book, it might not even be solitude. By contrast, chatter for its own sake is no better than cold, greasy fast food.

I guess I’ve given a philosopher’s answer then: both yes and no.

You need time alone, and can enjoy it, but—at least once a week—try to eat with someone else and see what they add to your meal. Some more continental eating places (like Jack of the Woods in Asheville) even have common tables, so that it is unavoidable to eat together.

Food is a necessity, but it can also be a pleasure; why not allow it to be both as much as possible?
Companionship is a necessity, but it can also be a pleasure; why not also allow it to be both as much as possible?
Eating together is a way to combine these necessities and these pleasures in a way that multiplies them; why not?

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Free-for-All Recycle

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Greece-Delphi-Oracle-202
I have had the Delphic Oracle on my mind lately–in large part, because I am teaching the Greeks this year.

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A great deal of the cult of Apollo–and this sun-god was very important within the Greek pantheon–centered around his temple at Delphi, on the edge of Mount Parnassus. As far as the Ancient Greeks were concerned, this complex’s most important fixture was the Pythia–an ecstatic priestess who would receive messages from Apollo and pass them on to questioners.
In fact, this oracle figures prominently in both Myth and History.

So, if you had the chance make the trek up the mountain, into the dark, smoke-filled cave, and to ask your question of the Pythia…

What would you ask?

Let me know.
Drop by the Bistro, leave a note here, or write me a letter at
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Dr. Bear
511 West D St.
Elizabethton, TN, 37643

 

PS: please stop sending panties to Wode Toad, ladies–you know who you are.
He says brownies or scotch would be fine, but does not need any more lace.

Our Description Deficit

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Tell me something.

That’s really what I want.

Tell me something that shows me what I cannot see, that takes me where I am not, that lets me understand.

Is that too much to ask?

We seem to have lost our ability to use descriptions that actually mean something, and instead, we are mired in the ketchup of bland, meaningless adjectives.
When you say “It was great,” that doesn’t tell me anything about it, just about you—it tells me that you liked it a lot. The same goes for “delicious,” “good,” “pretty,” “crazy,” and a whole host of vague adjectives. You use them out of habit, but they are lukewarm description deficitand indefinite, and really don’t say a damned thing. They are clichés that you use as a substitute for thinking about what you are saying—and I suppose you have a right to—but if you expect me to listen, I expect you to actually say something.

Don’t even get me started on “awesome” or “nice.” Grrrrr!

When you say you had a good day, that tells me nothing except that your day wasn’t bad; I want to know what made it good. Was it hectic? Was it relaxing? Was it productive? Was it amusing? If amusing (and yes, most of my days are), what made it so?

On the other hand, if you say you had a bad day, that doesn’t tell me much either. Was it boring? Terrifying? Exhausting? Frustrating? Unproductive? Were people cruel? Demanding? Unreliable? Distant?

So it was a good movie. Was it thrilling? Challenging? Surprising? Hilarious? Moving? Did it make you weep or laugh?

When you say the cake was delicious, I want to know what about this specific cake made it so wonderful. Was it rich? Moist? What flavor did it have? Subtle? Dramatic? Sweet? Spicy?

I’ve even heard people say “it was a really nice wedding.” Seriously? For better or for worse, one of the most important days for two people, and a rather momentous one for a lot of people connected to them, and all you can say is “nice?”
Oh. Pardon me. “Really nice”—adding a meaningless adverb to a meaningless adjective just raises the level of insipidness.

(Congratulations and best wishes Rachel and Rebecca, by the way; I’m sure the festivities were so beautiful nobody would dream of describing them as nice.)

An adjective should describe, should tell me something about the thing that it modifies.
An odd thing I’ve noticed about twitter is that very few people even need 140 characters, because we just don’t say very much. For many of us, life events can be reduced to an emoticon. But not for me—for me, life is infinitely rich, and each event is fraught with wonder and complexity. I have never seen a “pretty sunset;” the hard, cold facts of atmospheric conditions produce a symphony of violent red, majestic scarlet, and mellow orange, gilded with eye-catching gold and sharp yellow against the contrast of the shift from the blue of the day to the coming indigo of night.

I’m not saying you can never use a vague adjectives; they are fine as preludes, to set up the details that are to follow. I can start by saying that the chocolate cake was incredible, but then I should use my words to tell you that it was shaped like the top hat from Dr. Sleep, was a deep rich midnight black, was so moist that as the sunlight caught it, each bite on my fork would glitter in dark rainbows, and the piece of cake on my plate would slowly rise back where my fork had just been, so that it almost seemed alive. The chocolate was rich, so that the bitterness and the sweetness played off one another, and I would close my eyes and sit back in the sun, just to concentrate on the warm flavor in my mouth.
Or I can say the apple-caramel cake was amazing, and then follow-up by saying that I was amazed by the detail of the basket-weave icing, and the whimsy of the little cake apples on the top, and that the cake itself was firm—the way I like a fruit or spice cake to be, but that the layers of apple and butter cream in between kept it from being too dry, and that it was spicy, but really let the taste of apple come through.

(Special thanks to the divine Meg and to Grace J for those cakes this past week; either of you can bake for the Bistro anytime.)

OK.

To be fair, I know that very few of you live the life of a Dr Bear, where your mind runs through baroque patterns in several multisyllabic conversations at once, and the flowery Nineteenth century language swarms like a flock of starlings.  I don’t expect a sonnet with each status update. However, language is beautiful, so why not use it? Adjectives can tell us so much, so why not use words that actually do?

Or better yet, use verbs.
Tell me what the day has done.

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Until next time,
take care of yourself,

And I hope your life defies description, but that you try to anyway,
Affectionately yours,

Dr Bear


 

Needful Madness

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I want to talk to you tonight: not as your affable host here at the Bistro, nor as your gregarious philosopher, but as a social theorist.
It is Halloween, and I want to talk to you about transgression.

Europe 2013 274When we visited Germany this summer, on our wandering extended exploration. Germany is a very ordered society, full of rules. There are signs everywhere telling you what is forbidden. We saw a sign forbidding us from blocking a driveway, that said: “Exit must be kept free.” Underneath it, somebody had scrawled in Sharpie: “Freedom For All Exits!”
This is how cultures work. Society sets boundries and norms, expectations and rules for us, and, for the most part, this is a good thing, and it keeps us all from killing each other on a daily basis. But to keep the all these norms from crushing us, we also need some rupture, a way of transgressing these norms and boundaries, and of letting off steam. There are rules, but then there is an undercurrent of freedom, where we express ourselves. In a healthy society, this can be done with humor, or with strange rituals.Rhinocerous in Chattanooga
Most societies have them: Ancient Greece had the Dionysian Rites, Ancient Rome had Saturnalia, where all the conventions were turned on their heads and the masters served the slaves. Evolving from this, the Roman Colonies in Britain retained the Twelfth Night Celebration, including Twelfth Night Follies where the men would dress like women and the women like men, and everybody would laugh and be silly (and sometimes learn something or be made uncomfortable by the gender roles they saw from a different side). Germany, where I grew up, celebrated the madness of Fasching before heading into Lent, as many cultures celebrate Mardi Gras.

The last remnant of this we have in the United States is Halloween, Skull in Charlotteand even it is co-opted by fear of strangers and commercial interests and the consumerist desire to fill ourselves with candy or booze.

In a class I once taught, a student, a young romantic, suggested that all of us should go completely mad every once in a while. At the time, I was a bit put out by this, since I had an inkling of the pain mental illness can bring. Now, I understood madness better, having experienced a bit of it firsthand, and it can be terrifying.
However, I am convinced we do need a bit of safe madness, we do need to break free, to dress up and be someone else, to howl at the moon, to be a zombie and chase humans around, to pull pranks or jump out at people.

So celebrate this Halloween, but also keep it in your heart the rest of the year, and find little forms of transgression and rebelling that won’t hurt you or others.
Find some madness and ride it like a wild horse.
Take the time to dance the night away with abandon.Pumpkin Awesome
Sing out loud.
Pull a prank. Or two.
Make an inappropriate joke and shock someone.
Read Poetry out loud.
Howl at the moon.
We are all mad here.
Take a walk on the wild side.

Happy Halloween!
Enjoy your madness, but be kind to each other.
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Monday Night Leftovers: a word about irony

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I have missed having Brandon around on Monday nights, and not just because he is the one with opposable thumbs (my left one is unreliable, but that’s a long story). I do trust that he is having smash-up great success on his other writing projects.
Until he returns, I thought we might recycle some left-overs.
This also gives me a chance to do an audio version, which can be found here.

Hipsters in Washington HeightsHey. Hipster.
Of course, you know I’m not talking to you because you are not a hipster, but hey, hipster, I’m talking to you.

I’m not a hipster, although my life has had some “Bobo” elements. I started wearing fedoras because I wanted to be cool like Bogart. At the time, everybody was trying to look like the BeeGees (ask your mom). I grew the facial hair to look scruffy like Springsteen and Dylan. I started wearing boots because I wanted to be cool like Sid Vicious. (Do you even know who Sid Vicious was?) I found I liked all these things, and I added vests because I liked them. They also give me a place to keep my watch.Dr Bear in Vest I’ve never read On the Road; although I think we used to pretend we had, that and other cool books. A long time ago, I used to carry around copies of Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, but some of that was posing, too. I do think that reading Turgenev’s Father’s and Sons might have changed my life, but I am certain that it changed my wardrobe. I like locally owned microbrews because they are really good beer. I buy cheap beer because I cannot afford locally owned microbrews. I love irony–I had forgotten my youthful fondness for irony & symbols until I recently found a picture of me in my 20s wearing a Mickey Mouse Tshirt with safety pins in MIckey’s ears. I also….

wode looking right(Wode Toad tells me that I am digressing, and need to get back on track…) Because I value wit, I also value irony. It is a useful & fun form of expression. It also seems an antidote in a world that is filled with people who are way too serious. But look, irony also involves a failure to commit; something said ironically, or even just hinted at ironically, can be disowned or dismissed if it gets too close to being called out.

So here’s my advise: Don’t. Stop it right now! Stop trying to be ironic. Don’t speak ironically, speak honestly and passionately; don’t flirt, love. The original hipsters viewed the quotidian society with irony, but threw themselves into life, into dancing to bebop, into loving the women and men they were with, they threw themselves onto the road. Tear it up. “Sound your barbaric Yawp over the roofs of the world!” Throw yourself into where and what you are; learn to be, and do not be ironically.

Photo courtesy of EGS feet courtesy of the divine meg

You are being ironic because you are afraid of being silly, but why? If living fully, if experimenting with life makes you look silly, then own it; everybody looks silly the first dance, the first time stepping on a long board, the first step into freezing water at the beach, but they look sillier if they hesitate. Jump into life, even if it seems silly.

(Besides, I’ve seen your little hats and your mustaches; you already look silly.) Stop being ironic right now!

No, that’s too harsh: Tshirts, bumper stickers, & memes can be ironical. Jokes among friends can be ironical; comments whispered about other people can be ironical, especially when to do otherwise would be cruel.

Just don’t be ironic to people; always be honest to people. Especially yourself.
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