Almost-on-the-Highway Robbery

My recent problems with car thefts got me thinking of the stupidest time I was robbed. --Aren't they all pretty stupid? you ask. Yes, of course, but some leave you feeling more like a hapless sap than others. Now, I admit that this latest round of car robberies does incline me to believe I was rather excessive in Standing on Principle by still refusing to lock my doors after the second round of thefts, but the Convenience Store Pocket-Pickers of '92 win by a landslide for the extent to which they added insult to ego to injury to my pocketbook.

It all began, as most of these stories do, with idiocy. When yet another one of my $300 cars died (was it the Rambler? the Nova? the Mustang II? the Dart, the Valiant, the Olds? I have no idea, but I loved them all), my stepfather (the nice one) took the situation in hand and said we were going to go to a real car dealership, and get me a real car. Fair enough by itself, but when we got there, after cursory handshakes with the avuncular sales agent, both parents sat down and read magazines, leaving me to deal with the car shark on my own, on the basis that I was (chronologically, at any rate) an adult.

I told the middle-aged salesman what I wanted in a car: large and lumbering; safe and slow. As far as features, I wanted power windows. With regard to design, I was hoping for lots of metal around me, and pedals I could reach. In other words, I wanted some granny's trade-in. What I drove out in was a ridiculous speedy Mustang with a bordello-red interior, a spoiler, and some 'sporty' thing over the back window. The salesman was a 50-year-old man, an authority figure, and I gave up standing by my criteria soon after he began prating on about how 'young ladies like you' needed 'fun, sporty' cars. It was a ridiculous accusation, but I was helpless to protest.

Well, the payments on this thing were a bit obscene, and I was not entirely successful in making them all the time. In the days before online bill-paying, when bills got too late the only recourse we had was to drive somewhere and pay the thing in person, which was what I had to do one sunny summer day in Orange County.

First, go back in time one day.

I stopped at my customary Diet Coke outlet, a convenience store just before the freeway onramp. To get in, I walked past two men standing just beside the door who would have looked more at home in a Dorothea Lange photo than in our sparkling suburbs. When I came out, they asked for money. They told of how they had driven from Oklahoma for work in 'that ole pickup over there' (pointing to distant hideous truck parked in front of the office-supply store), earned some money, but got robbed and now just needed to fix up their ole truck to go back home. I felt flush, having just cashed my paycheck, and it hurt me that decent, hardworking rustics would have such a cruel welcome to California. Again. So I gave them a twenty.

Now, go forward a day.

I had to go pay my current and overdue car payment in person somewhere way up north. For that I needed Diet Coke. Now, I had the whole of my paycheck on me still, most of it in a billfold I had stuck in the side pocket of a jacket, and a lot of it was going to the car. The same two guys were outside the store as I went in. I paid for the Coke with money in my purse, and the same one as before accosted me again with a story. They had come out from Nevada to help their ailing relative in that ole van over there (pointing to a sickly, rusted van parked in front of the auto-parts store), but got robbed coming out of the nursing home or graveyard or something, and just needed to get some money to get back home. I was only brave because I was angry, but I actually managed to give some version of a 'Say, look here, Mister' and express a tiny bit of my indignation at having given them twenty dollars the previous day for a different story.

Needless to say, I did not again contribute to their cause. --Not intentionally, that is. While the talky one was remonstrating with me about his need for gas money, the silent partner picked my jacket pocket clean of the billfold, and with it nearly all the money I had in the world. I'm pretty sure that's the time I feel most stupid about. At least until the next one...

The Providential Cupboard of Good Cheer

What's nice, too, is that, although my bad stepfather was correct all the many times he reproached me with 'having no respect for things,' that characteristic can sometimes work out to one's advantage, even precisely in the realm of things. To wit, I don't have that many CDs anymore. And, I don't have an Apple anything. Therefore, losing the odd assortment of music in the Mazda put a significant dent in my supply. Since I continue to have 'no respect for things,' I don't know where what CDs I do have are; certainly they are not for the most part in their cases, which are, for their part, not in a place where CD cases, empty or filled, would naturally reside.

This being the case, I opened the Skirts-I-Don't-Wear kitchen cupboard (which I don't frequently open, since I don't wear those skirts) and found a stack of CDs. I grabbed the three on top, and was unabashedly gleeful that they were mix CDs, so each is worth about a handful of regular CDs in terms of variety and not getting increasingly resentful towards Beny Moré for being the only guy singing in your car ever. Nothing against mambo or guaguancó but, seriously, we all have our limits.

So now, instead of an all-Latin-all-the-time playlist, I have everything from Piaf to Diabaté to Loretta Lynn and Lemmy. I've got Crass next to Cash followed by the lovely Miss Kitty Wells and a more consistent disc titled 'Bamako to Beirut' that's only African and Middle Eastern. I remember making these CDs and enjoying them okay, but I had no idea how grateful I would be years later that they should surface again!

'The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed

is by being always absolutely over-educated' - if you happen to be Oscar Wilde, at any rate.


I have joked about it before, but I think I genuinely should consider making the electronic taxonomic 'wardrobe flashcards.' I worked with a girl once who had done this, and it was a fine idea. In her case, it was an actual little flip-book of pictures, with outfits and accessories laid out together in various combinations for easy reference. And it was interesting, frankly, since she was the last person most of her friends would have envisioned taking this extraordinary and labor-intensive step in sartorial ecology. She was exceptionally pragmatic and consistent in her dress, a bit of a hybrid between Northeast Yankee and Northwest Sporty, not to say verging perhaps on anodyne, and for the most part her 'dressing up' consisted of leaning more toward the former than the latter. Maybe that itself is why she did it; she may have felt that visual aids would spur greater creativity, allow her to match the salmon stripes on a blue background button-down with a salmon cardigan or salmon trouser socks, something she would be unlikely to contrive impromptu?

In my case, it's not as though I can't put together an ensemble. I start either with an idea of color(s) or a particular garment. The problem is, however, that like my friend I, too, have my habitudes, and that arguably my greater wardrobe may well hinder my selection process and steer my psyche in familiar directions more often than desirable, in an unconscious effort to conserve my mental health and leave what is left of my creativity for nobler ends.

In other words, I wear a lot of sweater sets, pastel jackets, and the same pearl or tiny hoop earrings until I drive myself mad. And, because I am an impossible size for jeans, the same thing holds for the bottom half: skirts or the same kid's size 10 or '10-slim' denims until I drive them mad.

What made me think of all this is that today I am going to a picnic. Since it's not sunny or warm, my clothes can only give a symbolic nod to the concept of 'summer picnic,' rather than being in actuality light and airy. That gives me color, jewelry, purse and shoes to work with.

Well, I have two very summery beaded necklaces, one that I made and one that I bought. One is green and pink, the other just green, so I started with those and managed to convince myself to put on dangly matching beaded earrings. I added a woven silk pink shell under a green fitted button-down, a sweater that matches the shell, a green leather purse (not especially summery, but neither is the weather, and I'm not wearing sandals) and pink slingbacks, as well as a frosty pink on the lips and fingers. And the current pair of favorite (i.e., the best I can do) jeans.

Now, the problem is not that that isn't a reasonable outfit for the occasion, and nice-looking, as well. The problem is the familiarity. I wore those shoes and the cardigan a few days ago. They were in my head - probably from the moment I thought of the necklace. Sure, I matched the purse to the shirt inside, rather than the outer cardigan and the shoes, but it was just lowest-common-denominator outfit-building, inasmuch as a) the handbags are all set out where I can see them and b) my default was 'not the purse you wore the last time you wore the shoes.' That's hardly creative; it's defensive, reactionary.

So, if I had a gallery of pictures, with a taxonomy akin to that of my closet:

Kingdom: Clothes
Phyla: Hanging, Folded (and we'll bracket that one: it's boring and never gets worn)
Classes: Suits, Jackets, Trousers, Skirts, Shirts, Dresses
Orders: Jackets, Trousers, Long Skirts, Short Skirts, Summer Skirts, Knit Tops, Button-Down Shirts, Sweaters, Sweater Sets, Evening...
Families: Black, Reds, Greens...
Subfamilies: Chartreuse, Lime, Celadon, Mint...
Tribes: Black with Metallic Wefts, Blues with White Collars/Cuffs...
Genera: Prints, Solids...
Species: Second-Favorite Off-White Button-Down Silk Sweater: with Detachable Narrow-Gauge White Fur Collar: No Cuffs: Delicate Knit: and Slim Fit Stopping Just at the Hipbone

THEN I would know what I was working with, and have a broader perspective necessarily, as I would have all members of every species equally available to my consideration. I could flip from

'shoes: high: pumps: green: pointed toe: w/buckle'
to
'jackets: whites: creams: patterned weave: w/color: green: belted: oversized-houndstooth cream-lime ribbon-belted self-fabric-button w/tiny pockets.'
And then I could browse the 'solids' genera in creams and greens and blues - and even mangoes if I wished - for tops and bottoms, giving a fair shot to all members equally, rather than too often resorting to the instinctive and the familiar.

I think it's worth a try. And it's manifestly a good excuse/incentive to get that dry-cleaning pile down to an apartment-sized scale. I'd add a photo of it, but it would hurt you, just like it hurts my closet, which can scarcely afford to take on more boarders...




**By the way, has anyone noticed that my former super-double-quotativity, of italics and quotation marks, has now become deluxe-triple quotativity, since I started using pink on quotes some time back. Interesting. Do I think that quotation marks are really all that unclear?

'I think fish is nice, but then I think rain is wet,

so who am I to judge?' saith the sage Douglas Adams, and

if I believed in the existence of rain boots and umbrellas any more than I believed in shorts and 'flip flops,' I would marry these. ('These' being Kamik 'Chance.')

I would do so of course in bridal lengha choli. But not - I can't stress this enough - not while wearing the boots. In fact, I can't think of any occasion on which I would wear the boots. But a part of me deep inside would want to. Sometimes. After we were married, at least.

If there were anything to be said for rain boots, these boots definitely would be able to say it.

Crow au Vin?

To follow up on that lengthy introduction, this is the actual story...

As some of you know, I work in food. Some others of you know I volunteer in food. Some even know both, and maybe me, as well. Some know that the service aspect of my life is very important to me, and perhaps that I have tried to incorporate that into my paid work, as well, when the parameters of my job would allow that.

Well, one of my frustrations is that there are a great many people consumed with trying to send money to Myanmar, and now China, while our local food banks are short of both food and volunteers. Another one is that people are terribly worried about buying organic, free-range whatevers* for their own tables at the same time that they show no signs of being concerned about whether their neighbors are eating anything at all. And there are people whose lefty and self-righteous environmental obsessions are so narrow and myopic that they fail to take in the human cost, and the human aspects in the ethical equations that purportedly conscious and conscientious people make when deciding what, where, and how to buy.

And for me, labor issues matter. Fair treatment matters. Decent working conditions matter terribly. And, because I have worked in the often ridiculously poor conditions of commercial kitchens, finished out shifts in kitchens with second- and third-degree burns on the palm my sauteeing hand, worked with people who have previously worked in agriculture and meat processing, and have been an undocumented worker overseas myself, I would argue I have greater experience with the issue, and greater natural, visceral, direct empathy for the workers involved than do most people who simply have neither the experience nor the broadmindedness to consider the whole story of an ingredient, to imagine that the history of their organic, free-range, shade-grown tomato started a long time ago, in a language far, far away from their Whole Foods produce aisle.

So, when I read a disheartening story (you can just NewsGoogle 'Stemilt' and get one million hits, so take your pick) about Washington fruit workers in California having difficult times with a reputable and progressive agricultural firm, fruit producer Stemilt, which, frankly, among big companies has a great record with moving toward more organic practices and being quite decent with workers, I was impassioned, and I wrote a letter. I wrote a terse, angry letter with a (perhaps poetic but) mean closing line.

And a person, a live, human person like me and like the laborers, wrote me back. Okay, fine, Stemilt isn't General Electric, but I'm not Bill Gates, either. And it is a very big company, and I am not. And the letter wasn't condescending, although it had a valuable lesson. And the message 'Don't believe all that you read/hear' is one that we all, most especially myself, need to keep with us as much as we can. I work hard at being both humble and critical, and I think that, relative to many strains in our culture, I'm doing okay at both. That being said, however, we do all have our prejudices, even as we struggle against them, and it is precisely those that are most ingrained -- and thus most powerful in swaying our thoughts, emotions, and actions -- that we are least likely to perceive as they influence us.

Thus, after that terribly dramatic build-up, here are the letters. Mine first, then his, and then my response. While it is true that we live in a world that can be so alienating, and we can go for days or weeks on end without, if we so wish it, any in-person human interaction, and we can have so many 'contacts' in our Blackberries or even our social lives that are fated always to be just that and nothing more, it was shocking and gratifying and satisfying in my soul that someone at Stemilt read my angry words in the very human and compassionate way he did, and responded in such a human way.

To Whom It May Concern:

I applaud Stemilt's contributions to greener agricultural practices, but your treatment of Washington workers in California is disgusting and indefensible. I am a private chef, and my business focuses on local, organic, and seasonal ingredients as much as possible, but both my clients and I can get by just fine without your products from any state. As well, in any case where I am unable to ascertain the origin of product from the vendor, I will simply forgo that fruit, and that dish. My clients will already know why by that point, as I will be giving them information sheets next week about Stemilt's labor practices. We may be more concerned about the environment up here than people in other regions, but we are also concerned with the dignity of our fellow human beings who labor to provide us with the food that sustains our lives. May you reap the fruit of your inhumanity.

(My Name),

All the workers are harvesting the crops today in California as scheduled. No workers were removed. Be careful what you read. Stemilt is who it says it is, both environmentally and socially. Other peoples motives are what are at issue. This orchard attracts lots of great harvest workers because of the income it provides them due to its production and cleanliness. You would need to interview the workers to believe what I am telling you. The owner of this orchard is a humanitarian. It will continue to attract workers in future years because of this orchards environment.

(My Name), we are glad you care about people. There isn't enough of that concern in this world.

I felt compelled to respond to you. You seem like a person that cares,

Stemilt

Wow,

(His Name), thank you very much for responding to me personally. I work alone now, but when I worked in kitchens I really cared about my employees, many of whom were from basically the same demographic as agricultural workers, so I do know that it is possible, even in difficult, dirty, physical jobs, to create an atmosphere where workers feel valued. I also know that even big organizations can create overall cultures that are largely positive or mostly negative, and I applaud any efforts Stemilt makes to engender the former.

As for caring, I do. I think the food industry is unique, different than any other. There are famous artists in it, and there are tons of unskilled and semiskilled, invisible but equally vital contributors, too. And on the one hand, food is something we need every day and don't have to reflect on when we want to grab a hamburger to stop being hungry. On the other, it is an integral part of family celebrations, religious holidays, and rites of passage. And even though the poor can survive without shelter or new clothes, everyone has to eat to live. In fact, I volunteer at meal programs to help poor people get some food, to balance out the feeding-wealthy-people side of my life.

I really thank you for taking the time to respond. It is individuals, whether in a for-profit business or a charity, that make decisions, make personal connections - and make a difference. I'm not famous or influential or anything, but I'll follow the story and eat whatever crow I have to, along with Stemilt cherries, on my blog, http://oisive-vitesse.blogspot.com as it progresses. Again, I know work in the fields is hard, but I applaud you for offering workers housing, and for paying wages that attract new workers.

I can't yet find updated news stories, but I will keep looking. I do know that there isn't much money in broadcasting cheery news, unless it is put at the end of the newscast and involves a child or a pet. Immigrant farmworkers have known for a long time that they're not as cute as they could be.

*This actually happened -- and not at a Whole Foods: I was innocently idling around the bulk-licorice zone (which unfortunately abuts the bulk-coffee zone), doing no harm to anyone, when some Birkenstock-shod, bicycle-helmetted Zen master accosted the poor stock-clerk and assaulted my ears with this unnecessary query: 'While I see on the label that this blend (why must it be 'this blend?' why can he not utter the word 'coffee?' why can none of them? it's so easy to say, only two felicitous syllables that so gently roll off the tongue? cof-fee! coffee! coffffffeeeee! why does it always have to be 'this blend,' or 'this roast' with these people???) is fair-trade and organic, I was wondering if it were also perchance shade-grown, as well?'

Alright, I don't know that he said 'perchance.' Probably he didn't. But he wanted to. And the poor seventeen-year-old grocery-store worker, who probably drinks Mountain Dew and Denny's coffee by the litre and was writing speed-metal lyrics in his head and finally starting to enjoy pouring bulk penne from bags into canisters picturing the bass he's going to put a downpayment on with his next check had to break his fleeting rapturous chain of thought to go grab some higher-up who has somehow managed to memorize all the individual PC attributes of each and every 'blend' the store has, just to let the Coffee Sensei know whether or not he's hit some arbitrary 2008 liberal-coffee-buying trifecta.

Which is just a way of saying that while I think we should be moved to take action when our conscience demands it, and we should strive to do as much good and as little harm in the world as we can, there are also other things that are, simply, overkill and fatuous, and serve primarily to artificially assuage the ego -- and result in very little effect at all. I wonder when the last time for most of the Yoga Coffee Dudes of the world was that they calculated all that they spend on their blends and contributed it to something better, let alone went and 'fair traded' their own labor for free at a very needy, local nonprofit...

'Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.'

So said the epicure Brillat-Savarin, and while an ontological argument based on that aphorism would be hard to sustain in many quarters (or so I pray, at any rate: the idea of my body decomposing into lardons of cured pork and boxes of Good-n-Plenty while the walls of my veins leaked Barolo and Amarone into the velvet walls of my coffin strikes far more terror in me than the normal image which -disturbingly, perhaps - doesn't disturb me in the least), and the more transcendent aspects of his musings on gastronomy and gourmandise are equally unsuited to the realities of our present world, the above quote, read entirely wrongly, of course, and viewed through an ethical rather than aesthetic lens, is what I want to get to here today.

(Update 06.12.08: That was really all one sentence. Someone, save me from myself.)

People like to think of globalism as a brand-new phenomenon. And I will admit that with the population of the world so much greater than ever before, every nation or region has a greater impact on others: I have more people producing more waste over here in country X, so there is a greater chance of some of it reaching you in country Y, for example. But the Chinese have been a global power for millennia, over land and by sea. The silver in Chinese coffers plundered by the British opium trade and subsequent wars and concessions was largely from South American mines, while the tea that the British came to love was, as we all know, an ancient part of Chinese gastronomic culture. Marco Polo brought pasta to Italy, and the cotton plantations of the southern United States arose to fill the growing gap between India's long history of production and current need, while the US is now poised in coming years to become the leader in 'hauling coals to Newcastle' quite literally -- not to mention the huge markets of China, India, Russia, as well as many smaller countries in the developing world.

So.

It may have been the case before, but now that the stakes are manifestly higher we admit it more readily: we are all in this together. Even George W. Bush has come to acknowledge that, at least as far as the ozone layer is concerned, human beings can have some kind of corporate and individual impact on the world as a whole. And I believe that food, our use of it, our approach to it, our taking it for granted or choosing to be deliberate in our choices, can be a significant aspect of living up to our values.

Every left-leaning, bunny-hugging simpleton will recite the evils of McDonalds anytime there is a perceptible lapse in conversation. And, in the Northwest at least, anyone desirous of impressing upon his audience the virtuousness of his life and lower intestine will not fail to (re-) state (the obvious:) his unswerving allegiance to the aisles of Whole Foods for all his home cooking and (natural) grooming products needs.

But in the same way that my sending a check every once in a while to Mercy Corps or the Red Cross does not confer something akin to proactive moral immunity, a lifetime's absolution, or mean I thus have carte blanche to perform human sacrifices or set the neighbor's house on fire because I did good elsewhere, trusting a preacher, or a friend, or - for heaven's sake! - a retailer, as gatekeeper for all our individual, specific ethical choices sells our own conscience and powers of rational contemplation short. There simply is no one guidebook containing every possible moral conundrum an individual can face in the moment. And I think that before we can get to 'we are what we eat' in its moral sense, we have first to accept that we are what we do, overall. We are the choices we make, the mistakes we regret, the issues we feel compelled to stand for, and the hand we do or do not offer a suffering soul.

How this all ties in to food, not to mention my enduring and recurrently proven faith in the human voice coming through miles of wires and anonymity and preconceptions, and not forgetting, as well, my own well-deserved humility and willingness to put crow in cream sauce on my own dinner menu when appropriate, will have to wait until next time, as this preamble to what I intended to say is already too long without even having a body yet!

Blowin' in the Wind

I was finally brave enough to tackle the wine cabinet redo, and I don't know what to think. I do know I did as best I could. As you can see in the 'after' pictures, the cabinet is covered in nice marquetry veneers. I say 'nice' because it looks nice and took some time to do, but also because the piece is old so the depth of the veneer exceeds that of paper.

However.

I have a deep-seated and possibly pathological desire to be polite, commingled with a distaste for shopping. These two tendencies taken together (and so far, I haven't been able to take them apart) mean that I sometimes encounter great difficulties when trying to buy things. I don't go into stores to browse: I go in stores to get the one, or three, or six things I know in advance I want or need to get from the store. If it turns out they do not have the items, I leave. I am not, in other words, tempted to buy a bathtub because there are no more pruning shears, nor a new lampshade because the store ran out of my brand of stockings. I recently went to a lot of antique stores looking for a particular type of settee, and one with upholstery I would not have to change immediately, as well. The settee still eludes me, but I did not turn to dining sets or hall stands to anesthetize my feelings of setteelessness.

Still, though.

The situation is different when in response to an advertisement for an item I go to someone's house. I cannot contemplate the horror of a day spent going to several strangers' houses to look at various single items. If you place an ad and I call you, it means that I want to come your house, buy the item, and take it away, assuming the photos and description are more or less accurate. However, once I am there those conditions shift. I realize I am in your house and in that house I am passing judgment on an item you own. Yes, I am not a guest; yes, this is, despite the surroundings, a business transaction -- but I don't want to be mean. Rude. And I don't want to have got your hopes up for nothing.

Moreover.

By this point, as well, I have driven, at great risk to myself and other travelers, to wherever it is that you have your house and your possibly-unattractive-in-person piece of furniture. Perhaps, as was the case with the wine cabinet, I did so in the dark and was in the process nearly driven into a cow pasture at the urging of a less-than-inerrant GPS. At some point -- and almost four-wheeling in a farmyard is as solid a point as any other -- it is simply the case that I am 'all in': I am going to buy that hideous piece of Bombay Company MDF loathsomeness photographed through Vaseline and described as 'gorgeous settee 1880s Victorian Eastlake must see xlnt cond' no matter how much it hurts to do so, for to do otherwise would make me look like a fool for having driven so far for nothing. At least to myself it would make me look like a fool. And since, as you all know, I'm a) the only one who has to live with me and b) not one to suffer fools gladly, I can't afford that sort of rancor between me.

But still also I don't want to hurt your feelings.

So, prior to looking at the wine cabinet in person, I asked what were those 'designs' on the front in the two faraway photos, and what were they made of. The very nice lady said she thought one was a flower, and the other, well, she couldn't quite tell. She was happy enough to send me photos of them, but they were huge and I was as ignorant as her as to how to scale them down for viewing from within this solar system, at least on a then-dying computer with about three programs left on it. Fair enough, I thought, the rest of it looks quite sexy, and I've never been out to that village (but I bet they have livestock nearby!).

In short, the cabinet was unusable in its state at the time. The Seventies were a challenging period, I realize: so much change, tumult, and uncertainty, as though all the moorings were coming loose everywhere, equally, fully. Fashion, popular music, design, and graphic art reflected the confusion. By the middle of the decade, 'hippie look' design was mainstream in clothing as well as home decor. Housewives sewed granny dresses and quilted skirts, découpaged and scalloped-edged everything in sight, and stuck cork embellishments on anything not actively running away from them.

Such was my cabinet's fate.

This unlucky chump had been the victim of the Seventies hat trick of cork, scalloped edges, and the ubiquitous mushroom-as-decorative-motif. The mushroom, moreover, and the 'flower,' which turned out to be a leaf, appeared to be products of a Ladies' Intro to Metalwork class. Plucking the metallic flora merely solved the glare problem; there was still the issue of the incongruous texture, shape, depth and appearance of the cork appliqués, which were painted in shades ranging from black, brown, and 'natural' to metallic gold.

I first thought of taking the hacksaw to it, and getting the depth of the appliqués to a sliver, over which I would simply paste something more in line with the original lines and look of the piece. They would still protrude a bit, but not two inches and, more importantly, not hideously. Then, positioning the tool first one way and then another, I realized there was no way that attack would be possible as the plane of the front is interrupted by molding at the top and base. I could have someone else do it, of course, someone who knew about these things, someone with expertise, but that would be cheating.

Now, I don't receive much child support from my exhusband, so it is a good thing he came in handy on a Christmas visit when he stuck his penknife a bit under one of the cork bits and emboldened me terrifically by his revelation that the adhesive was loose and elastic, as well as by his prediction that removing the grisly duo would be simple and quick. Still, he is an exhusband, and it took me a few more weeks before I grew the confidence to begin to test what I still considered to be no more than a hypothesis about the state of my glue.

My glue, it turned out, was quite healthy.

Accordingly, I slathered both doors with copious amounts of oil in hopes of loosening it and the cork ovals without damaging the veneer unduly. The scheme largely succeeded, and no veneer ripped off, but once the cork was removed it turned out that the final embellishment to the ovals, the dark brown paint around the outermost edge, was applied after they had already been glued on. Additionally, although I hadn't damaged the veneer, there were in fact gouges in it which appeared to have been what precipitated the 1970s modifications. I sanded enough to even out most of the surface, but there would have been no way to get below the absorbed paint and the deeper gouges.


So, I decided on two-tone gold leaf under stain in a geometric pattern that echoed the existing geometric pattern. Yes, it is not original, but not much about this cabinet was by the point of making that decision. I know it is not more authentic, and I am not sure it is much better, but I am absolutely certain it is not as bad.

This is the only happiness; and is a rare instance of advantage in the body overpowering the Mind.

Said Keats regarding indolence, and while I to this day hate that Ode, I still love Keats and admire as always his respect for indolence. We devalue it tremendously, of course, the sitting, being, the taking in, and allowing...

We are no doubt fearful that passivity or unalloyed receptivity in one area will leech out and become some overarching guiding principle in our psyche, or life. That we'll wake up one day and find we've unwittingly morphed into swarthy, layabout Mediterraneans who say 'five' when they mean 'six-thirty' or worse. This is one reason, amidst poor taste, uninventiveness, ignorance, xenophobia, and fear of solitude, that we spend our vacations righteously doing things, ticking off Chartres and Epidavros on our lists, snapping the requisite few hurried shots of St. Basil's and St. Peter's before making our way to consuming the Great Wall and Kyoto's daibutsu.

I have no such fears, myself, but certainly if you are the sort of person who needs to, you can check my resume and see that I have worked hard enough, and worked long enough, to have 'earned' the right to spend the day doing nothing but making melon balls I never intend to eat or sitting around Montmartre doing nothing other than doing nothing and calling it a holiday all the same. And that's what I did. That was my vacation. I ate quite a bit of pastry, drank a lot of both coffee and wine, talked to my friend and my friend's friends, and bought a book hoping it would help me reproach one of them in German. It didn't, and anyway I expect his French and English were better than mine, so I stuck with those and reproached away and got a foot massage out of it so all was fine.

We did make it to Champagne, which is where the reproaching, the Teuton, and the feet come in, but it wasn't a 'goal' of mine, or even my idea. And we almost didn't make it (European gas mileage is a thing of beauty, but only when there is gas in one's tank to get mileage from), but we did, and we sat around there, too. This litttle sojourn to France was very nearly the only short trip I've ever taken except for ones close to where I happen to live right then, and I was very tempted to stay there, too, except that that would mean the loss of both my bed and a truly fabulous coat.

Maybe I'll move there next year. It couldn't possibly cost more to ship my bed than what I paid in overweight charges for books and shoes when I left Greece. And by then I could have conceivably winnowed my current supply of both to a manageable level, so that it would only be the 100-piece Chinese bed and the 50-pound coat with which I'd need concern myself. And since it will no doubt remain true in a year that the only German I know consists in a few cabaret songs and the occasional singspiel stanza, I won't have worn out my welcome with anyone.

Happy St. Calvin's Day!

Today we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the US, and along with The Harvest, the fruits of This Great Land, squashes of all sorts and can-shaped cranberry puree, the changing of the seasons, colonialism, imperialism, Manifest Destiny, the Noble Savage and the White Man's Burden, we also pay homage to the undying legacy of John Calvin. He gave us hard work and Blackberrys and fax machines, to be sure, and quite possibly timeshares and cruiseboat holidays, as well, but the full measure of his influence cannot be appreciated without taking into account the Puritans' sumptuary strictures and their enduring significance.

'Original sin, therefore, appears to be an hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused through all the parts of the soul, rendering us obnoxious to the divine wrath and producing in us those works which the scripture calls "works of the flesh."' - J.C.

I do not mean to imply that I think the whole Reformation was a bad idea initially, or sprang from bad impulses. I would not like to have lived in Burgundy, for example, during a certain period, if I did not happen to be recognized as exactly and precisely orthodox by the Benedictines. I would have preferred not to live in Spain, either, from about 1500 to 1800, regardless of my affiliations or lack thereof. And I am grateful not to have been in the position of attempting to lead a devout life in some of the less-than-devout monasteries that reform and renewal put to right. However, if the end result would have been that no one, ever, centuries later, when I wouldn't even know, except in Heaven, where I could no longer feel pain, would have had to wear polyester masquerading as 'gabardine,' or drink 'white Zinfandel,' or stuff themselves into hideous little rooms on boats the size of cities with thousands of other holiday-makers, only to spend their days gorging on cafeteria food, playing shuffleboard, swimming in chlorinated pools in the midst of the Aegean, and debarking in growling hordes to buy up gilded replicas of Attic treasures and machine-made lace, I would gladly have submitted to whatever tonsure, penitence -- or cloistered aristocratic licentiousness -- were the case in my region.

'You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.' -J.C.

But because I didn't, we live in a society that continues to view pleasure as dangerous and the senses as Satan's inbuilt handmaidens. We oscillate between wordless orgiastic feedings of Grande Meals at the Big Hombre and the next day's punishing asceticism. Neither tastes like anything, but one causes self-loathing while the other promises redemption -- and flatter abs. We eat salmon-colored tomatoes in February and think nothing of it; we pump 'cheese' out of an aerosol; we have diabetes and hemorrhoids, cancer of the colon and hypertension, and our only consolation is At least we didn't enjoy ourselves getting to this point...

'Though Satan instills his poison, and fans the flames of our corrupt desires within us, we are yet not carried by any external force to the commission of sin, but our own flesh entices us, and we willingly yield to its allurements.' -J.C.

A handily reductivist version of Calvinism is that Adam screwed it up for all of us, and we're never going to get back to anything close to a prelapsarian state, in spirit or conditions or behavior, but it is our duty nonetheless to try to - even if we're some of the ones God has already decided He's not that keen on letting back into Heaven - with every waking breath, in each act and thought of our lives, and thus anything that distracts us from this is proof of our fallenness, our 'total depravity' (a phrase which came after Calvin himself but is not an unrepresentative distillation of his point of view), our hideous natures which draw us away from, rather than toward, the Good.

'Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.' -J.C.

This is an exceedingly long leap from the Roman Catholic position of 'don't get so drunk that your judgment will be clouded and you risk making bad choices and ending up in an opium den in Chinatown.' In Calvinism, we've already tied off our arm, flicked the needle, and had sex with the dealer. We are meretricious, deceitful, murderous, lazy, avaricious, gluttonous crackwhores from the start who would sooner kill you than wish you a good day. No wonder, then, that we can't stand the idea of enjoying a good meal in pleasant surroundings: one bite of the medium-rare filet with a delicate shallot beurre blanc and we have paved the way for lechery, idolatry, pederasty, income tax fraud, bestiality, and unbridled killing sprees. Enjoy anything too heartily, and it's only a matter of time before the stakes have to be raised, before the beurre blanc just won't do, it will have to be pounds of some ponderous Norman cream sauce, poured all over the steak and dripping down your chin, and the med-rare will mutate into saignant and before you know it you will be starring in a Bosch painting, eating babies, buggering lobsters, and never combing your hair.

So it arises that we take pains not to have too good a time. When that doesn't work, we endeavor to convince ourselves we are not really enjoying things but doing what we must, such as rampant overspending cloaked as necessary Christmas shopping or renovating yet again what we just discovered to be a hugely outdated living room. Or, we deny our urges so habitually, and in such illogical ways, that they perforce irrupt disguised - that they might for once be satisfied - and we rather than buy one pair of fancy shoes, or get a bit giddy on two glasses of port, or quietly watch the setting sun from the shore of a lake, instead order sixteen shots of whatever, stuff down some onion rings slathered in synthetic 'mayonnaise,' and try to convince the drunk girl next to us to go back to the apartment for anonymous, detached, barely conscious casual sex.

'So indulgent is man towards himself, that, while doing evil, he always endeavours as much as he can to suppress the idea of sin.' - J.C.

And that isn't what the Catholics warned us about, either. It's not the alcohol's fault. The alcohol is there in order that the rest can take place, in order deliberately to renounce judgment sufficiently that we can be as mindless of sin as of either genuine pleasure or redemption, and thus get on with our half-hearted quest for the bad food, the unsatisfying company, the superficial conversation, and the mindless, soulless, fumbling sex. We're no longer worrying about God, or Calvin, or Burgundian excesses. We don't even know where or what Burgundy is, for that matter, since we don't drink nice wines, or read books that aren't assigned, or travel to places where they don't speak American. And we no longer believe we're damned, nor care; we're chained to the ramified legacy of Calvin, without any recollection of how we got here or what the original argument was. We just know we're not supposed to enjoy ourselves. We should be multitasking on our Blackberrys while chasing the four-minute mile and listening to management seminars on our iPods, not idly reading the TLS on a Saturday morning and sipping mimosas in deck chairs amidst birdsong and evergreens.

'Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols.' -J.C.

So, when the dam breaks and the need for genuine pleasure mutates yet again into a virulent need to consume, we are stuck. It's too late to decide to keep fresh flowers in the house. Gone is our chance to enjoy the walking tour of the Piedmont, or to start wearing clothing that doesn't punish all the senses. And no longer will poetry or color or silky sheets or taking up ikebana or cheesemaking sate our deranged, repressed need for something, anything, that can stimulate a sense of even the most distant, third-order simulacrum of the commodity called 'enjoyment.'

But we've become by that point the crackwhore Calvin warned us about. Now it can no longer be about nuance or joy. We have ground ourselves down to nearly insensate lumps from alternating between compulsive and overarching gravitas surrounding work/'success' and puerile outbursts of mindless grasping that we can no longer just be. We have annihilated our receptivity so thoroughly that our whole outlook reduces not merely things but people, as well, to instruments. I see you for what you can give me, just like the obscenely large truck or the Patek Philippe or the ten numbing, dumbing vodka-and-Red-Bulls. But don't worry; as soon as I've eaten you and the four-pound McNasty and the 'craftsman style' high-end bathroom renovation, I'll spend two hours on the electronic bicycle and commit myself to at least three more memos a week and do a colon cleanse and take a Men's Retreat and swear off booze and find my inner child again and give him the kick in the teeth he so roundly deserves.

'I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.' -J.C.