Cube-ism, and Where I Went Wrong

The Jeu de Marienbad, or Nim, or Fantan, or Tiuktiuk, or Tiouk-tiouk, is like a short, crappy game of chess. I can't play chess, since I can't accomplish drivings, or pool, or finding a parking lot, or walking to a destination, or anything even obliquely involving geometry. But I like to think I'm smart enough to accomplish many short, crappy versions of many things.

So, my question to you is, why can't I win it? You can answer that here. (Hint: I can do simple [okay, very simple: chuckle smugly, think of me as 'cute,' and then calm yourself] arithmetic, so I count ahead and do what limited planning my mind is able to do, and it seems to me my mind is indeed able enough for this, if at the same time admittedly not for chess, so factor that in to your factoring.)

I think whoever goes first loses?

Or is there something I do wrong? Or is it just that, with a human partner and thus the opportunity for tactical application of my formidable Withering Glance, and vast knowledge of human and canid psychology, I might be able endlessly to vanquish non-virtual opponents in this realm?

(Or tomorrow at the tattooist's should I just get it engraved in the stone of my biceps that '2 + 2 = Something the Vague Idea of Which I at Times Begin to Comprehend Theoretically and then Lose Entirely the Gist thereof'?)

(Or perhaps just 'Ibn Sina, I'm sorry.')

The Cheek of Day

A trip to traffic court is not unlike a trip to the airport before a flight. There is the careful selection of clothing for the event, the long drive early in the morning, the mental wrestling over which book to bring, and the inability to sleep the night before from nerves. Such was my morning this morning.

As for the outfit, my wardrobe is overrun by neutrals at the moment, so I did as I have been lately and went with Eight Layers of Beige. Even the silk long-john shirt underneath it all was beige, as were the wool tights. On the bottom, I opted for jeans, imagining that in Seattle anything more would seem overly calculating. And no one wants to seem overly calculating to a traffic judge. As for the book, it was an odd choice, since I would not normally bring a novel when the interruptions to its reading would not be of my own choosing but imposed from outside, but since this novel has its own built-in interruptions I think it was just as reasonable a choice as nonfiction: Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. And I wore slim brown tasseled loafers, since I seem to be having a difficult time keeping my balance in flats and can use the practice.

I had to be there, faraway, at 8:30. Obviously, the commute would involve rush-hour traffic, so I figured that doubling estimated driving time and adding .5 more on top would be the best idea, since no one wants to seem late, either, to a traffic judge. I don't actually know how long it would normally take me to get there, since I don't 'actually' 'normally' get there at all. I only have the ticket from driving to go look at a piece of furniture (which I had the strength not to buy, even though I felt awful for wasting the old lady's time) and getting so confused that I was driving very slowly and poorly on the same stretch of road more than once and not availing myself at all times of all available signaling devices as I tried to figure out where it was the GPS was trying to get me to go, and whether it was more correct this time than the last. I gave the trip 2 1/2 hours, since it seemed like it would normally take about one. This would allow for traffic, for getting to alternate routes if traffic were not moving at all, and for getting lost and righting myself at least once.

It wasn't hard to be ready at six since I had not been asleep yet. I wrote down the directions from Google and entered the address in the GPS, as well, my customary practice. If one fails, I still have the other, since my mind is of no help in such situations.

The traffic was not bad. In fact, it was hardly traffic. And all along the way I was accompanied by a truly astonishing sunrise on my left with views of the snowy Cascade Mountains and Mt. Rainier glowing pink. The whole experience was so lovely and refreshing and energizing I even got into the fast lane for a while. Then I thought, Who'm I kidding? and merged right. But even then, though, I was going over the speed limit and got where I was going with an awful lot of time to spare, especially considering the hour of the morning.

The court building was easy to find (well, with GPS it was easy to find) and was right in the middle of what seemed an enormous nine-pointed star of strip malls. It being seven AM, they were no more open than the courthouse was, and it was too cold to sit in the car and read. The only place open seemed to be the Denny's back by the highway, but I hate pancakes as well as beef-barley soup. My only salvation for wasting time seemed to be the 24-hour Walgreen's drugstore. Since I need to find a new lipstick strategy, anyway, it was a welcome diversion.

My lipstick problem is thus: this summer I was very brown. In the past, I have kept a little bit of glow over winter by popping into a tanning salon sporadically. I started the practice on the advice of a friend who suggested it just as a way to get a blast of powerful heat and relayed that I could even put on a sunblock and use it for nothing other than raising my core (reptilian) temperature. That way I would have no need of difficult, tense, and accusatory conversations with myself over being vain.

I didn't bother with the sunblock, though, because I could never remember it. And, frankly, it was amusing to me to see me looking bronzed and rugged in January.

However.

This winter I have been warmer than usual. Maybe I have simply been more careful, or perhaps I have actually gained a bit of insulating fat; I don't know to what I should attribute this shocking and promising change. Quite separate from that issue, however, I have also wanted to see just how pallid I can get, how I look as a study in etiolated Victorian Yankeedom, and especially if the freckles on my cheeks will fade away. Toward the end of last summer they had sort-of, well, massed, in a terrifically unbecoming way, such that my cheeks tended to look darker than the other bits, and giving me a somewhat 'ruddy' character, even though they, and I, weren't actually red.

Well, now I am not ruddy, genuinely or merely apparently, thank God, but my lipsticks are either too red or too brown for this new, wan self. The pallor makes the brown ones appear too orange, and the gorgeous 1940s/50s reds look better in photos from the 1940s and 50s than they do on me, here, now. I have any number of taupe selections, too, which I think suit me fine, but between the beige outfit, the beige eyeshadow, the beige nails, the beige lipstick, and my incredibly small size, I would be nearly imperceptible and end up dying, unnoticed in a corner booth, of starvation waiting for service at some overpriced wine bar or noodle house.

So berry it is.

They have a slight jolt of color, signifying that I am, in fact, there, and that these are my lips - but not enough to overpower the other elements. I bought two lipsticks and their nail polishes, and I think they look quite nice, but I feel sad in swearing off red clothing until July, when I can again wear lipstick and nail color that don't clash with my complexion.

And, as a final note, I wasn't supposed to be in court at all. I am not sure what I did, and even less solid on what I failed to do, but whatever I thought I mailed in did not, it seems, get to where it might have under ideal circumstances.

I guess I'm paying that ticket after all.

And it still was a lovely, lovely drive. And had I not gone, I never would have, in all my life, seen a sign that said:

Auto Sheepskin
Shoe Repair
Mink Blankets

'If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.'

And if Mr. Amis is right, then the following, though it violates several of my personal rules of conduct, has a point and a justification for having been written. Also, God willing, enough of this sort of thing and the monkey will find a new home. I just pray he does not take the neighbor's cat with him -- although he can have the 'pet chaise' as a sop if that will help speed the move.

Right, then: the Reckoning. As I said, once one gets past that, does the necessary math, weighs all variables accurately, and accepts due responsibility for whatever share of idiocy and misjudgment is his own, then the final stage of dealing with the loss is complete, dispassion has been achieved, and forgetting has commenced. And the harsher, or more honest and complete, the accounting, the quicker and more effortless is the business of getting on with things. Additionally, as I intimated earlier, having previously experienced and addressed genuine grief, loss, and tumult in one's life gives one invaluable perspective as to the actual magnitude of loss on future occasions.

Love, I will forever maintain, is transformative. Its positive effects racinate into all other areas of our lives. When we are in love, we see the world differently, and we walk differently in it. With regard solely to the object of this Love, however, one of its effects is a loss of objectivity, a willingness always to focus on the good, an abundance of forgiveness and an overflowing empathy. And I believe all that is necessary, salutary, and good; without it one couldn't arrive at, or maintain, genuine Love. Without it there would be no substantive difference between romantic committed relationships and pleasant casual friendships.

But when there is a fissure in the emotion, when something big enough has transpired to rend that beautiful gauzy veil, then the Lover can most definitely address the situation, and the other person, with the same logic and dispassion as he can any other individual or set of circumstances. This, too, I think, is necessary and constructive: if one's spouse has gambled away all the retirement funds, being able to acknowledge that and to take steps to address that and the relationship as it now is cannot but be preferable to blithely ignoring what is clearly a grave reality.

It is a bit nasty and embarrassing, though, even if it only transpires within the privacy of one's head. One's judgment, or even sanity, can be called into question as one reflects upon the various things glossed over in deference to the continuance of the Love-state.

And this is the part where I violate my ethics in hopes that doing so will banish the monkey.

When I got to that point, after a bit of crying and missing having someone to do special things for, I then had to endure feeling like an idiot on a number of counts. That, my dears, hurts more than anything. I do strongly believe we should all be idiots in love, or 'childlike' if that makes you feel better about things, but at the point where it seems as though the idiocy was 'for nothing,' one is necessarily inclined a bit more toward self-flagellation than is normally the case. In some sense -- if there was Love, at any rate, or at least one believed there to be -- one has to find the relationship to have been senseless and inherently flawed in order to be able enthusiastically or even calmly to accept its demise. The practical problem with this is that by devaluing or fully invalidating the relationship, one does the same to one's investment of time, ardour, kindness, openness, and boundless empathy.

And by God does that sting. The specifics of the thing stick in the mouth like ammonia from Dutch licorice (Hello, Andy!). One has to address the horror of multiple versions of 'I was in love with someone who __________!' The things that leave the most enduring bad tastes vary from person to person, clearly, but that is, for some of us, at least, the worst stage of the grieving.

In other words, I might be able get on just fine knowing that I accidentally dated a bank robber or married a serial philanderer. You might well be able to integrate seamlessly having been briefly engaged to an expert on artificial bovine insemination into your self-concept, or never regret for a moment the dalliance with the writer of how-to Morris Dancing books. But you may well experience a lasting difficulty with rectifying your posture after coming to terms with the psychic scars of having plighted your troth to a Scientologist, Nikken distributor, or collector of porcelain cat figurines.

This is where it really gets tawdry. And, again, I apologize, but it's all to a good cause.

In my case, the following. And let me preface it all by admitting that I believed myself to be 'in love.' I said those words, I felt that glowy feeling, I had caritas and agape and eros and the rest radiating ceaselessly from my ever-dilated pupils. My voice was soft, my gestures were kind, my thoughts were noble, and my emotions true. So it's me, not him, that was the problem.

So.

1) A thesaurus is not a dictionary. A synonym relationship is neither an equal sign nor a copula. I myself have never owned nor sought recourse to a thesaurus, and I freely admit my relationship to words has never been typical. Still, however, even if we postulate they might possibly have their place, sometimes and for some people, thesauruses are extremely limited in their usefulness and MUST, as any sixth-grade teacher or history professor despairingly red-lining term papers will insist, be used with extreme caution, if not outright fear.

Why? See above. But also because not only does one not get an actual denotation, as with a dictionary, one does not get context. 'Blue' or 'tawdry' can 'mean,' according to a thesaurus, 'dirty,' but the neighbor's cat, although he sometimes comes in with sticks and burrs stuck to his coat, never returns from his tours looking either of the above.

Sometimes the words in a thesaurus entry can indeed be said to be part of the same cognitive category. Fiery, hot, steamy, sultry, sweltering, feverish. Fine. But none of those words equals the other. I didn't just pull a sultry loaf of pumpernickel out of the oven. I know I didn't. And the sixth-grade teacher in me bristles at this sort of thing every time. Thesaurus abuse doesn't make anyone sound smarter; reading, and absorbing the content, and noting grammatical nuances one wishes to remember, do.

2) Nor does mispronouncing fancy words help one's case when trying to impress others with one's erudition. (And we are leaving to the side for the moment the issue of why anyone should wish to do that.) (But stick around: there's always tomorrow.) (Which I think, in terms of my dating of these posts, is actually yesterday.) Again, the dictionary can be a great resource. Good dictionaries, as well, can assist with some of the clarificatory context issues that thesauruses can't, and thus demonstrate the sorts of things that, unlike pumpernickel, can at times accurately be described as 'sultry,' for example.

On this note, I sometimes used to refer to my last apartment as 'the seraglio' jokingly in print. It had a great many pillows, a low bed, little furniture, many textures and prints, and even a narghile a friend had given me in acknowledgment of my deranged decorating 'style.' Not everything said in print is worth saying aloud and vice versa, and when speaking I called the same residence 'my apartment.' This habit was cemented into law when the exboyfriend insisted on using the former label when speaking, and pronouncing it in such a way as to make every sinew in me twitch in pain.

I don't correct people. Especially as regards language. My idiolect is my own, and my reading and study have been far broader than most people's, so I know I use words many other people don't. Sometimes they are in the active-use pile from one discipline or language, and because they are there, they might come into my head for quite different contexts than originally learned. But just as I can't be expected to discourse rationally about mathematics, I don't expect anyone to have precisely my reading, educational, or cross-cultural background.

However.

It is always ill-advised to use a word you don't understand or to say a word you don't know how to pronounce. This is trickier in English than any other language, because we have adopted words from so very many different languages, and there is no consistency as to the level to which we have Anglicized the various adoptees. To avoid buffoonery one must have knowledge, not merely confidence, on one's side. Seraglio in English cleaves to its Italianate past, as does intaglio. One doesn't sound well traveled or educated by summoning a waiter with 'garkin!' nor by describing the day's events as having been largely 'comb ill fought.' At the same time, it is past the bounds of both common sense and decency to subject a dear friend to snapshots of one's vacation in 'Paree.'

I am not perfect, but when I want to say something was ghastly, and I can't quite come to quite the right word to describe the precise way in which it was as ghastly as it was, I am more than happy to stick with what is at hand and describe the various ways in which the ghastliness manifested itself. The fact is, context often determines whether the same word will be pejorative or praising, and no thesaurus can give that insight. Even 'tepid' can be a good thing under certain circumstances, and 'righteous' can be downright slanderous.

The point is, I cared about someone who engaged in this sort of behavior. It's not as though I was deaf or illiterate while we were dating, but I chose not to focus on the less appealing aspects of his personality. Then, once graver unappealing characteristics emerged and I divested myself of the thing, all those nasty bits came to the forefront of my consciousness. At that point, I did what math I could manage, figured there must have been some rationale not immediately perceptible that would ultimately vindicate my unswerving belief in my own sanity, and went on with things. A bit less trusting of my powers of discernment, perhaps, but confident in my ability to hone them should it appear necessary that I do so.

But then the thesaurus came out again and, having already gone through the dispassionate charts-and-diagrams phase, I no longer had the willpower or motivation not to look with wide-open eyes. Or to be other than horrified by what I saw. Consequently, I had to revisit the self-flagellation stage, but with no vestigial gauzy glow at all. No, now it was 'I was in love with someone who _________ and whom I have unwittingly given license to continue to do it!' Why, in other words, would he have thought I found it charming then, and (of far more consequence and spine-chilling potential) in what way am I complicit in his assuming I will still find it charming now? And why, oh why, oh why, is he noting the timestamp?

As you know from numerous posts, I am hung up on the idea of adulthood. And I think the greater part of embracing adulthood consists in accepting responsibility. Indeed, welcoming, cherishing, that responsibility. It is a harder course, yes, but far more rewarding. (Also tremendously less annoying to others.) So at this stage it is of no consequence to me that the thing is over, or why it is over: that pugnacious primate pulling at my hair is ME, demanding of myself that I please explain to me why I did whatever it was that I did to make him feel that flirting with me, reminiscing to me, and attempting to charm me with stolen, inapposite adjectives or insult me with inaccurate barbs is polite, permissible, quirkily winsome, or anything other than base and futile.