The Weekend Eudemon
Draft Day 2005. The biggest non-event event of the year. It's our understanding that ESPN will dedicate over twelve hours to people talking on phones.
Don't get us wrong. We like football and we enjoy the draft, but to watch it on TV for prolonged periods? We don't get it.
A good friend of ours plans on working in his yard while listening to the draft on ESPN Radio. That would be perfect. The draft is definitely a one-sense event: you can listen to it or watch the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen. You don't need to hear and see it at the same time. Yeah, we realize ESPN provides video footage of drafted players' highlights, but the highlights are typically lame and not enlightening about a player's ability.
Oh well, to each their own diversions. When we were younger, we used to rail against such inane excesses (referring to "ennui" and the "denial of one's existential crisis"), but with age comes mellowness. We also began to realize that our general observations about ennui and related issues never seemed to fit any one particular person when we came to know his or her situation. If general observations or rules don't fit any one person, can they be fair generalizations? And even if they are fair generalizations but riddled with exceptions or unusual circumstances in each individual, are the generalizations at all helpful?
So increasing age and those types of uncertainties, combined with the inner observation that we still needed diversions to keep us happy and sane (our uninformed pursuit of hesychasm fell well short of producing day-to-day peace), made us more tolerant of things like jet skis, sports obsession, shopping, and other pursuits that our culture consumes at a dizzying pace.
We still, however, think everyone should pause to consider the existential questions. They ought also to be brave enough to risk ennui (the "Noontide Demon") occasionally. But we also realize that the really big battles on those fronts are not meant to be fought by the likes of us. Let St. Anthony's spiritual descendants grapple with the Noontide Demon every day and mightily. For the rest of us, it's enough to get a peek of him, recognize him, and to remember, at least for a few moments every day, that we're ultimately called to walk the final road naked and alone. None of those diversions are going to help when it's time to go and, indeed, may have made the journey more difficult.
The Punchy Journal (Gentle reader: the following is off-color, but Nate assures us it's a true story, from the incident to the conversation that followed):
. . . Ironically, though mass culture offers few comportment choices, the capitalist free market that fosters it offers a ton of consuming choices. Go the grocery market, and you'll see twenty cheeses. On TV, you have 100 stations. Among cars, you have thirty models–with varied colors and options.
And in my slice of the world, I have ten different bars within driving distance.
Sadly, only three in town and within walking distance (and only one within crawling).
Because a few of us were nearing our BAL limits, we decided to pack up and go to a bar in town. Few things are worse than waking up with a hangover and trying to arrange a ride to get your car the next morning. Waking up with a hangover and walking a brisk six blocks to get your car, on the other hand, can be kinda refreshing.
My friend Mike rode with me to the next bar. On the way there, he told me a bizarre story about a trip to California a month earlier.
"I was in Santa Barbara, checking out my cousin's baseball game (he plays for University of California Santa Barbara). That evening, I went down to the beach by myself to smoke a cigar and listen to the waves crash. There was hardly anybody there because it was pretty cold by California standards. It was a clear evening and no wind; it was really nice.
"This guy came up and laid down a few feet from me. He said, 'Nice evening, huh,' and I said, 'yeah,' then tried to ignore him. Ya know, I felt like being by myself. I looked over about thirty seconds later, and saw he was j****** off. Right there, looking at me and chuckling."
"Oh man," I said, laughing. "You gotta be joking."
"Joking!" Mike said. "I was like, 'Hey, fag, get the hell out of here.' The guy just laughed and kept doing it and said, 'Blow me some more of that fine cigar smoke.'"
"Blow me! He actually said 'Blow me'?" I said, laughing so hard almost drove into a curb.
Mike, laughing a little, said, "It wasn't funny, man. That's f***** up, freaky s***. I shoulda beaten his ass, but the fag police in California probably woulda jailed me on a hate crime, so I just got up, kicked some sand at him, and walked away, my pant-leg still unstained."
"Oh man," I said, laughing. "So you think you attracted him with your cigar?"
"I don't know!" Mike said, irately.
"Maybe it's the way you smoke," I said, trying to keep straight. "When you hold the cigar to puff, do you put your entire fist around the cigar?"
I was slaying myself. Mike had begun to laugh, too, but his was more subdued and punctuated with obscenities.
Funny story, but what the heck?
Why should Mike have been subjected to such a thing? Then again, the guy didn't hurt him, or even threaten him in the JS Mill-ian clear-and-present danger kind of way, so did he really do anything wrong? Is masturbation an act of perversion or, because it takes place with the consent of all involved adults (Mike could've ignored him), is it all right? And if consent is all that's required to make an act moral, how do we judge a myriad of other things that pretty much all places and cultures have condemned in some fashion? . . .
