I know. C'est très
décadent,
n'est-ce pas?
But,
not long after, the anxieties took over. I can hang out poolside, but
I'm possessed by the sort of self-loathing that define the American
relationship to our own bodies, and, what's worse, the immense
phobia, that, stubbly and hairy, half-concealed by the palm fronds,
that I'm perceived as a creep and a weirdo, the lone masturbator in
the bushes.
And
the pool-- a tropical pool set in a garden, as perfect a symbol of
idyllic living as one can imagine!-- is mainly a source of exercise
for me. It's not for playing in, now is it? It is for a dutiful 20
laps after a day's work.
Or
I sit out as the sun dips below the Indian Ocean, my feet washed in
the froth of the sea, a cold gin and tonic in my hand, and think
“well, that was fun, I'll feel so much better when I go in on
Monday.”
An
uneasy relationship to the flesh and a suspicion of indolence. Two of
the strongest marks of the frigid Northern culture of the land I come
from. The term “Protestant work ethic” has been much-abused and
overapplied and overanalyzed and mangled since Max Weber first
unleashed it on us over 100 years ago.
This
isn't to say that I had some kind of horrible Calvinist-Oedipal
childhood marked by austere diets and grim penitence in a rough-hewn
prairie church. And yet the attitude that marked the Midwestern
spirit was always that labor is the essence of being.
Now,
I'm glad that I developed a work ethic early-- I hated and resisted
my chores, as all children do-- but it's a work ethic is something
I've learned is a great strength, and something I've very consciously
tried to cultivate. And married to a political leftism, it becomes a
remarkably virtuous worldview, fostering a militant egalitarianism, a
deep respect for workers, and a suspicion of the showiness and flash
of the capitalist class.
As
I've gotten older, I have-- like countless other arty Yanks--
consciously sought out cultures that do it differently. The
sensuousness and emotion and otherworldliness that mark the American
images of Asia and Latin America and the Mediterranean draw me in. In
college I fell in love, in turn with Fellini, Rushdie, Mishima,
Almodóvar.
I read Italo Calvino on a stairwell on a sunny June evening in
Montmartre. I got blessed by an old woman in a Cambodian temple ruin.
I smoked a lot of weed on a lot of beaches.
But,
try as I might to escape from the lens of work, I viewed all of these
through the lens of productivity. Introspection and adventure and
culture were means of self-improvement, and I didn't necessarily opt
to take these experiences out of sheer delight and wonder. And
furthermore, as someone who had a comfortably middle class
two-Toyotas-and-a-mortgage American upbringing, I felt that I had a
responsibility to experience things because so many people lacked the
socioeconomic freedom to do so.
It's
an odd variation on the Protestant work ethic. Traditionally-- and,
as seems borne out on my Facebook news feed, seems to be the case for
a lot of folks today-- I should have gotten the career-track job, had
the kids, gotten the Toyota and the mortgage, things I absolutely ran
screaming from. But in my ostensibly bohemian sort of life, I've
found a similar one-directionality both in myself and in my peers,
and oftentimes a conformity as rigid and unforgiving as that of a
salaried manager in a Richard Yates story.
Because
no matter how hard we try, our early conceptions of things will
eternally nag us. It's often said that we can't escape our roots.
What's not often said is that we never know when they will remind us
of that fact.
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