of Austerity
December 30, 2011
One might assume, as much as I mention or write about him, that my Father and I were close. We were not.
In fact, it’s accepted that in the end, he despised me. Accepted, being the operative word.
Perhaps it’s as easy to assume, knowing that, I’ve come to romanticize his memory in hopes of somehow shedding that awful truth. Perhaps.
He was flawed, very, but then who among might cast that first stone? Not I, that’s for sure.
For all his flaws, he was also had a great hand in determining the Man I’ve become. Flaws and all. But then…he would, wouldn’t he.
I’d liked to have been able to pick and choose among his many influences and so it’s at this years end that I, in my romanticizing, will again forgo cursing.
Mark, my Brother, remembers differently but I cannot recall a single instance of my Father cursing. Not one.
Lord knows I gave him cause.
This will be my fourth, or fifth, attempt in what has become, for me, a New Years ritual. My last attempt, failing miserably and the first, having lasted the longest.
I’ve noticed, there is a point one reaches, after a few months, that it is the curse that suddenly sounds oddly out of place. That is the hump. Some time later, hearing someone swear aloud, can actually have me cringe. I imagine it’s a little like giving up meat…the longer you go without, the easier it is and the more distasteful it seems.
Only, sitting down to a nice, medium rare prime rib hardly has you seem an imbecile. Swearing, incessantly, certainly does.
Now, I hardly notice it. That, in itself, is disturbing because in my best attempt, it was shocking to hear how often foul language was used as filler in conversation. How people would, like a small child’s “huh?”, insert the F-bomb at frequent intervals to allow for their thoughts to catch up with their mouths.
That’s where I’m at currently.
My disdain for swearing is not out of some priggish notion of 19th century charm or civility…fuck that…but from a gaining appreciation of austerity.
A good. solid profanity can be, if used sparingly, a very powerful thing.
My Father had little trouble getting my attention (keeping it, was another matter) but had I ever heard him let go with a forbidden expletive, I would have known that serious just got very serious.
It’s balance I’m looking for here.
So, out of some romantized idea of tribute to a flawed but distinct presence in my life and my want of just being more like him, I will, this New Year, try again.
Wish me luck and please….don’t make me angry.
Your command of language is incredibly powerful. You have no need for fillers. Also, I apologize for the time(s) I caused you to “Goddamn” and then do it again as you would say “Goddamnit Woman, you frustrate me to the point of Goddamning!!”. And as for moments of passion? I suppose a primal sound from you will do nicely.
Check this apocalypse stuff out:
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/printerFriendly.php?ref=2012.01-essay-apocalypse-soon
Gonna.
I wish you well in your resolution, Roland. Anyone’s personal goals to improve themselves deserve respect. Personally I love swearing. I don’t like it in that every-second-word way. I think a fine curse is like a delicious dessert, and one can’t enjoy it if it’s inserted throughout the day. I never swore in front of my parents. They never swore (once I heard my dad say “Damn” in the hallway when I was in bed and I was quite shocked). So I’m quite used to having 2 or more lexicons that I can switch at will. Of course, I don’t swear at work. I may insert a “beep” sound effect at times of high emotion (usually when telling my student s a story). I think it fits in with my love of words in all their colors. You know I love words more than you right? Did you also know that swearing can help you endure pain? Scientifically proven! (Two groups had to endure pain, one with a random word, one with a favorite curse word, the group with the curse lasted longer.) Well, anyway, the way I interpret your New Years goal is that you are now swearing in a way that you perceive as being outside of your personal taste (such is the way of bad habits). I encourage the idea of bringing your own behavior in line with how you want to be. I know a lot about failing in that mission, but I’ll never give up and neither should you. One thing I’ll add is that I don’t think you can blame others for failing yourself. I hope you meant that in a humorous way. No one can make you drink or swear or throw a punch, only you can do that. I think you’ve long established yourself as a firm believer in personal responsibility, right? So, no woman can make you “Goddamn”.
I will add one more thing, when I began reading this entry in your prolific and fascinating blog, I was hoping for a bit more info on you dad. You tease me with this small tidbit of info. How could anyone end up despising you? Not possible. I may be the only one reading this blog who doesn’t know the story.
Thank you Kate, for your encouragement.
There are those that can serve profanity as an art and perhaps you are one of those. I am not.
As I described, cursing, for me, has become a diversion into vernacular laziness and while it has it’s place and can have an impact, it seems I am unable to regulate it. Equally, I think abstaining can have an impact and not only do I notice the few (unheard of in Military circles) that do not but obviously my own Fathers resistance to it has made a lasting impression on me.
Two birds with one stone. My tipping of my hat to his memory and a self assurance that I will strive to not sound like a blathering idiot when I speak.
Again, not everyone that curses does but I feel I do and would prefer to be more inventive and resourceful with the tools that language is rife with. Needless to say…I have a greater love of the written and spoken word than yourself. Surely you’d agree.
I am not entirely clear what you meant by “you are now swearing in a way that you perceive as being outside your personal taste”. I hope to eradicate profanity completely from my vocabulary (save, in writing, on occasion, perhaps).
Also, I was frantic in searching for where I might have given the impression that I had blamed anyone else for ANY of my actions, spoken or otherwise, and was relieved to discover you had misspoken. I had not.
My Girlfriend did imply that I accused her of inducing the G-bomb from me and while I admit, to my horror and shame, having done so, it was in response to her own passion in conversing (read: knock down drag out), her being a most passionate young Woman of renown temperament. I take full responsibility for that or those utterances but happily admit, as she is well aware, that she can have a great affect on my own.
I appreciate your interest, truly, in my Family and my relationship with them and hope to, in the near future, shed some light. You’ll understand, I can only hope to be objective.
R.
I will name my passion and renown temperament for why I did not make it as long as you did the last time I tried to leave off swearing. The traditional Woman in me is not ashamed to say, I think that cursing is somehow even less attractive on a woman than a man. The positive side to the “goddaming” was how we ended the conversation in laughter. High emotions in one direction can lead to equally strong emotions in another. Cursing or no, I will always choose passion over the mundane.
…how would a Man resist such determination? Such eloquent disposal?
I’d meet that Man. study and then dismiss him as a fool.
Well, I know it was LD who said the “Goddamn” comment. But I believe it was you, Roland, who said, “please don’t make me angry”. Surely you don’t want me to back away from conflict? I wouldn’t know what makes you angry anyway. How shall I try not to make you angry? Like I said before, I have a feeling that was said as a funny succinct way to tie up your blog entry. (I don’t take you so seriously.) But did I misspeak? Tell me please, who was it who misspoke. Did you say the bit about don’t make me angry or did some dark genie take a hold of your keyboard in the moment before you clicked publish. Oh, yes, it was you who misspoke. Oh dear, am I making you angry? Terribly sorry.
Re: “you are now swearing in a way that you perceive as being outside your personal taste”. I just meant that although I am not a moral relativist, I do think the modes of behavior one chooses are a matter of personal taste. For example, fashion, to swear or not to swear, to drink or not to, etc. In those arenas, I believe it’s up to each individual to decide what works for them, and then adhere to these choices,to not let tides like “military culture” change those choices.
As for man vs. woman and swearing I have no comment. Ad Hominem is perhaps my bad habit to curb.
I will wait patiently for your version of the story. Objectivity is a myth that died with modernism in my ever so humble opinion.
One more thing, LD mentioned ending the conversation in laughter. This is something that I definitely find. I find an extremely salty, creative curse, in the context of a frustrating situation very funny. It is a pressure valve that lets the steam out. I’m a big fan of seeing the hilarious side of creative swearing.
Cheers, to your reply, I do my best not to scald your re-virginized ears in 2012.
Ah. Yes. That.
Damn.
It was in jest. It was, as you suggest, by means of tying off the post.
In my rush to discover what you referred, I totally missed considering it.
Like your own suggesting that one might resist pain more affectively in swearing, it reasons that one might swear fluently when angered as well. I have that habit. Though in jest, it also might be a plea to assist in avoiding the temptation. If a Friend or lover were embarking on a like mission of resolve, I would want to at least be aware of how I might prop up their goal.
When my Girlfriend, at regular intervals, threatens to deny me her affections, for questionable motives, it is my duty, I believe, to help her by persisting in whatever demeanor first stirred her predilection to begin with. Easy enough.
Yet, if she caves, the fault for having done so, is her own.
Though…who could blame her…really.
I am a total nazi when it comes to rejecting hall passes for abhorrent behavior. I often use the ever, and over, abused menstrual cycle excuse for irrational peer abuse, in example.
If, as a grown Woman, one is well versed in how the cycle can somehow reduce them to screaming, cursing, weeping, bloated beasts of nature, I think they owe it to humanity to lock themselves in a closet for the duration.
But…because of societies indulgence and the obvious benefits to such carte blanche, we now are accommodating the periods of pre-menstrual, menstrual, and post- menstrual. Affording your gender about 3.8 days out of 30 to be accountable for their behaviour.
~CRASH!!!~
Yes Dear…I know, I know…YOU are sleeping on the couch…again. Blah blah blah.
I cannot for the life of me,think why you thought your father despised you.he did not have a despised bone in his body. He was a man that could not show his feelings, sadly. I still love that man.
Mother
As melodramatic as it might seem, it was no less the case. It might be that as he understood his light was swiftly dimming, he cared to not have things left unsaid. It is not a conversation I’ll soon forget. While the shock of his words have faded, the impression they made have not. C’est la vie.
If l am not to imposing. What was behind it all ?., other than dispair & pulling his hair out, as to what to do.
Is that your answer to everything. C`est la vie. ?
It is certainly my answer for things that I cannot, or would not, change.
It was in regards to how he perceived my feelings towards the Woman Gloria.
While he was justified in thinking I disliked her, he assumed the wrong reasons, with her direct influence, as to why. Having disliked her, I came to despise her and her poison. C’est la vie.
I’m not sure how you so deftly changed the conversation to one about affording women the opportunity to excuse behavior because of PMS. And there was some big block of conversation about women refusing you sexually for some reason. I feel I have been blindfolded and spun around and I can’t find the donkey, nevermind the ass I might pin the tail onto.
I have this feeling like your comments were meant for other eyes, and might be in reference to things I know not of.
Let’s see, I know you have sometimes felt that emotion stirs you to behavior you wouldn’t consider while tranquil. Emotions are connected to many things, our external experiences, be they past or present, our hormones (look at any teenager), hunger, fatigue, and many more factors. Emotions do not exist in a vacuum. They are all mixed up in the soup of “you”. This is to also insist that our actions do not exist separately from our feelings. Many people see thoughts, feelings and actions as three sides of a triangle, each affecting the other two. A woman’s hormones do affect her thoughts, actions and feelings, of course. Some women experience this much more than others, and a woman might be blessedly free at some points on her life, and then overrun, and overwhelmed at other times. I can attest to experiencing this recently, as you know.
Does all this mean that we excuse bad behavior? No. I think not. I am still responsible and must still apologize for bad behavior. I do not suffer excuse morality, whether it be “oh, I was drunk” or “oh, I had PMS” or “I was furious” or any other reason. Of course these factors affect the difficulty one has in controlling oneself. But if we fail to rise to the occasion that is our fault, and we must not blame an external factor.
I hope I have made myself clear on this point. I do not like it when other people blame external factors for their own bad behavior. My feminism means men and women are equal, I do not give women a free pass on anything. This does not mean, however that I am blind to context. I see a person in a context and I will view behavior in a context and seek to understand it within the world. If you punch a wall after your brother dies it is different than if you punch a wall because I refused to apologize for broken eggs in the groceries. Context is everything in moral philosophy. If we seek to understand we MUST see the context of the behavior. Stealing for a hungry child is different than stealing for greed. There are endless hypotheticals we use to parse our moral judgements. This work is necessary to come face to face with our real beliefs, and to know if we can defend them or not.
So, to conclude this rather dry treatise, I do not allow excuses for behavior based on hormones, this kind of thinking was used to keep women out of the voting box, and out of politics and out of many positions. A woman can’t handle it, she’s too emotional.
That being said, if your woman starts crying after a hard day at work and asks you to go to the store and get her some chocolate ice-cream, I would hope you’d do so with all the kindness you can muster. For these tears are honestly felt and if you love your woman, you’ll help her. The same goes for forgiving a quick temper. That is because you see her in context, as a whole person, just as she does you.
You notice that the important verb is “forgive”, not “excuse”.
correction:
But if we fail to rise to the occasion that is our fault, and we must not blame an external factor.
change to
But if we fail to rise to the occasion that is our fault, we must not blame an external factor.