"I once caught a fish THIS BIG!"
Heel - Heal
By popular demand, here it is… well, by three demands. At my level three requests is popularity.
I’m going to start this yarn with a little prologue… because ending with one just doesn’t seem right. What’s it called when the drummer does the three beats after a bad one liner?
I’d like to start this anecdote by raising to the foam a little lesson of passage that all men must endure. That lesson is mature manhood. At some point all of us cross a line where we see that which we committed behind us on the rambunctious side of said line, shake our heads and say, ‘oh man’, though truthfully we’re never very far from the little trouble-maker inside us. This lesson can be enlightening, cathartic, or outright painful.
Though many may think this line is the same of the passage to manhood in the traditional sexually plundering sense, ooh baby, you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a football field worth of difference between becoming a man and becoming a mature, or at least fully coherent man. On one side there is independence and the other is responsibility. Though independence is an important lesson and vital to the achievement of responsibility, it is still quite the river to cross, and usually involves both a literal and figurative blow to the independent man’s cranium.
That blow can actually occur at any part of the anatomy.
This leads me to the Tale of The Heel.
Let me first set the scene. Picture a quaint Northern Ontario town. Picture the kind of quasi-industrial picturesque place that has a Wal-Mart, but is still somewhat excited to have been bestowed a Wal-Mart, and at that Wal-Mart is a sectioned off snowmobile parking lot. Picture lakes and trees and friendly faces that are made all the more pleasing in that they are just anonymous enough that you don’t necessarily have to say hi to them.
In early August my treasured hometown is all a buzz, in that quaint small town sort of way, with a summer festival that attracts all manner of neighboring communities in for a week of carnival rides and greasy… well, everything gets kind of greasy.
This same week attracts most of my buddies from high school. We are still close and take advantage of every opportunity to shake off the burden of our impending thirties and reacquaint ourselves with the hooligans we once were. Hooliganism is one of those traits that stands on the younger side of that aforementioned line, but somehow retains a seductive power over the refined gentleman positioned on the latter half.
The hooligan in me had quite the convincing argument for me that evening.
The notorious night began as most of those reunion nights tend to, gathering at the home of one of these buddies that has found his career in our hometown, and ingesting our first few bushels of beer.
I should interject a note of the volume of alcohol consumption that we in a cold northern climate are capable and accustomed to. It becomes not only a badge of honor, but a survivalist necessity to keep the body well pickled and therefore protected and prepared for battle. I was doing my best at this point to adhere to this adage.
I could now tell a thousand funny little stories about booze and the men that love them, and the women that hate them, and the women the men want to love, and the ensuing hate affair men have with booze after the women they wanted to love are gone and replaced by the sun and a massive hangover… but lets get to the turkey of this dinner, shall we?
At the end of any given night in my hallowed hometown in the tepid days of summer, certain ceremonial rites come into play. In our continuing quest to regain or retain our youth, we can tend to engage in some activities that might seem… odd.
At this point, the male population has been split into the haves and have-nots, and I’ll let you guess what it is the haves will soon be having. The have-nots are left to forage for all-night, red-light heated slices of pizza and finding any lingering method of making the evening memorable. This tends to be where I come in.
I don’t mean to toot my own horn, though this is my website and an essay about ME, but this is usually the part of the night where I take the stage. As it happens, boy did I choose the wrong stage!
You may have inferred at this point that I usually stand with the have-nots. It is perhaps this constant membership in the have-not roster that instilled in me a need to perform and make being a have-not and getting not, not so bad.
I’ve done it all in the name of this quest. As the night winds down, I just seem to wind up, and certainly seem to get my steam. I take dares, I break things, I disrobe, I trespass, I ingest, and do just about anything to get noticed, acknowledged, and get something even though I have-not-thing.
On this particular night the performance went as such: We left the bar in a stupor I personally hadn’t stooped to in years. This was an inebriation built over six hours, all genres of alcohol, and at one point an entire tray of shots. There were four of us left, myself, The Three Toed Sloth, Primetime, and his younger brother Time Jr. Because of the summer festival mentioned earlier, there was a luxurious Recreational Vehicle on display outside the downtown bar to advertise some misbegotten festival sweepstakes for RV enthusiasts. With one look at this massive four-wheeled testament to geriatric adventure itself, I knew I had my stage.
I was up on the rooftop deck faster than a spider monkey on PCP. I looked over my people, my three friends and the droves of nightclubers, unleashed upon the night with the closing of their surrogate homes, most of whom couldn’t care less about the genius of my imminent my aria. They were right to ignore me as they sought ignorance in each other, I was probably the twelveth meathead to seek his glory on top of this moveable mountain. It wasn’t in my Edmund Hilary-like ascent of this Everest that I would find my own immortality, however…
… it would be in my dismount.
You read it right. In a moment of unbridled beer-fueled epiphany I chose the graceful way off of the oversized, nearly twenty-foot tall RV. If no one was going to respond to my show, the showman in me had to take it up a notch and drop all the jaws before with a show-stopping finish.
Imagine now my articulate, baritone inner-monologue, wiggled slightly by the influence of ‘liquid strength’. “A cartwheel… yeah, that’ll look cool! And golly, will it ever be enriching for everybody!”
Right about now you’re probably picturing a spectacularly cartoonish crash into the asphalt below, reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote’s accordion body. I hate to let you down in that respect, but no, I landed that baby. Oh boy, I landed it too well. If there were judges watching… well, judges holding numbered cards, I would have earned a ten. I landed that puppy like a lawn dart, straight up and down. The difference between me the gymnasts out there, aside from a lifetime of training, is a soft surface, not a road, and proper footwear, not crappy flip flops, which are currently serving my lifelong boycott… bloody traitors. Maybe you thought the title of this essay was in reference to my action or the substance of my character… sadly, for my foot anyway, it’s a not-so-clever ‘single entendre’.
I planted my hands just below the corner of the roof and threw my feet into the air. A spectacular aerial ballet ensued as the night wind of that eternal split-second carried me to the ground on the wings of angels… carried me and promptly dropped me like a bag expired yak fertilizer on to that unforgiving asphalt and clearly over that manhood line I talked about earlier. “Oh Man!” Though I fell from the sky I distinctly heard the sound of God or some higher power boot-fucking my ass clear through the uprights of ‘welcome to the land of grown-up consequences’. Maybe that ‘thud’ was the sound of my calcaneous (heal bone) cracking.
You could quite literally say that I broke my foot off in my own ass.
My last images of that evening, as shock and adrenaline began to mix in my blood with nine liters of alcohol and nine more of regret, are quite clear considering my state. The first among them is my good buddy Primetime and young Jr., actually thoughtfully praising my form, and as the giggling paramedics loaded me strapped down into their meat-head-wagon, was looking out at my adoring public for that last bit of recognition. Among the eyes open in wonder and ridicule staring at the car crash that was ME, there was that recognition… the Sloth… ah hell, Andrew Geden, smiling at me with that smile I tended to get after one of my showstoppers, accompanying it with a big thumbs-up.
Why did I do it? What did I hope to achieve? What did I think would happen? Though it may be difficult to believe at this point, I am a reasonable, sometimes thoughtful, marginally educated young man with a fully functioning brain. Why, after twenty-eight years on a planet with gravity and asphalt, did I think this could end any differently? All I can say with any certainty is that I didn’t think. If my synapses were firing, it was in that part of the immature male brain that leads us in to our finest, but often our dumbest moments of greatness, and is associated with words like impetuous and exuberant. The unfortunate part of the transition, the traverse across that line of devirginized manhood into actual manhood, is that I kind of liked that version of me. I’ll miss him. Three o’clock in the morning will never be the same… if it still exists at all.
'The evening began innocently enough.' Let me say at this point that if you learned anything in the preceding, beware innocent looking evenings. Beware those reunion weekends, beware friends bearing gifts and gifts bearing friends, they love, would kill for you and love to see you happy, but do you ever get into these kinds of trouble without either? Beware what you wear, on your feet and in place of your thinking cap. Lastly, beware recreational vehicles. Personally, I’ve always been suspicious.
At the time of the requests for this little bittle, a year and a half of recovery and reflection, nicknames and funny walks have passed. I am almost fully recovered, both in terms of the condition of my right hoof and the amputation of the little hooligan performer. On certain days, usually following a lot of walking or exertion, I have stiffness and discomfort to remind me of those days of blissful ignorance and the sunny side of that manhood line. To be honest, I hope it always hurts a little, I don't really want to forget. Besides, I think a little limp kind of makes me look cowboy-cool. Maybe not.
Keep those feet on the ground and... ah, whatever. Don't break your heel, it really hurts.
Patrick "Veggie Heel" Hughes
I’m going to start this yarn with a little prologue… because ending with one just doesn’t seem right. What’s it called when the drummer does the three beats after a bad one liner?
I’d like to start this anecdote by raising to the foam a little lesson of passage that all men must endure. That lesson is mature manhood. At some point all of us cross a line where we see that which we committed behind us on the rambunctious side of said line, shake our heads and say, ‘oh man’, though truthfully we’re never very far from the little trouble-maker inside us. This lesson can be enlightening, cathartic, or outright painful.
Though many may think this line is the same of the passage to manhood in the traditional sexually plundering sense, ooh baby, you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a football field worth of difference between becoming a man and becoming a mature, or at least fully coherent man. On one side there is independence and the other is responsibility. Though independence is an important lesson and vital to the achievement of responsibility, it is still quite the river to cross, and usually involves both a literal and figurative blow to the independent man’s cranium.
That blow can actually occur at any part of the anatomy.
This leads me to the Tale of The Heel.
Let me first set the scene. Picture a quaint Northern Ontario town. Picture the kind of quasi-industrial picturesque place that has a Wal-Mart, but is still somewhat excited to have been bestowed a Wal-Mart, and at that Wal-Mart is a sectioned off snowmobile parking lot. Picture lakes and trees and friendly faces that are made all the more pleasing in that they are just anonymous enough that you don’t necessarily have to say hi to them.
In early August my treasured hometown is all a buzz, in that quaint small town sort of way, with a summer festival that attracts all manner of neighboring communities in for a week of carnival rides and greasy… well, everything gets kind of greasy.
This same week attracts most of my buddies from high school. We are still close and take advantage of every opportunity to shake off the burden of our impending thirties and reacquaint ourselves with the hooligans we once were. Hooliganism is one of those traits that stands on the younger side of that aforementioned line, but somehow retains a seductive power over the refined gentleman positioned on the latter half.
The hooligan in me had quite the convincing argument for me that evening.
The notorious night began as most of those reunion nights tend to, gathering at the home of one of these buddies that has found his career in our hometown, and ingesting our first few bushels of beer.
I should interject a note of the volume of alcohol consumption that we in a cold northern climate are capable and accustomed to. It becomes not only a badge of honor, but a survivalist necessity to keep the body well pickled and therefore protected and prepared for battle. I was doing my best at this point to adhere to this adage.
I could now tell a thousand funny little stories about booze and the men that love them, and the women that hate them, and the women the men want to love, and the ensuing hate affair men have with booze after the women they wanted to love are gone and replaced by the sun and a massive hangover… but lets get to the turkey of this dinner, shall we?
At the end of any given night in my hallowed hometown in the tepid days of summer, certain ceremonial rites come into play. In our continuing quest to regain or retain our youth, we can tend to engage in some activities that might seem… odd.
At this point, the male population has been split into the haves and have-nots, and I’ll let you guess what it is the haves will soon be having. The have-nots are left to forage for all-night, red-light heated slices of pizza and finding any lingering method of making the evening memorable. This tends to be where I come in.
I don’t mean to toot my own horn, though this is my website and an essay about ME, but this is usually the part of the night where I take the stage. As it happens, boy did I choose the wrong stage!
You may have inferred at this point that I usually stand with the have-nots. It is perhaps this constant membership in the have-not roster that instilled in me a need to perform and make being a have-not and getting not, not so bad.
I’ve done it all in the name of this quest. As the night winds down, I just seem to wind up, and certainly seem to get my steam. I take dares, I break things, I disrobe, I trespass, I ingest, and do just about anything to get noticed, acknowledged, and get something even though I have-not-thing.
On this particular night the performance went as such: We left the bar in a stupor I personally hadn’t stooped to in years. This was an inebriation built over six hours, all genres of alcohol, and at one point an entire tray of shots. There were four of us left, myself, The Three Toed Sloth, Primetime, and his younger brother Time Jr. Because of the summer festival mentioned earlier, there was a luxurious Recreational Vehicle on display outside the downtown bar to advertise some misbegotten festival sweepstakes for RV enthusiasts. With one look at this massive four-wheeled testament to geriatric adventure itself, I knew I had my stage.
I was up on the rooftop deck faster than a spider monkey on PCP. I looked over my people, my three friends and the droves of nightclubers, unleashed upon the night with the closing of their surrogate homes, most of whom couldn’t care less about the genius of my imminent my aria. They were right to ignore me as they sought ignorance in each other, I was probably the twelveth meathead to seek his glory on top of this moveable mountain. It wasn’t in my Edmund Hilary-like ascent of this Everest that I would find my own immortality, however…
… it would be in my dismount.
You read it right. In a moment of unbridled beer-fueled epiphany I chose the graceful way off of the oversized, nearly twenty-foot tall RV. If no one was going to respond to my show, the showman in me had to take it up a notch and drop all the jaws before with a show-stopping finish.
Imagine now my articulate, baritone inner-monologue, wiggled slightly by the influence of ‘liquid strength’. “A cartwheel… yeah, that’ll look cool! And golly, will it ever be enriching for everybody!”
Right about now you’re probably picturing a spectacularly cartoonish crash into the asphalt below, reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote’s accordion body. I hate to let you down in that respect, but no, I landed that baby. Oh boy, I landed it too well. If there were judges watching… well, judges holding numbered cards, I would have earned a ten. I landed that puppy like a lawn dart, straight up and down. The difference between me the gymnasts out there, aside from a lifetime of training, is a soft surface, not a road, and proper footwear, not crappy flip flops, which are currently serving my lifelong boycott… bloody traitors. Maybe you thought the title of this essay was in reference to my action or the substance of my character… sadly, for my foot anyway, it’s a not-so-clever ‘single entendre’.
I planted my hands just below the corner of the roof and threw my feet into the air. A spectacular aerial ballet ensued as the night wind of that eternal split-second carried me to the ground on the wings of angels… carried me and promptly dropped me like a bag expired yak fertilizer on to that unforgiving asphalt and clearly over that manhood line I talked about earlier. “Oh Man!” Though I fell from the sky I distinctly heard the sound of God or some higher power boot-fucking my ass clear through the uprights of ‘welcome to the land of grown-up consequences’. Maybe that ‘thud’ was the sound of my calcaneous (heal bone) cracking.
You could quite literally say that I broke my foot off in my own ass.
My last images of that evening, as shock and adrenaline began to mix in my blood with nine liters of alcohol and nine more of regret, are quite clear considering my state. The first among them is my good buddy Primetime and young Jr., actually thoughtfully praising my form, and as the giggling paramedics loaded me strapped down into their meat-head-wagon, was looking out at my adoring public for that last bit of recognition. Among the eyes open in wonder and ridicule staring at the car crash that was ME, there was that recognition… the Sloth… ah hell, Andrew Geden, smiling at me with that smile I tended to get after one of my showstoppers, accompanying it with a big thumbs-up.
Why did I do it? What did I hope to achieve? What did I think would happen? Though it may be difficult to believe at this point, I am a reasonable, sometimes thoughtful, marginally educated young man with a fully functioning brain. Why, after twenty-eight years on a planet with gravity and asphalt, did I think this could end any differently? All I can say with any certainty is that I didn’t think. If my synapses were firing, it was in that part of the immature male brain that leads us in to our finest, but often our dumbest moments of greatness, and is associated with words like impetuous and exuberant. The unfortunate part of the transition, the traverse across that line of devirginized manhood into actual manhood, is that I kind of liked that version of me. I’ll miss him. Three o’clock in the morning will never be the same… if it still exists at all.
'The evening began innocently enough.' Let me say at this point that if you learned anything in the preceding, beware innocent looking evenings. Beware those reunion weekends, beware friends bearing gifts and gifts bearing friends, they love, would kill for you and love to see you happy, but do you ever get into these kinds of trouble without either? Beware what you wear, on your feet and in place of your thinking cap. Lastly, beware recreational vehicles. Personally, I’ve always been suspicious.
At the time of the requests for this little bittle, a year and a half of recovery and reflection, nicknames and funny walks have passed. I am almost fully recovered, both in terms of the condition of my right hoof and the amputation of the little hooligan performer. On certain days, usually following a lot of walking or exertion, I have stiffness and discomfort to remind me of those days of blissful ignorance and the sunny side of that manhood line. To be honest, I hope it always hurts a little, I don't really want to forget. Besides, I think a little limp kind of makes me look cowboy-cool. Maybe not.
Keep those feet on the ground and... ah, whatever. Don't break your heel, it really hurts.
Patrick "Veggie Heel" Hughes
Beholder
Last summer I was enjoying a sunny afternoon on the rocky banks of West Vancouver’s Lighthouse Park. The sun poured down on the water at the mouth of the Burrard Inlet and ran across the lilting waves like a finger drawn across piano keys. I was hiking with a buddy and his parents who were in town for a visit, and quickly becoming addicted, as many of us have, to an intoxicating Vancouver in its habit-forming summer splendor. Things were fine lounging on that rock, a regal kind of fine, but they were about to get finer.
I noticed a young woman in a bikini below us, on a rock closer to the water that licked up at her feet. She stood at that distance just beyond detail, where the knowledge of a bikini conjures beauty in detail’s place. She was at that distance that an angel or a mermaid always seems to stand in your dreams, just past acknowledgement.
Does anyone else dream about mermaids, by the way?
She was standing and posing in a way that didn’t seem to invite the necessary sun to tan and didn’t seem overly natural, so I leaned forward to see what was making her assume an arched and tiptoed stance. About ten feet in front of her stood a man holding a huge light with a white umbrella surrounding it and a guy on one knee directing her holding a camera and an enthusiastic grin. Wait, lights… camera… hold everything, we have a model sighting!
Upon the awareness of said shutterbug, the bikini in front of me went from out of focus angel to an all-together new form of celestial entity. She was destined for the immortality of swimsuit calendars and workshop walls. I was mesmerized, until I realized the distasteful truth of my infatuation. She was just a bikini until I saw that photographer. Does that make me more interested in his and his camera’s presence than hers?
The fact that I knew that this girl was likely to be the subject of adoration for many made her instantly more adorable and admirable to me.
Can’t I pick my own angels any more?
Wasn’t it beauty I saw in the first place? Why did it take a camera and a man for me to behold it? Why did this new definition of the figure in front of me form a new image in my eyes? The level of her beauty was decided by this external force, what does that say about my ability to behold beauty?
Beauty was once in the eye of the beholder, now the beholder holds none of the cards. We are fed beauty in large, overly sugared, or should I say Nutra-Sweetened doses. Beauty and all its counterparts, style, expression, and class, have been labeled, packaged and mass-produced. Beauty is no longer the subject of poetry, but the air brushed product at the end of an assembly line.
Why is it that something isn’t beautiful until it’s beautiful to someone else?
Individualism, is this the problem? It seems that from the very moment we as a race acquired the gift of self-awareness we starting seeking someone to emulate. We ceased being apes but clung to ‘monkey see monkey do’ like a chimp in a tree. We’ve been falling in line, constructing our dogma, and seeking a supreme version of ourselves for the throne from the moment we had a voice with which to voice our conformity. Individualism isn’t the reason that model became an idol. I’m a product of the twentieth century; I’m not an individual even when I’m standing by myself.
I tend then to put the experience in that box of inherent human curiosity. You know that brightly colored box adorned with sparkling stars dangled before you by Monty Hall and certain to hold untold riches and even perhaps the key to Heaven itself? We all know that box; we know how things seem to get interesting to us when mystery and unattainability are introduced. Girls are more delectable when they give chase, chase is a gift they give the courtship. Candy is sweeter when stolen, but never even desired until desired by your little brother. We are compelled to forage when the answer to our curiosity isn’t readily provided.
Curiosity can’t be blamed for killing anything in this case, but it is our collective curiosity, and our individual need for conformity, that has killed the image of beauty, our sense of evolving style, and the power of the beholder by classifying every nuance of earth, sky and the air around us until mystery itself is rendered a mystery.
Beauty was once the muse, the divine intoxicant; it gave men that fun little step beyond sanity and woman the power to shatter that sanity. Now instead of a muse, we have a magazine cover and a strict set of guidelines. We have a fashion dictatorship that governs over more than a spring line, but indirectly over expression itself.
What is it exactly that’s inspirational about the blank expression staring at me with painted eyes from the cover of Cosmallurie Clairogue Fair? The only emotion that this literature inspires is a fear for those who once held the beholders. The fashion culture, the keepers of ‘popular beauty’, leave us with an increasingly stricter frame for the grandest gift the eyes can be given or behold. I’m convinced, and I’m not exactly expounding a theory about the speed of light here, that these periodicals are designed to train, pacify, and sort of enslave woman into subscribing to this believe of one kind of beauty. They force-feed, a ‘model’ for woman everywhere to fantasize about conforming to, and sell them makeup while doing so. I’m actually uncertain at this point if the ultimate ulterior motive of this fashion propaganda is to propagate an impossible image or just sell handbags. Both are clearly evil endeavors. Even sadder still is that most women know this, but are continually pushed, most often by each other, to praise these tomes of false imagery. Have you seen these things? I mean seriously, it’s a glossy, monthly Encyclopedia Britannica, filled with people who really truly do not at all look like the depictions presented. The actual models can’t even achieve these standards.
This quest has now reached absurd lengths with the popularization of surgical enhancement. What if I told you ten years ago that there would one day be a ‘reality’ show, where people would undergo surgery to look more like… whom or whatever? Plastic surgery does have its place, but… I can’t believe I have to say it… it is not on television. This subject is an essay unto itself, so without further digression…
Secondary to image itself in constructing the demolition of beauty is the revolving nature of trends. We live in an age where every combination of clothing, accessory, attitude and social standing has been labeled, and fluxes through a constantly changing ranking. The only constant in this ranking is that nothing remains. There was a time when a trend fit an age and a collective sense of belonging. In the early 60s the first lady showed women how to be conservatively stylish, and by the latter half of the decade Jim Morrison showed men how to be wild, yet thoughtful and brooding. It was simple, no one asked questions or sought a pigeonhole. By the mid 80s, the phenomenon of retro-style had begun. By the late 90s, the retro-flip had flopped over on itself. Trends were left with nothing but retrospective references to guide them.
Think about it for a moment. When you think of the 70s, what do you picture? Deborah Harry and Barry Gibb. When you think of the 80s its Don Johnson and a suit that burns your retinas. How about the late 90s and today? You’re back to the 60s and 70s all mish-mashed together, aren’t you? Trends, as a style based on originality is now as dead as we once thought Disco was. We are left with no creation, merely labeled boxes that everything must be filed into. The sad thing about setting a trend in our world today is that a trend isn’t a trend and originality isn’t original until acknowledged and copied by a second or second-hundredth person.
If a trend forms and no one is there to rank it, does it make a sound?
What would it take for the collective acknowledgement of our society that beauty is not contained within the impulse racks at the supermarket’s check out lines? How can we as a people take the property of beauty out of the hands of the label-makers and put it back into The Eye of the Beholder?
We have to abandon the labels, or to at least stand outside of these labels every now and then. We have to change the way we consider that which we admire. Don’t describe anything in the realm of creativity by comparing it to something that came before it. Don’t describe what you’re creating with a pop-culture reference or the closest comparison; explain the process that brought you there. Though this may seem an unsexy strategy, it will unravel the fabric holding the labels over that which once inspired us.
Imagine if once a week each one of us consciously did something completely out of the box of fashion and cliché. I mean something totally sideways, something like tying a shoe to your belt or wearing six belts. I mean replacing the word ‘please’ with ‘tickle’. I mean recognizing real beauty, by complementing someone who isn’t ready for it. If enough people were redefining beauty and creativity, the permutations would be too numerous to categorize. We could reinvent originality and rediscover what we each find beautiful.
Be Beautiful: People are ALWAYS at their best when they are cultivating their finer qualities. If you are weird, be weird; if you are boring, be boring; if you are fat, be fat, just be really good at it. If you happen to be one of those cover model types, be that kind of beautiful and revel in it.
Create Beauty: If you have a secret passion or outlet, don’t let secrecy, the clock or the deadline get in the way of it. Whether it’s playing piano, cooking, or burping the alphabet backwards, don’t let a day pass without some time spent exploring that outlet. Even paper airplane building needs a Mozart.
Think Beautiful: Far too many of us resist speaking our minds. I’m a believer in tact, at least a measure of it, but I’m also a believer in expression. Too many of us are concerned with being charming, and deal out a joke rather than sharing something meaningful. Don’t let the chance to have beautiful disagreement pass you by.
Say Beautiful: Beauty goes far too often unacknowledged. It remains unjustly just beyond detail. Maybe that’s why it has come the caged animal that once ran free, because it wasn’t chased. A sunset, a vintage car, or a stranger on the street, if you see beauty, acknowledge it. You can become the beholder again.
Beauty should not be the mold we fit into, but that which sets us apart. I for one would like to behold real beauty again. I would like to be bowled over by beauty rather than merely bombarded with the plastic version of it. There are perhaps greater causes to put the remnant strength of our individual opinion behind, but if you really think about it, what’s the point of any of it if we have to live in a world without beauty? I think remaining on a path where nothing is new and everything has been marketed; Beauty will slowly be relegated to the Memory of the Beholder.
The more I reflect on my experience with that angelic mermaid bikini, the more I wish two things: First, I wish I saw the cameraman first. Perhaps if my knowledge began with him, my image of her wouldn’t have bended into the label of bikini-model. I wouldn’t then have a memory that starts on something real and ends on a magazine cover. Second, I wish our two rocks were a little bit closer. If I could have been within that distance to appreciate her at the level of personal acknowledgement, perhaps then I wouldn’t have stamped on her that label that devalued her beauty, and perhaps then she could have acknowledged me right back.
This actually leads me to my third wish…
Hughes.
I noticed a young woman in a bikini below us, on a rock closer to the water that licked up at her feet. She stood at that distance just beyond detail, where the knowledge of a bikini conjures beauty in detail’s place. She was at that distance that an angel or a mermaid always seems to stand in your dreams, just past acknowledgement.
Does anyone else dream about mermaids, by the way?
She was standing and posing in a way that didn’t seem to invite the necessary sun to tan and didn’t seem overly natural, so I leaned forward to see what was making her assume an arched and tiptoed stance. About ten feet in front of her stood a man holding a huge light with a white umbrella surrounding it and a guy on one knee directing her holding a camera and an enthusiastic grin. Wait, lights… camera… hold everything, we have a model sighting!
Upon the awareness of said shutterbug, the bikini in front of me went from out of focus angel to an all-together new form of celestial entity. She was destined for the immortality of swimsuit calendars and workshop walls. I was mesmerized, until I realized the distasteful truth of my infatuation. She was just a bikini until I saw that photographer. Does that make me more interested in his and his camera’s presence than hers?
The fact that I knew that this girl was likely to be the subject of adoration for many made her instantly more adorable and admirable to me.
Can’t I pick my own angels any more?
Wasn’t it beauty I saw in the first place? Why did it take a camera and a man for me to behold it? Why did this new definition of the figure in front of me form a new image in my eyes? The level of her beauty was decided by this external force, what does that say about my ability to behold beauty?
Beauty was once in the eye of the beholder, now the beholder holds none of the cards. We are fed beauty in large, overly sugared, or should I say Nutra-Sweetened doses. Beauty and all its counterparts, style, expression, and class, have been labeled, packaged and mass-produced. Beauty is no longer the subject of poetry, but the air brushed product at the end of an assembly line.
Why is it that something isn’t beautiful until it’s beautiful to someone else?
Individualism, is this the problem? It seems that from the very moment we as a race acquired the gift of self-awareness we starting seeking someone to emulate. We ceased being apes but clung to ‘monkey see monkey do’ like a chimp in a tree. We’ve been falling in line, constructing our dogma, and seeking a supreme version of ourselves for the throne from the moment we had a voice with which to voice our conformity. Individualism isn’t the reason that model became an idol. I’m a product of the twentieth century; I’m not an individual even when I’m standing by myself.
I tend then to put the experience in that box of inherent human curiosity. You know that brightly colored box adorned with sparkling stars dangled before you by Monty Hall and certain to hold untold riches and even perhaps the key to Heaven itself? We all know that box; we know how things seem to get interesting to us when mystery and unattainability are introduced. Girls are more delectable when they give chase, chase is a gift they give the courtship. Candy is sweeter when stolen, but never even desired until desired by your little brother. We are compelled to forage when the answer to our curiosity isn’t readily provided.
Curiosity can’t be blamed for killing anything in this case, but it is our collective curiosity, and our individual need for conformity, that has killed the image of beauty, our sense of evolving style, and the power of the beholder by classifying every nuance of earth, sky and the air around us until mystery itself is rendered a mystery.
Beauty was once the muse, the divine intoxicant; it gave men that fun little step beyond sanity and woman the power to shatter that sanity. Now instead of a muse, we have a magazine cover and a strict set of guidelines. We have a fashion dictatorship that governs over more than a spring line, but indirectly over expression itself.
What is it exactly that’s inspirational about the blank expression staring at me with painted eyes from the cover of Cosmallurie Clairogue Fair? The only emotion that this literature inspires is a fear for those who once held the beholders. The fashion culture, the keepers of ‘popular beauty’, leave us with an increasingly stricter frame for the grandest gift the eyes can be given or behold. I’m convinced, and I’m not exactly expounding a theory about the speed of light here, that these periodicals are designed to train, pacify, and sort of enslave woman into subscribing to this believe of one kind of beauty. They force-feed, a ‘model’ for woman everywhere to fantasize about conforming to, and sell them makeup while doing so. I’m actually uncertain at this point if the ultimate ulterior motive of this fashion propaganda is to propagate an impossible image or just sell handbags. Both are clearly evil endeavors. Even sadder still is that most women know this, but are continually pushed, most often by each other, to praise these tomes of false imagery. Have you seen these things? I mean seriously, it’s a glossy, monthly Encyclopedia Britannica, filled with people who really truly do not at all look like the depictions presented. The actual models can’t even achieve these standards.
This quest has now reached absurd lengths with the popularization of surgical enhancement. What if I told you ten years ago that there would one day be a ‘reality’ show, where people would undergo surgery to look more like… whom or whatever? Plastic surgery does have its place, but… I can’t believe I have to say it… it is not on television. This subject is an essay unto itself, so without further digression…
Secondary to image itself in constructing the demolition of beauty is the revolving nature of trends. We live in an age where every combination of clothing, accessory, attitude and social standing has been labeled, and fluxes through a constantly changing ranking. The only constant in this ranking is that nothing remains. There was a time when a trend fit an age and a collective sense of belonging. In the early 60s the first lady showed women how to be conservatively stylish, and by the latter half of the decade Jim Morrison showed men how to be wild, yet thoughtful and brooding. It was simple, no one asked questions or sought a pigeonhole. By the mid 80s, the phenomenon of retro-style had begun. By the late 90s, the retro-flip had flopped over on itself. Trends were left with nothing but retrospective references to guide them.
Think about it for a moment. When you think of the 70s, what do you picture? Deborah Harry and Barry Gibb. When you think of the 80s its Don Johnson and a suit that burns your retinas. How about the late 90s and today? You’re back to the 60s and 70s all mish-mashed together, aren’t you? Trends, as a style based on originality is now as dead as we once thought Disco was. We are left with no creation, merely labeled boxes that everything must be filed into. The sad thing about setting a trend in our world today is that a trend isn’t a trend and originality isn’t original until acknowledged and copied by a second or second-hundredth person.
If a trend forms and no one is there to rank it, does it make a sound?
What would it take for the collective acknowledgement of our society that beauty is not contained within the impulse racks at the supermarket’s check out lines? How can we as a people take the property of beauty out of the hands of the label-makers and put it back into The Eye of the Beholder?
We have to abandon the labels, or to at least stand outside of these labels every now and then. We have to change the way we consider that which we admire. Don’t describe anything in the realm of creativity by comparing it to something that came before it. Don’t describe what you’re creating with a pop-culture reference or the closest comparison; explain the process that brought you there. Though this may seem an unsexy strategy, it will unravel the fabric holding the labels over that which once inspired us.
Imagine if once a week each one of us consciously did something completely out of the box of fashion and cliché. I mean something totally sideways, something like tying a shoe to your belt or wearing six belts. I mean replacing the word ‘please’ with ‘tickle’. I mean recognizing real beauty, by complementing someone who isn’t ready for it. If enough people were redefining beauty and creativity, the permutations would be too numerous to categorize. We could reinvent originality and rediscover what we each find beautiful.
Be Beautiful: People are ALWAYS at their best when they are cultivating their finer qualities. If you are weird, be weird; if you are boring, be boring; if you are fat, be fat, just be really good at it. If you happen to be one of those cover model types, be that kind of beautiful and revel in it.
Create Beauty: If you have a secret passion or outlet, don’t let secrecy, the clock or the deadline get in the way of it. Whether it’s playing piano, cooking, or burping the alphabet backwards, don’t let a day pass without some time spent exploring that outlet. Even paper airplane building needs a Mozart.
Think Beautiful: Far too many of us resist speaking our minds. I’m a believer in tact, at least a measure of it, but I’m also a believer in expression. Too many of us are concerned with being charming, and deal out a joke rather than sharing something meaningful. Don’t let the chance to have beautiful disagreement pass you by.
Say Beautiful: Beauty goes far too often unacknowledged. It remains unjustly just beyond detail. Maybe that’s why it has come the caged animal that once ran free, because it wasn’t chased. A sunset, a vintage car, or a stranger on the street, if you see beauty, acknowledge it. You can become the beholder again.
Beauty should not be the mold we fit into, but that which sets us apart. I for one would like to behold real beauty again. I would like to be bowled over by beauty rather than merely bombarded with the plastic version of it. There are perhaps greater causes to put the remnant strength of our individual opinion behind, but if you really think about it, what’s the point of any of it if we have to live in a world without beauty? I think remaining on a path where nothing is new and everything has been marketed; Beauty will slowly be relegated to the Memory of the Beholder.
The more I reflect on my experience with that angelic mermaid bikini, the more I wish two things: First, I wish I saw the cameraman first. Perhaps if my knowledge began with him, my image of her wouldn’t have bended into the label of bikini-model. I wouldn’t then have a memory that starts on something real and ends on a magazine cover. Second, I wish our two rocks were a little bit closer. If I could have been within that distance to appreciate her at the level of personal acknowledgement, perhaps then I wouldn’t have stamped on her that label that devalued her beauty, and perhaps then she could have acknowledged me right back.
This actually leads me to my third wish…
Hughes.
D.A.D.
My Favorite Entries:
Drunk And Disorderly
Dumb As Dirt
Doobies All Day
Clearly inspired by the picture.
Thanks for commenting.
AcroNumb
Of all the things in the world that annoy me, there is an underlying uselessness that threads them all together. I don’t tend to concern myself with politics, or controversy, or isms for that matter. I really just tend to get irked by the things that I feel are using up brain cells that would be better served committing pornography to long-term memory. Among those things that needn’t be proudly stands the Acronym.
“Excuse me, sir. Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P., shouldn't we keep the P.C. on the Q.T.? 'Cause of the leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A., and then we'd all be put out in K.P.” Robin Williams – Good Morning Vietnam; 1987
Have you ever been left in the dark because you couldn’t crack the code of a phrase squashed into letters and dots? Were you ever left out of a certain reindeer game because you were unaware of the latest abbreviated adolescent euphemism? Have you ever found yourself square in the middle of a social faux pas because you mixed I.O.U and I.U.D.?
Acronyms are about brevity and some say brevity is the soul of wit. Needless to say, this essay will be witty, but due to the subject matter, and for you guys with diminutive attention spans, it will also be brief.
I consider it a reasonable possibility that I may one day have the devotion of a staunch group of followers, that praise my rantings with unconditional reverence. Should that time come and my disciples feel inclined to devise a list of the Gospels of Our Hughes, one of the ones right near the top will read: “I have a problem with people who have a problem with words.” Acronyms fall right on the altar of that gospel. People will always have problems and many words will be rented by fools, but what I can’t figure is why we feel compelled to waste time using shortcuts?
Some will now propose the defense of efficiency. Why would I want to spend my time talking when I can get my point across in letters crossed with points? Why would I describe the contents of my sandwich when I can get away with B,L, and T? Am I the only one who sees that the fine line between genius and insanity as The Great Wall of China compared to the fine little line that separates efficiency and laziness? In our age of unqualified quantity we’ve immatured in our worship of the shortest distance between two points... or several points. ‘The fast way’ has universally become the best way, but what flavors and details have we then left along the way? It’s lazy to always fall back on the quicker or faster option as a default. The drive-thru window at your local fast food joint is an efficient source of nourishment, but is far bested by the steak dinner that awaits us at home on the other side of a little elbow grease and motivation. There’s no denying that faster isn’t always better. Could we then also agree that being efficient for the sake of efficiency is like having a hamburger when steak waits at home?
This is how I feel about acronyms over taking our succulent one-inch-cut grade ‘A’ discourse. I always feel a little bit confused when people deliberately under use when they have the chance to over take and gorge on the vastness of smooth unpointed words worth taking. When did talking, conversing, convulsing, exaggerating, expounding, and blathering become too expensive a commodity to for our valuable time?
Like everything else worth complaining about, Acronyms do have their place. Imagine how quickly the roots of democracy would have crumbled if we always had to say ‘The United States of America’ in full every time. I believe a very likely contributor to the fall of communism, despite unsound Marxist Theories, was that people got sick of that brutally long U.S.S.R. acronym. Some phrases and titles aren’t worth saying in full at all times, some simply sound better as their abbreviated alter egos, like UFO and SCUBA. Most however, simply are not simple at all and ruin what they were designed to represent.
As a companion, Acronyms have Abbreviation, which also can be a needed, but tend to be the lethargic way to get out a thought probably better left unthought. An example of the exception that proves me unruly is the very medium on which I share my itches. Web Log becomes ‘Blog’ and suddenly we have a means of being mean that comprises still more thoughts that probably shouldn't… I think you know where I’m going with this. Proposed system of measurement: if the thought isn’t valuable enough to qualify even the words used to express it, it is probably better suited for the W.P.B. (waste paper basket)
Like everything else that has its good side, we have exploited it until that side is rubbed and diluted to ineffectuality, or spoiled and seduced by the dark side. I’m happy that we can yell ‘SOS!’ in an emergency, but I find it unfortunate that many people have no clue what it is they’re yelling. (Si Opus Sit, for those out there keeping track… in Latin)
A problem almost as severe as the watering down and repackaging of our language is an Acronym’s removal of communication, replacing it with a secret code. Not everyone is necessarily privy to a phrase or a title that has been masked as initials and alternating periods. We’ve all been part of a dinner conversation that ejected us unexpectedly when our companions switch from English to E.N.G.L.I.S.H. Don’t you tend to feel there’s something hidden behind these little word cliques? Even if you know the definition those points are hiding, isn’t there something deceptive and duplicitous about a word or phrase unwilling to show its face?
From getting around something that was taking too long or occupying too much time or tongue muscle energy, we have evolved to vacuum sealing and dehydrating everything with the space to shrink. In our tireless quest to eradicate adventure, question, and color from our daily lives, our language is becoming a victim to an age that puts the ‘www’ ahead of the world itself.
As always I propose the solution. Every word in our language deserves the respect of a proper address. In formal correspondence and notation proper names are said in full and then referred to in shorter form. As long as you say Mr. Patrick Hughes once in the address, you are then free to roll it back to Patrick, Hughes, Pat… insert your favorite nickname here. Address the word or phrase once in full and then feel free to walk all over it following that courtesy. “The Central Intelligence Agency is the keystone of Intelligence for the American Government. Where would the Government be without the Intelligence of the C.I.A.?” Let the sun shine into the spaces between words and punctuation, don’t plug them with points. I think our language, our verbal discourse, and the ears being let in on the thought deserve that much, don’t you?
UFO and SCUBA are of course exempt from this rule.
I assume that most of my readers, critics and passersby are of the learned, or at least clever sort. To you I ask this question: How much does it bug you when someone in your presence uses a word, like innocuous or serendipitous, to which they clearly don’t know the meaning? Do you think they should be allowed to use that word?
P.S. How many of you out there know what P.S. stands for?
P.P.S. Sorry, I guess that wasn’t very short.
XOXO, P.H.
“Excuse me, sir. Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P., shouldn't we keep the P.C. on the Q.T.? 'Cause of the leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A., and then we'd all be put out in K.P.” Robin Williams – Good Morning Vietnam; 1987
Have you ever been left in the dark because you couldn’t crack the code of a phrase squashed into letters and dots? Were you ever left out of a certain reindeer game because you were unaware of the latest abbreviated adolescent euphemism? Have you ever found yourself square in the middle of a social faux pas because you mixed I.O.U and I.U.D.?
Acronyms are about brevity and some say brevity is the soul of wit. Needless to say, this essay will be witty, but due to the subject matter, and for you guys with diminutive attention spans, it will also be brief.
I consider it a reasonable possibility that I may one day have the devotion of a staunch group of followers, that praise my rantings with unconditional reverence. Should that time come and my disciples feel inclined to devise a list of the Gospels of Our Hughes, one of the ones right near the top will read: “I have a problem with people who have a problem with words.” Acronyms fall right on the altar of that gospel. People will always have problems and many words will be rented by fools, but what I can’t figure is why we feel compelled to waste time using shortcuts?
Some will now propose the defense of efficiency. Why would I want to spend my time talking when I can get my point across in letters crossed with points? Why would I describe the contents of my sandwich when I can get away with B,L, and T? Am I the only one who sees that the fine line between genius and insanity as The Great Wall of China compared to the fine little line that separates efficiency and laziness? In our age of unqualified quantity we’ve immatured in our worship of the shortest distance between two points... or several points. ‘The fast way’ has universally become the best way, but what flavors and details have we then left along the way? It’s lazy to always fall back on the quicker or faster option as a default. The drive-thru window at your local fast food joint is an efficient source of nourishment, but is far bested by the steak dinner that awaits us at home on the other side of a little elbow grease and motivation. There’s no denying that faster isn’t always better. Could we then also agree that being efficient for the sake of efficiency is like having a hamburger when steak waits at home?
This is how I feel about acronyms over taking our succulent one-inch-cut grade ‘A’ discourse. I always feel a little bit confused when people deliberately under use when they have the chance to over take and gorge on the vastness of smooth unpointed words worth taking. When did talking, conversing, convulsing, exaggerating, expounding, and blathering become too expensive a commodity to for our valuable time?
Like everything else worth complaining about, Acronyms do have their place. Imagine how quickly the roots of democracy would have crumbled if we always had to say ‘The United States of America’ in full every time. I believe a very likely contributor to the fall of communism, despite unsound Marxist Theories, was that people got sick of that brutally long U.S.S.R. acronym. Some phrases and titles aren’t worth saying in full at all times, some simply sound better as their abbreviated alter egos, like UFO and SCUBA. Most however, simply are not simple at all and ruin what they were designed to represent.
As a companion, Acronyms have Abbreviation, which also can be a needed, but tend to be the lethargic way to get out a thought probably better left unthought. An example of the exception that proves me unruly is the very medium on which I share my itches. Web Log becomes ‘Blog’ and suddenly we have a means of being mean that comprises still more thoughts that probably shouldn't… I think you know where I’m going with this. Proposed system of measurement: if the thought isn’t valuable enough to qualify even the words used to express it, it is probably better suited for the W.P.B. (waste paper basket)
Like everything else that has its good side, we have exploited it until that side is rubbed and diluted to ineffectuality, or spoiled and seduced by the dark side. I’m happy that we can yell ‘SOS!’ in an emergency, but I find it unfortunate that many people have no clue what it is they’re yelling. (Si Opus Sit, for those out there keeping track… in Latin)
A problem almost as severe as the watering down and repackaging of our language is an Acronym’s removal of communication, replacing it with a secret code. Not everyone is necessarily privy to a phrase or a title that has been masked as initials and alternating periods. We’ve all been part of a dinner conversation that ejected us unexpectedly when our companions switch from English to E.N.G.L.I.S.H. Don’t you tend to feel there’s something hidden behind these little word cliques? Even if you know the definition those points are hiding, isn’t there something deceptive and duplicitous about a word or phrase unwilling to show its face?
From getting around something that was taking too long or occupying too much time or tongue muscle energy, we have evolved to vacuum sealing and dehydrating everything with the space to shrink. In our tireless quest to eradicate adventure, question, and color from our daily lives, our language is becoming a victim to an age that puts the ‘www’ ahead of the world itself.
As always I propose the solution. Every word in our language deserves the respect of a proper address. In formal correspondence and notation proper names are said in full and then referred to in shorter form. As long as you say Mr. Patrick Hughes once in the address, you are then free to roll it back to Patrick, Hughes, Pat… insert your favorite nickname here. Address the word or phrase once in full and then feel free to walk all over it following that courtesy. “The Central Intelligence Agency is the keystone of Intelligence for the American Government. Where would the Government be without the Intelligence of the C.I.A.?” Let the sun shine into the spaces between words and punctuation, don’t plug them with points. I think our language, our verbal discourse, and the ears being let in on the thought deserve that much, don’t you?
UFO and SCUBA are of course exempt from this rule.
I assume that most of my readers, critics and passersby are of the learned, or at least clever sort. To you I ask this question: How much does it bug you when someone in your presence uses a word, like innocuous or serendipitous, to which they clearly don’t know the meaning? Do you think they should be allowed to use that word?
P.S. How many of you out there know what P.S. stands for?
P.P.S. Sorry, I guess that wasn’t very short.
XOXO, P.H.
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