Decoupage

Decoupage: (n) the art or technique of decorating something with cut-outs of flat materials over which varnish or lacquer is applied.

I’ve heard it mentioned.

People have threatened to do it.

In the midst of a meeting, it has inspired a whole room, leaving them agog with anticipation.

“We could decoupage.”

The only reason I even knew the definition is that one time, upon leaving such a gathering, feeling ignorant, I looked it up in the dictionary. I also watched a video of what may apparently be the only soul who actually has tackled the process.

Yet it is a favored suggestion. However, when actually placed in the context of the moment, is quickly avoided due to the amount of work it entails.

It’s sticky, it’s messy and after it’s finished, it screams at the top of its lungs:

 “I’m homemade!”

I don’t know how it ever got a reputation for being elegant, cool and “happening.”

But since I feel fairly certain that I will never decoupage anything (and am probably riling up some ardent “decoupagers”) I will stop criticizing the process and declare it an art form—which I hope will make everybody happy.

 

Decorum

Decorum: (adj) dignified propriety of behavior, speech, dress, etc.

Underlings always consider rules to be unnecessary.

Those in middle management view rules as a way to lord it over the underlings.

And the actual managers of any endeavor consider rules the best way to avoid chaos.

Yet the question should be asked, how much decorum is necessary to keep us from falling into a great pit of meaningless activity?

How many restrictions are required to restrict us enough so that we don’t do stupid things?

How much freedom can be allotted to a person who spends all of his time doing nothing but screaming for freedom?

What does a human being need and what causes a human being to become needy?

I think it all revolves around the word invested.

If I have nothing invested in a project or a blessing waiting for me in the outcome, it will be difficult to convince me to maintain decorum or hit the marks just right in order to top dogs.

One of the worst things we can do for human beings is tell them that their part is not that important, and the result has nothing to do with their contribution.

It seems comical to me that the people who make the least amount of money actually touch our lives the most.

  • People who make fast food
  • Grocery store clerks
  • Those who handle produce
  • Mechanics
  • And even individuals who are in charge of driving here and there and are given “Uber” responsibility with minimal reward.

It would be intelligent to pay those who could poison us with more coins, and even more appreciation.

But instead, we ask for decorum without offering much incentive.

If you come and join me in a project, I will make sure you’re invested.

I will let you know how intricate you are to the workings, and it will be true instead of just a bunch of hype.

Because if I don’t need people to work, I don’t hire them. And if I do need them to work, I treasure them.

Don’t ask a human being to toe a line and maintain decorum unless at the end of that toe-job, there is an obvious prize.

 

Decorate

Decorate: (v) to furnish or adorn with something ornamental or becoming

It is not picky.

It is not fussy.

It is not flamboyant.

Nor is it feminine or gay.

It is a natural inclination which we stifle.

That being: to decorate.

Yes, it is our human instinct to take something that is given to us and in making it our own, add our touches and personality.

We decorate.

We’re not all decorators by profession.

We don’t run around the room pointing at things, frantically uttering ideas that are popping into our minds.

But we do decorate.

It is our way of establishing turf.

It is one of the ways we distinguish our poverty-stricken hut from the dilapidated one next door.

It is also the process we use to make our yacht stand out among the other yachts floating on the ocean blue.

We decorate.

It makes us delightful.

When we allow ourselves to consider what color tie we will wear with our suit or whether tennis shoes are appropriate for a night out dining in the city, or if we think the desk that is now in the left-hand corner is screaming to be right-cornered…

Whatever it is, we possess it, we own it—and it makes us endearing.

And as I said, it is not gender biased.

For men will take their bathroom supplies and stack them just as fastidiously as their lady friends.

  • Decorate.
  • Replenish the Earth.
  • And be fruitful about it.

Decontextualize

Decontextualize: (v) to remove from a context

Water.

What do we use it for?

  • We drink it.
  • We swim in it.
  • We clean with it.

Very simple.

This is the context for water.

So the young prophet shows up at the river and he wants to use the water to baptize people. Why?

Because it’s something we drink, we swim in it and it cleans us.

The context is clear.  Water is a symbol of life, joy and cleanliness.

What a great way to communicate a transition in our beings. Take us into the water, let us promise good things, let us believe better things. Then splash us beneath the deep and rise us up—cleansed.

Could anything be more beautiful than that?

Does it matter how the water is used?

Does the top of my head have to get wet?

How about my hip bones?

Is it less significant if my kneecaps remain dry?

Since we understand the context of water bringing life, joy and cleanliness, why must we decontextualize by insisting the style in which we enact this ritual is more important than the expression itself?

How shall we take our communion?

Should we use wine or grape juice?

How can we take the symbolism of the body and blood of Christ and trivialize it down to grocery store concerns?

Are you saved?

How do you know?

Did you confess?

Did you come to it on your own?

Did you do it in church?

Did you do it in public?

Do any of these things matter?

Is it necessary to take the context of something beautiful and change it to a complexity and make it nearly inaccessible?

How do you know when you’ve found something pure?

That’s easy.

When no one needs to explain it to you.

 

Decongestant

Decongestant: (n) a substance that relieves mucus congestion of the upper respiratory tract.

I hate colds.

I am not alone in this, but they are a hazard for my profession.

I have spent my life using my voice in various capacities, and having that altered is at least annoying, if not costly.

Over the years, I’ve learned that the sooner I treat a cold, the better off I am.

This discovery was birthed during a particularly nasty head cold I had when I was a junior in high school. Being that particular age, I took no medications and certainly would never carry Kleenex in my pocket.

So one very cold day, when the study hall at school was overly warm, my nose began to run. I had nothing at all to stop the flow.

I had not taken a decongestant to dry me out.

Kleenex was for girls.

And unfortunately, the only thing available was the fuzzy sweater my brother had loaned to me, which had big, bushy sleeves.

I resisted for a long time.

I tried to breathe in deeply, sucking the nose flow back into my head.

I did a quick reach-up with my finger to push back the lava.

But it just kept coming.

Finally, in a complete breakdown, I lifted my sweater sleeve and quickly rubbed it across my nose, allowing all the furriness to absorb the “ick.”

I immediately reached down and tried to redistribute the human glue throughout the sweater so it wouldn’t be noticeable—and fortunately for me, the bell rang. I was able to run to the bathroom to blow my nose.

Being a teenager, I forgot all about the incident until a week later, when my brother put on the sweater and asked me what the deal was with the sleeve.

I could not tell him the truth.

It would not be healthy for his heart. (I don’t think he had a heart condition, but he could develop one.)

Being an adolescent and not quick-thinking on my feet, I replied, “Wear and tear?”

My brother looked at me, perplexed, then down at his clumpy, sticky sleeve. I don’t think he really wanted to know, so he accepted my explanation.

I have since learned that the power of a decongestant is that it dries you up so much that you don’t have to do embarrassing things to your clothing.

 

Decompress

Decompress: (v) to relax; unwind

When I was nine years old, a friend of mine jammed his finger.

It hurt.

No doubt about that.

But over the next week, through the urging of his mother, the jammed finger went from being a painful incident to a potentially lethal trauma.

Every day when I saw him, he had a new angle on how a jammed finger could lead to some sort of bizarre complication, culminating in a contorted death.

Honestly, I started avoiding him, waiting for his finger to heal, so that he could become normal again.

That has been my inclination with the human race.

Since most people think they have a jammed finger, they are prepared to exaggerate their wounds to make themselves feel more endangered.

Therefore I hate the word “decompress.”

I hear it all the time: “I am under so much pressure that I must get someplace and decompress.”

Really?

I guess I have a different definition for “pressure.”

To me, pressure is when you realize you’re going to die.

And even then, it’s a good idea to get a second opinion.

Everything short of death is problematic—and by problematic, I mean solvable.

I am just completely flummoxed as to why we think our lives are more intriguing when we express levels of breathless desperation.

Why is it more enticing to say, “I don’t think I’m going to make it,” than “I’ve had a bad week.”

Why must we think the world is going to end simply because we can’t find our favorite jar of pickles?

How in the hell important do we think we are?

For the record:

I do not need to decompress.

I do not require escaping somewhere to spend even more time musing over my plight.

I need to expand.

I must be around people who also have problems, and together, we can develop the good cheer of realizing that there doesn’t seem to be anything life has come up with that can destroy us.

If we reach that point, we gain a certain lightness of spirit—an irrepressible joy that makes us love ourselves and valuable to those around us.

Don’t decompress.

Just don’t get yourself in a position where you take things too seriously.

In life there are no dramas—there are just comedies, and sometimes we don’t get the joke.

 

Decompose

Decompose: (v) to rot; putrefy

My dad died of lung cancer.

It was not a surprise—though death itself offers a certain array of misunderstandings.

He smoked all his life.

Matter of fact, he rolled his own. No filters.

So by the time cancer got to his lungs, the disease already had a climate suited for its purposes.

I was never close to my dad. The last few months of his life, he made a feeble, but noble, attempt to connect with me—but I was sixteen and in no mood for sentimental drivel.

The summer following his demise, I was old enough that I needed money of my own so I could pay for gasoline, dates and some clothes.

I joined a summer jobs campaign offered by the federal government, which paid $1.10 an hour. I ended up working at the community cemetery, mowing the grass around the graves.

I guess I was a little freaked out about it. But it was quiet, and the man in charge of the grounds didn’t hang around, supervising me, which meant I could do things at a pace that honored my laziness.

This was also the location of my father’s grave.

His site was so new that grass had not yet grown up over the pile of dirt. So every time I took my mower by his plot, I said something to him. Since we had not talked much during my growing up years, I thought I would make up for it by chatting to him in his reclining position.

It felt weird at first.

But then I struck up a conversation that prompted me to work more efficiently, actually relishing the time I had, mowing down the departed.

I will never forget, one very, very hot day, there was a smell in the air. It was a combination of rotten tomatoes, vitamins—if you put your nose right up to the jar—with a slight bit of the hay fields that surrounded our town.

It was not an unpleasant odor. After a while, I breathed it deeply into my lungs.

It was the scent of human beings simmering in their graves. It was very natural.

The job only lasted that one summer.

It’s probably good that it didn’t continue.

I was young and didn’t need to be ruminating over the sniff of those who decompose.

Decoder

Decode: (v) to translate data or a message from a code into the original language or form.

There actually was something called a “decoder ring.”

It was a little plastic ornament put into Cracker Jacks, for kids to place on a finger to make them believe they were decoding.

Candidly, I had no idea what “decoding” was.

But possessing the ring was still important.

As I become an adult (mainly confirmed by the number of my birthday parties), I realize that the whole Earth and everything around it and in it has a code. If you do not know how to decode it, you will begin to believe things at face value, or try to put faces on faceless values.

May I assist you with what I have garnered from having once owned a decoder ring?

Religion

When it comes to religion, if it doesn’t help people, make people better, make people think, make people feel or make people more generous, it is nothing but superstition or witchcraft.

Politics

In the realm of politics, if it doesn’t make people better, make them think, make them care for each other, improve their status and create equality, it is a really bad party, which will only make you drunk on your own ego.

Science

If you’re talking about science, there’s only one thing to remember: every living thing will do whatever is necessary to continue to be living. A second thing could be added: every mystery to continue living is hidden somewhere in the rocks.

Business

Customers are the little devils that make the business world work. Calling them little devils does not help. Treating them like little devils is even worse. Becoming a little devil to battle with them yourself could put you in jail.

And even though there are many subjects I could address, let me conclude with:

Romance

Romance ultimately is not about feelings, but instead, orgasms. To achieve orgasms, people have to cooperate with each other, which only makes the world a better place anyway.

I present this today just in case you did not get your decoder ring in your Cracker Jacks box.

If you did, I apologize for my presumption.

 

Deco

Deco: (adj) of, relating to, or suggestive of art deco design

You can’t have one without the other.

This was a lyric from a song entitled “Love and Marriage.”

The contention of the writer was that some words are just meant to be together—and when you separate them, they turn on their heel and frightened to death, run back toward each other.

I don’t know if this is true or not.

But I am certain that if I were in a room with anyone who started talking about “art deco,” I would start looking for an excuse about a pet I had at home which needed my immediate attention.

Yet worse would be if this individual felt that “art deco” was too common a phrase and decided to just proclaim it “deco.”

The children would be shivering in the corner.

And I with them.

As I often say, pretense walks in the room and I walk out the back door.

And if there is no back door, I will make one.

 

Declutter

Declutter: (v) to remove mess or clutter from a place.

All the power in life lies in discovering worthy definitions.

Therefore, what is declutter?

If we can’t come to terms on the definition of something, then each person can develop his or her rendition of the word—until we end up fighting over it.

For instance, the word “slavery,” circa 1855, did not have the same meaning in Boston that it did in Atlanta. Arriving at common ground is how we move forward to make quality decisions.

So in determining what clutter is, we must realize that we can either evaluate it by worth, sentiment or value.

If we do it by worth, we’re going to start chatting about money.

Sentimentality will bring in deep-rooted feelings.

But value, on the other hand, is very simple:

If I haven’t used this in the past six months, I don’t have any need for it.

There are obvious contradictions. For instance, a pair of skis. If I found the in my garage in July, I would think they were useless. But come January, they can be a treasure.

Yet most of the time, if the object in question is an item for all seasons, if we have not used it in six calendar months, it probably is ready to skedaddle. It has gone from being a gift to an experience to a failure—ending as clutter.

Just consider if we had the intelligence to take all our failures, box them up…

 And ship them off.