Tag Archives: angst

Beau

Beau: (n) a boyfriend or male admirer.Dictionary B

Although I don’t want to be considered a curmudgeon, there are certain words that rile me up.

One of them is “boyfriend.” And honestly, I am not any more enamored with the use of “beau.”

It is my discovery that to be a friend to a female, the last thing I need to be is a boy. Equally disappointing to the average woman is when we don the persona of man.

The reason we contend there’s a battle of the sexes is because we posture in our gender and insist on our uniqueness, making us a goddam threat. We don’t tolerate such an exclusive approach in other situations:

We don’t allow butchers to cut up our pets because they’re off work and miss the job.

We don’t permit teenagers to insist they don’t need to be part of the social structure because they’re too busy dealing with the angst of their acne.

Yet for some reason, it appears to be acceptable to hide behind the “guise of the guys” and the “mystique of the feminine.”

It’s hilarious–especially when you get around people in their senior years, who find themselves ingloriously dating, introducing their male partner as a “boyfriend.”

I have just found that the best way to get along with a woman is to make it clear that you do not consider her an acquisition, but rather, a confidante.

Adding the word “boy” inserts way to much testosterone.

And if you insist on being called “beau” in order to avoid boyfriend… then you add too much grits and gravy.

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Beatnik

Beatnik: (n) a young person in the 1950s and early 1960s belonging to a subculture associated with the beat generation.Dictionary B

Trends and fads have one thing in common: they have a commencement with no graduation, also having a beginning minus destination. For that reason, it’s difficult to assess their genesis, or comprehend their exodus.

But if you take a moment and think about it, every movement goes through three stages:

  1. Purity
  2. Parity
  3. Paltry

Our new ideas often begin with purity.

Like beatniks.

I believe the purpose of such a social awakening was to become more introspective and discover our inner selves and how we relate to the world around us.

Quite noble.

But for an idea to become popular, you have to be able to market it without promoting its more cerebral aspects. So eventually the beatnik generation sought parity by wearing black berets and turtlenecks. It was an easy way to identify a fellow beatnik.

Yes, often our greatest movements are shrunken to a simple fashion statement.

Then, once they became tired of wearing their costumes, they decided to just maintain the angst. Thus, the 1960s and 1970s.

We ended up with a paltry representation of self-realization–actually merely an adolescent temper tantrum to anything our parents did.

After all, there would have been no objection to the war in Vietnam if there weren’t a draft blowing young men into military service.

So how is it possible to keep the purity without insisting on parity and ending up with paltry?

I don’t know.

But I think it is the job of writers, who detour their material through the brain, to insist on considering such idealism.

 

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Attribute

Attribute: (n) a quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something.dictionary with letter A

Marley had been dead for 7 years, and the only two things said about him came from Ebenezer Scrooge, who proclaimed him “a good man of business,” and others, who surmised that he was a cheap son-of-a-bitch.

Even though I recognize the value of leaving behind a history of my thoughts and feelings by writing and creating, in 30 years I will be judged by a single attribute.

What did I do to make other people’s lives easier?

That’s it.

If you’re of the mindset which contends that you’re on the planet to defend righteousness, or on the other side of the scales, to “eat, drink and be merry,” you may be sadly disappointed by the legacy you leave behind–because forced righteousness makes humans miserable and a philosophy of open-ended vice creates its own vacuum of angst.

What have I done this week to make people’s lives simpler, more gentle–shoot–more possible?

Being grouchy, picky, anal, selfish, giggly, scatter-brained or invisible really are not attributes, but instead, human vices we wink at, assuming that the person tied to them is basically useless to us.

  • Are you finding problems and solving them or just discussing them, or perhaps making them worse?
  • Are you bringing good cheer to situations of tension, or a can of gasoline to a forest fire?
  • Are you believing for the best, or joining those who chase conspiracies, insisting they’re not theories?

For what will I be known?

When it’s all said and done, and clichés like “when it’s all said and done” have been abandoned, I will probably be known for the silliness I brought to others.

They might actually read some of my works because they desire to possess such a gypsy joy, but it will be my attribute of child-like appreciation which draws them to my compositions.

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Angst

dictionary with letter A

Angst: (n) a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically unfocused, about the human condition or the state of the world in general.

I don’t want to be one of those people who pursue so much optimistic hopefulness that I fail to recognize what is necessary in order to maintain our present integrity.

Yet I have to wonder if it’s possible for the human race, in this season, to acquire both of the necessary portions that make us worthy of continuation.

For I feel it takes progress and process.

Yes, I think technology is wonderful, and I do not want to go back to a time when we had no computers, racism was extolled as normal, and antibiotics were not available for sickness.

I am not nostalgic for backward times.

However, by the same token, making progress without honoring the process of human character which honors the feelings of others, makes the world a dangerous place and certainly volatile.

It produces angst.

We become afraid that we will lose our progress if we honor the process. Or we preach the process and become “anti-progress,” making ourselves appear Neanderthal.

Is it possible to be a human being who realizes that progress needs to be made emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically, without ignoring the values which make the process of living so much sweeter, and ripe with goodness?

We always attach the word “angst” to teenagers, but I am not convinced that a fourteen-year-old riding in a Conestoga Wagon with his parents, crossing the Great Plains in 1850, had much time to reflect on his or her misgivings.

If progress gives us too much free time to bitch and complain, robbing from the process of busying ourselves about becoming better people, then are we really moving forward?

Yet if the process of maintaining civility causes us to be suspicious of every facet of progress, then the foolishness we maintain makes our belief system appear to be shortsighted.

What would it take to mingle progress with process?

  1. I will put to use anything at all that makes life easier, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
  2. I will acknowledge that there is no replacement for personal contact, love and gentleness with my fellow-travelers.
  3. I am ready to go forward if it doesn’t push someone else backward.

I think in considering this trio of principles, we can merge progress and process, to generate a climate of mutual benefit, drenched in compassion.

 

 

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