A friend and I had recently just had a conversation revolving around how social norms and etiquette is changing. It was noted that you can rapidly fall out of a conversation if you have not see the latest popular clip on youtube or that you can somehow socially exclude yourself if you are not up-to-date on last week's episode of Grey's Anatomy or the Bachelor. Last year I was almost victim of a social lynching when I admitted that I was not an avid 24 fan, and in fact didn't really care for it. I got these blank stares and piercing eyes as if I can just admitted that I was also not really a female. The point is not that all form of entertainment is bad. I have a severe jonesing for the So You Think You Can Dance season to start, and an admitted guilty pleasure in catching late episodes of The Hills, but the idea of "defining" the self by the form of entertainment is disconcerting. The self is no longer about developing skills, accomplishing goals, or even traveling to new places to interface with the world, the self is now a pop culture list of likes and dislikes and haughtly tossed opinions.
It is as if our world is more commonly experienced via some form of media rather than through a first person sensory experienced-based stimuli. It is as if it is conceivable that an individual can replicate "life" in a somewhat virtual way and in reality experience nothing more than one sensation at a time.
As I was reading "6 NOVEMBER - Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" I turned to page 200 and found this amazing section, it starts: "If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA's state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts." The pages that follow catalogue this ridiculous list of randomly connected facts that are funny, crass, again funny, and some that are highlight worthy (many actually). Wallace has this acute sense of what substance abuse is really like and an exquisite way of describing addiction. From the bottom of page 202 through the paragraph on 203 you know Wallace has experienced this, lived it, and makes even a reader whose never sucked a joint more aware of what is feels like.
I think this section also shows that Wallace believes that anything people do can be abused, and that abuse is what makes a behavior dangerous and addictive. Abuse of any substance or idea or action for its sustained and temporary effect can in effect screw up your head and make you unwell. Any action be it drugs, sex, or charitable acts can become so addictive for its stimulative purposes that ending the behavior is hell and in fact can cause you to lose your mind, or at least wish it. Wallace says it this way, "you will find yourself beginning to pray to be allowed literally to lose your mind, to be able to wrap your mind in an old newspaper or something and leave it in an alley to shift for itself, without you." Wallace eludes to the allure of escape in this statement. If only we could escape. The desire to escape is what places a man in the swing of the pendulum of obsession and addictive behavior; be it sleep or the purposeful deprivation of sleep, it can serve as an emotional escape, and an abusable one. I wonder if Wallace is trying to say that our obsession to stay busy and to overstimulate ourselves with absurd amounts of indulgence, or in contrast numb ourselves into an unfeeling hallucinogenic dream-state is because we are to damn afraid of ourselves, what we are and what we are not.
"Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever. Use it or lose it, he'd say over the newspaper. I'm...I'm just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN. It's...potential may be worse than none, Jim. Than no talent to fritter in the first place, lying around guzzling because I haven't the balls to...God I'm I'm so sorry. Jim. You don't deserve to see me like this. I'm so scared, Jim. I'm so scared of dying without ever being seen." (from another chapter I love--pages 157-169)If we escape - we deny the moment of responsibility, and we never have to admit that it was our fault we never amounted to anything. We can keep doing what we do to feel a certain way and never question it, because questioning is too painful and disappointing.
So this is the part when I get really sad. I feel like Wallace was so insightful, despite everything, he had it figured out. This section only validates his genius, his sincere grasp of human nature and insightful observation. If he knew all this, all the stuff written on these pages, why did he still die? How did he still quit? If he couldn't do it...how can anybody?
Wallace says so himself, he realizes "That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness." If this is as true as it feels, why is the author dead?
The chapter continues with a vignette of Tiny and his obsession with gathering information about the tattoos of the residences of Ennet House. Tiny categorizes his findings, the stoic regretters and the younger crowd who show them off with a fake-quiet pride. Wallace also lends a significant focus to the permanency of tattoos and how that element sets tattoos apart from other impulsive actions. A tattoo is a permanent consequence for an impulsive action, while even a impulsive wedding is Vegas is perhaps a bigger production and even a "larger" mistake, but still less permanent.
I myself, might have an insatiable curiosity about tattoos. I admittedly went through an embarrassing phase of watching several episodes of Miami Ink strung together on late night TLC when I would get home from closing late at work. I am in the most basic way, intrigued by the reasons people get tattoos, what the significance is, or what insignificance it is...how people value or view their body.
A kid in my class just started phase I of a III phase tattoo. It spans from the left rib cage below the armpit to the base of his hip. It is a picture of this old gnarly tree with a red sun in the the background. Its pretty, but also weird because the entire first semester when we sat in lab with our shirts off and sports bras I saw no tattoo, just his - admittedly sculpted - chest and abs. And now it can never look that way again. Ever.
My friend in high school got his Lotus blossom on her back between her shoulder blades and it is symbolic for her, of a pivotal moment in her life. I also vividly remember treating a patient in our outpatient clinic that taught me that you can give yourself tattoos by using scorched baby oil for ink. I even dated a kid that used to give tattoos is Argentina, but had since become so ashamed of his own. I told him I liked them because in essence his past makes him who he is now...no matter how different. I find it a surprising avenue for Wallace to explore and am curious to how it will later be developed. Regardless--this point feels significant.
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