Except When It’s Not

Wedding day shave, August 15, 1998

In just the past week, I’ve had email exchanges with three different blog readers, in which each of them expressed a degree of shame for having not contributed to the generosity enabler. Naturally, I berated them as mercilessly as they deserved and furthermore attached photos of the boys undergoing back alley surgeries to remove extraneous organs for resale on the black market. I mean, like I said, we’re in the market for a new-to-us truck, and they don’t just give those things away.

In all seriousness, it is certainly not my intent to sow guilt. I’ve said it before, but I suppose it bears repeating: If you are called to contribute, it is greatly appreciated. Not only is writing how I earn the bulk of our cash living, there are hard costs to the maintenance of this space. I have all sorts of ideas for things I’d like to bring to this site that I believe will be gratifying for myself and my readers alike. For instance, I’m super-interested in creating an audio component, not merely (or even primarily) to tell our stories, but to tell the stories of others. As an example, I love, love, love what Erica is doing with Rumble Strip VT. Whatever I might or might not do will of course be different from what she does in all the ways I am different from Erica. But tarnation, I think it’s a cool idea.

Whenever I bring up money on this site, someone or another seems to get their undies in a bunch. It’s a little mystifying to me, honestly. It’s not like I’m threatening to put it behind a paywall or anything like that. I suspect it would be more acceptable if I just put up a bunch of ads; we’re so accustomed to being exploited in this manner that we hardly notice it anymore. As a friend of mine said to me recently, in relation to his decision to sell ads on his website, “capitalism gets you every time.” Wise words, those. For what it’s worth, I don’t cast aspersions on my friend’s decision; hell, he’s probably definitely the smarter of the two of us.

Anyway. I believe it’s important to be transparent about all this. I don’t ask for contributions because money is tight; I ask for contributions because I have faith in the value of what is offered here, and because I’d like to be able to afford to continue offering it. Maybe even to offer more. It’s as simple as that.

That said, don’t ever feel guilty because you’re not in a position to contribute. That’s not what it’s about.

•     •     •

In the wee hours of this morning, right after Daisy dawg got a hair ‘cross her ass and starting barking to beat the band at 4 a. friggin’ m., I was lying in bed mulling over the whole transportation/materialism issue a bit more. Now, I do not generally have my most-congent thoughts after being awakened at four in the morning, so bear with me, ok?

The first thing I was thinking about was an ad I’d seen in a recent issue of the New Yorker for Lincoln, touting their new Black Label service (I was gonna link to it, but it’s a total waste of your time and mine). “When was the last time you used the word luscious to describe your commute?” reads the ad, and I choked a bit on the bile in my mouth. Luscious? Lusc-fucking-ious? To describe driving to work?

Herein lies at least one problem with our car-addled society: We try to make driving tolerable. Comfortable. Fun, even. I remember when we first got the ‘ru from Penny’s folks, and how utterly blown away we were by all the creature comforts. I mean, did you know that some cars have buttons you can push, and that when you push ‘em, your ass gets hot? I am not kidding. Cruise control! Anti-lock brakes (which, as anyone who actually knows how to drive can tell you, make stopping on ice almost impossible. We pulled the damn fuse). The driver’s seat has something like six different adjustments; some nights, when I’m having trouble sleeping, I head for the car. No, I don’t, because I never have trouble sleeping. But you get my point.

Here’s what I think. I think driving should suck. I think car seats should be hewn of bare rusted metal. I think instead of striving for greater fuel efficiency, we should mandate that all cars get 3 mpg tops, making it as financially painful as possible to operate them. Windshields should be outlawed; you wanna go somewhere, you put on your damn aviator goggles and stick your face into the wind/rain/snow. Radios are allowed, but only if permatuned to “today’s best soft rock.” And so on.

I realize that according to this logic, we should just hang onto the diesel truck that gives Penny such fits. Probably oughta pipe a small stream of it’s pungent exhaust into the cab; not enough to make her sick, of course, but enough to ensure the damn thing only gets driven when it well and truly needs to be driven. Stick that really crackly live Motorhead bootleg I’ve got into the tape deck and put it on repeat. Glue the volume knot at 11. That sort of stuff.

Anyway. This all sort of ties into the whole brief frugality/thriftiness/materialism discussion that erupted in the comments pertaining to yesterday’s post, in which it was generally agreed that our society doesn’t need less materialism, but a different sort of materialism, one that actually values, respects, maybe even reveres the material objects under our purview. Someone posted the following passage from John Michael Greer, which I think is spot on:

Americans are arguably the least materialistic people in the world; no actual materialist—no one who had the least appreciation for actual physical matter and its sensory and sensuous qualities—could stand the vile plastic tackiness of America’s built environment and consumer economy for a fraction of a second. Americans don’t care in the least about matter; they’re happy to buy even the most ugly, uncomfortable, shoddily made and absurdly overpriced consumer products you care to imagine, so long as they’ve been convinced that having those products symbolizes some abstract quality they want, such as happiness, freedom, sexual pleasure, or what have you. 

Furthermore, I am reminded of this short list of rules for consumption that someone emailed me, contrived by none other than Wendell Berry.

1 – Be happy with what you’ve got. Don’t be always looking for something better.

2 – Don’t buy anything you don’t need.

3 – Don’t buy what you ought to save. Don’t buy what you ought to make.

4 – Unless you absolutely have got to do it, don’t buy anything new.

5 – If somebody tries to sell you something to “save labor,” look out. If you can work, then work.

6 – If other people want to buy a lot of new stuff and fill up the country with junk, use the junk.

7 – Some good things are cheap, even free. Use them first.

8 – Keep watch for what nobody wants. Sort through the leavings.

9 – You might know, or find out, what it is to need help. So help people.

It’s a good list, and contains valuable reminders for us all, including myself. The only thing I feel compelled to add is that I don’t generally like hard and fast rules (hence my proclivity for making them and then adding ridiculous disclaimers like “this is true, except when it’s not”); the world seems to me like a nuanced place, demanding of a certain amount of nuance to navigate with equanimity. But there’s nothing wrong with a little guidance, either.

Finally, I will say that I believe there’s a fine line between appreciating/respecting/revering our material belongings and becoming captive to their care and feeding. A friend of ours likes to tell the story of someone he knows who is so in love with his truck that he won’t carry anything in the bed, lest it become blemished. I suppose one might argue that this person has a certain reverence for his truck, but I’m not convinced it’s a healthy reverence.

So then. Reverence for material belongings is a good thing.

This is definitely true.

Except when it’s not.