Image: J. Holbrook
On Friday night I had a few pilsners with Jess at Rob Roy. Saturday I woke up and had breakfast and watched The Road, while Jaime had to work all day. Saturday night I went to a backyard barbecue at Jesse's house in West Seattle. The thing about this barbecue was, it was the first barbecue where I was the only unmarried/unengaged fellow and where I was among the 50% of my friends present who did not either 1) have a child or 2) have offspring in the offing.
I keep having these experiences over the past year - sporadically I have the feeling of living in the world just outside the frame of my baby pictures: the adult world. But as one of a diminishing number of people not holding The Baby, I increasingly become the out-of-focus adult seen in profile in the background.
You catch only glimpses of that out-of-focus world growing up, because most of the people in your world are those that appear in focus, at least partially within the frame. They are the ones who own the arms that reached down and held you upright for the picture.
And this whole myopic experience of childhood and young adulthood that almost inevitably informs who you become as you mature leaves you without a set of observed experiences, which you might use as guideposts, in a world that increasingly exists outside the frame. Instead, you find that, more and more, you inhabit a world that - res ipsa loquitur - is largely overlooked not only by your own family history, but by advertisers, mass culture, etc.
And so, the question is: to what end was/is all that background stuff?
And this whole myopic experience of childhood and young adulthood that almost inevitably informs who you become as you mature leaves you without a set of observed experiences, which you might use as guideposts, in a world that increasingly exists outside the frame. Instead, you find that, more and more, you inhabit a world that - res ipsa loquitur - is largely overlooked not only by your own family history, but by advertisers, mass culture, etc.
And so, the question is: to what end was/is all that background stuff?
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7 comments:
OK, what are you saying in the last paragraph.....you are in the age group that is finding a life partner, thinking about forming or... forming a family. That is the usual way of things. I am not clear as to what you are trying to say. Is it that you do not have the inclinations of your peers? And if that is the case, are you clear as to why?
Your situation presents itself because you are really straddling a a conflict between your view of yourself and your true preferences. You choose your surroundings because the baby making group is the one you most enjoy and identify with despite the fact that you are not in baby making mode. You have other friends in clubbing and bachelor pad maintaining mode but the way these friends fill their time is not consistent with the way you want to fill yours. You would prefer yourself in a relaxed setting on a lawn, with an icy beer, enjoying that new marinade recipe so-and-so's sister brought for the bbq.
It is like you love the golf club but are not convinced about the golf. They are inseparably linked. To enjoy one you must at least be in proximity to the other.
I think you are just getting old! I should know!
B&L: I'm not really trying to say anything. I'm sharing a question that my conscious mind is asking. The answers to your questions are: 1) certainly and 2) no, every answer I can muster seems glib and/or trite.
Ajax: You play a nice little rhetorical trick by posing the question digitally, but reality is analog, mon frere. That is to say, it is possible to not want either of the options you pose, but still choose the better of the two because you haven't discovered the third. Still, there have got to be lots of other options.
The interesting thing, which I am trying to describe, is that being a child of a relatively traditional upbringing, a problem exists in that you ipso facto don't have readily available role models for a life lived outside the tradition. And so but here I am.
But what is "background" is relative. Just because you're not in focus in some pictures doesn't mean you're not in others.
Grumble, grumble. I wrote lengthy comments to this post twice. Both times we were at campgrounds with such slow internet that they wouldn't post. Now I've had a second glass of wine, while we have good internet, so can't put together the cogent comments. Guess it will have to wait for discussion in person. But love the post!! xoxo C
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