"Snarkenfreude"

I ran across this delicious word for a malicious behaviour in a column by Aretha Van Herk, in the Winter 2012 New Trails magazine from the U. of A. Alumni Association ("Telling Hard Truths," page 9, for those who worry about the finer details of apparatus).

It's a portmanteau from "snark" and the German word "Schadenfreude." "Snark" everyone has had experience of, probably even spoken or written an example of. You might be familiar with the word via Lewis Carroll, but Urban Dictionary says "snark" already a portmanteau, is a "combination from `snide' and `remark.'" "Schadenfreude" refers to pleasure in the misfortunes or unhappiness of others. Hence this combined term for taking sarcastic or snide pleasure in remarking on the misfortunes or unhappiness of others. Or maybe taking pleasure in causing unhappiness or misfortune for others through snarkiness: Snarkenfreude.

One place snarkenfreude tends to show up is in the "Comments" sections of the blogosphere. In one form, it is cyberbullying, the online hobby of literate narcissists and cybersociopaths.

The Van Herk column brings up the word in a discussion of a bigger issue worth thinking about. Why do we assume that "the hard truths" are always the unpleasant ones? At least, that's the way the saying gets passed around. And some just take snarky pleasure in spitting it out to watch the misery it creates.  Is good news, then, a "soft truth"? Is that why when we have a hard truth to convey, and we are not in a snarkenfreude mood, we look for language to soften the blow? And end up, in my all-too-frequent experience, muddying the issues, confusing the situation and making a sour hash of something better made short and, if necessary, unsweet.

Why pretend the bad news isn't really that bad? Why not just let the person receiving it get on with the next stage--anger, grief, frustration, depression?...  Of course, there is always the fear that the recipient will shoot the messenger--even if the messenger did not create the bad news in the first place. Messengers tend to be less powerful (which is how they get to be messengers in the first place), so easier to take things out on--less dangerous. Fewer bodyguards and enforcers.

A former student was by my office today. She has been working for Health Canada, but is on a lower rung on the seniority ladder, so is likely one of the upcoming Budget-Balancing Layoffs. She was one of the thousands of recent public service hires, after all, of the minority Federal government, so will be one of the face-saving victims of the majority Federal government. She was telling me she was going to think of it as an "opportunity." Sad, thinking of her going gentle into a different good night.

There is a passage in Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage that keeps coming to mind when government or any other institution begins to solve its own self-inflicted financial or other problems by resorting to decisions to cut back everything and everyone they have been spending madly on for years:

The building of the ark was a monstrous undertaking--and once the keel frame had been laid and the ribs of the ark itself set in place, it was obvious how vast its size would be: the largest structure ever built in the whole district. The workmen now were in awe of it, as though they were building a temple, and this produced a thoroughly satisfying atmosphere of  "no more questions asked--no more questions needed." Noah was able, now, to stare each workman squarely in the eye and dare him with a look to challenge the grandeur of the project. As if the grandeur of the ark was its own justification. (119)

In the present circumstances, that would sound something like: "Just question how we're balancing the budget--we dare you. Surely you must believe that the budget needs to be balanced and the deficit we created for you must be paid off? Surely you don't want to leave a mess for your children and grandchildren to pay off and repair after you have taken more than your fair share out of the system we built to give you access to more than your fair share as a way of buying your votes the way we now are forcing your shamed silence?"

I recall a hospital administrator, in the mid-1990s, when Ralph Klein was slashing budgets of all sorts of Alberta public institutions in order to eliminate the deficit, to make this the one shining glory spot in the nation, the only province without a debt--well not one to talk of, anyway. All that decayed or never built infrastructure? Not worth mentioning: "Go on, mention it. I dare you." The administrator, who had yearly asked the province to increase the budget of the hospital, for the good of the public and to create better access to health care, immediately turned tail and proclaimed that his could be a better institution for the cut-backs--a leaner, more efficient, more effective machine. In one of those cases, he had to be messing with the hard truth. Maybe in both.

In Alberta today, if you question the grandeur of some of the tar-sands development policies, such as the virtual holiday from royalties the richest companies in the province enjoy, at the expense of the taxpayer, you are in for a dose of this "dare-you" look.

"Surely you cannot question the need to develop this valuable resource for the good of all?" Nope, I can't. And if it were for the good of all, we could all rejoice in its completion. Of course, when it is complete, there will be a big messy hole in the province, and not much carry-over. We'll be the provincial equivalent of a ghost-mining-town, the likes of which dot the interior of British Columbia, northern Ontario, Quebec.

Remember what happened to all those silent, bullied workmen who toiled on the ark?  They were left with their families and animals to drown in the great cleansing flood that carried all the undeserving undesirables to their doom, after they had built the lifeboat for the few deserving desirables: Noah; his wife; their sons Shem, Ham and Japheth; and their wives. Apparently the wives didn't have names, only roles to play in the grand scheme, so a place in the lifeboat. Probably feeding the animals. Then looking after the livestock.

A few snarkenfreude-like retorts begin to frame themselves at the core of my otherwise carefully maintained, mild-mannered Canadian politesse. If only I thought they might cause a few seconds of unease among today's Noahs.

But I'm too restrained and intimidated by years of such symbolic violence as "the look" ever to comment on such things.

Not all differences are created equal

We have an election going on in Alberta. The conservative party pushing hard to replace the conservative party that has run things (increasing badly) for the past 41 years has a couple of interesting promises in its bag of tricks: revise access to information laws to make information about government easier to access, and bring in whistleblower legislation to protect public workers who expose government waste or bad behaviour.

Interesting not because I ever expect to see it, but because I've heard this all before, from other parties not in power making promises about what they will do when they are in power. Then, suddenly, if and when that day arrives, they suddenly have other priorities from the back pages of the party manual, and the other stuff they were elected to deliver just has to wait its turn--in the platform of a party now in opposition.

But an item on the local news tonight put another interesting perspective on things: take the four parties most likely to elect members to the legislature, and the costs of their top few promises, and oddly enough, the whole election seems to be about how to spend $1.3 to $1.5 billion of public money to buy votes from the public. That's not all of it, obviously--just the part that is getting most of the media attention.

There was a bumper sticker around in the 1960s, as I recall: "Don't Vote. It Only Encourages Them." That, too, seems pretty self-defeating. Not voting just seems to keep them happy doing nothing, to disturb nobody. Our outgoing conservative government, the one that called the election, had a huge majority, so after years of consultation and revision, it decided not to pass a new Education Bill, because it might give the opposition conservative party too much ammunition in an election. The new Bill might have upset 5 000 families spread out throughout a province with 3.5 million people. It might also have encouraged a few thousand other voters to believe the old government was actually willing to make a difference, after years of trying very hard not to. Better not risk that. What's that line about cowards dying a thousand deaths?...  But did they have to take us with them?

Dressing Up for Church

A line from Laraine Herring, Writing Begins With the Breath, writing about the problem of establishing empathy with a character, a line that produced an audible “Hmmmpfff” when I read it, punching the breath out of me, the memory it brought back: “As you begin to accept the shadow inside of you, you can accept the shadow in others. Acceptance doesn’t mean condoning action. It means recognizing that piece of each of us that is purely an animal, not dressed up to go to church all the time” (40).

Dressing for church. A PBS episode on “cool hunting” a few years ago had gone with some “cool hunters” into the bedroom closet of a teen in some mid-western U.S. city, to inspect his choices in clothes. He opened his closet and the first thing he pointed to were the suits he had for going to church. The “cool hunters” couldn’t turn their backs on that end of the closet fast enough. What did he wear when he went out with friends or on dates? When he was being his real self, I guess. Not becoming one of “them.”

Dressing for church, a weekly normal and family ritual, not,  as far as I was aware at the time, a metaphor for putting up a front or putting on a mask, was part of the life I was raised in, from very young. When we lived in Claresholm, at the RCAF base, before we moved away in late 1957 because it was being closed in 1958, and my dad, for reasons none of us will ever understand, had turned down a permanent commission in the Air Force at a time when hundreds of sign-ups for the Korean conflict were being de-commissioned, Sunday dress-up for Sunday School and church was just what one did. At least, if one was in our family or my parents’ social circle.

            Somehow, sometime about 1955, my friend Elliot next door got interested in Sunday School. Maybe he was lonely. Probably he was lonely. Elliot was a rarity in the mid-1950s at the start of the baby boom: an only child. I had my little brother Bobby. Over the next five years we were going to be joined (through those mysterious processes only parents seemed to understand) by Ian, Matt and Vicki. Maybe Elliot, who never did get a brother or sister, to my knowledge, and might have been, in the euphemisms of the time, an "accident, wondered what we and other families did all dressed up on a Sunday morning. His parents didn’t seem to have much time for him, even on Sunday morning--something even a seven-year-old could figure out (or maybe something I picked up from something my mother had said, in one of her sniffs of disapproval or disappointment. She really liked Elliot, but not his parents).

            Anyway, as the story went, Elliot had showed up at our door Sunday morning, in his regular clothes, nickel in hand for collection, to see if we were ready to go to Sunday School yet. Bobby and I looked at him in surprise, having been tidied into our Sunday suits, as we always were. “You’re not going to Sunday School in those clothes?” I blurted. Nobody went to Sunday School in regular clothes. Maybe Elliot didn’t know that. Maybe I didn’t know that Elliot probably didn’t have much that was any better—he didn’t have much need for anything you couldn’t go out and rough-house in.  Elliot, apparently, looked hurt and went home, and never did join us for Sunday School that day or later. He probably also wrestled me to the ground and sat on my chest later that day, just to remind me who was boss. That's how we usually re-established effective order in our friendship.

             I forgot about it till years later, when my parents, disappointed in me about something else, put out by my deplorable, insufferable behaviour on some now forgotten occasion, dragged out this gem from the past for further inspection, to remind me of the pattern of my snobbish selfishness: “You were so good because we took the trouble to dress you up, and you had to make Elliot feel bad.” Mom and Dad had been raised in small-town Saskatchewan in the Depression.  They must have seen lots of kids with nothing but the clothes on their backs, having to make them do for church. But also they would have been raised in an atmosphere like that experienced by Rose-Anna Lacasse in Gabriel Roy’s The Tin Flute. She goes half crazy sewing new clothes for her city kids, so she can take them to visit family in the country: “The important thing, the thing that would clothe her regally, was to have her children well dressed. She would be judged by her children.” And I bet Mom and Dad growing up had overheard plenty of nervous class-conscious adult sniping, as others shivered at the sight of kids in less than good dress for church, and thought that “there but for the grace of God go my kids and I.”

             I think what truly horrified Mom, especially, that day was that I was saying out loud to Elliot, whose fault it was not, what she was thinking about Elliot’s parents, that they should be ashamed of themselves for letting him dress for church that way. But I said it. I did it. Obviously it was a flaw in me. I couldn’t have learned the expectation from everyone around me that on a Sunday morning, to stay in God’s good graces, one always dressed up to go to church. That as a well-brought-up child versed in the middle-class superego of the 1950s, I would assume this dressing up was normal, and of course Elliot’s clothes would look strange to me. But, no, Mom and Dad had to remind me of what a brat I had been to Elliot, just like I was being a brat now. Me and my big head. Mom and Dad definitely wanted to keep my head small.

             I should have been raised Hindu, under the influence of Ganesha. I have two small Ganesha figurines in my office, thank-you gifts from colleagues of Hindu backgrounds, who gave them to me after I had helped them with some research or teaching problem or other. Ganesha is the “Remover of Obstacles,” and they gave me the figures in that spirit. But today I also saw a diagram explaining the symbolism attached to all the parts of Ganesha’s body and costume. Ganesha could be a God designed by parents. Observe Ganesha’s small mouth—a reminder to talk less. Or the big ears, a reminder to listen more.

            But he has one problematic quality: Ganesha has a big head, a reminder to think big. That’s something else I was always encouraged to do: set high goals, over-achieve. Just don't get big-headed about my successes; dwell on my failings and shortcomings.

           And always dress for church.

Slackers and Swingers

I've been looking back at notations on things that caught my attention just long enough to get a passing note in my day book. One from New Year's Eve really does deserve follow-up.

I don't know how, but there it was, another "reality" tv show that has no business being: Real Virgins. The first item featured a 31-year-old male. "Man" just seems too generous a word. He was with his fiancee, and they were planning their wedding. Their boast, on tv? That they have never even kissed each other on the lips yet, their love is so pure. That first, somewhat consummating, kiss will come just after the minister says "I now pronounce you husband and wife."

31 years old, and he claims he's never kissed any woman on the mouth. He is either a liar, or a fool. I hope he gets a massive testosterone booster shot as a wedding gift--to or from his wife-to-be. She makes the parallel claim, by the way, and looks somewhat past sweet sixteen.

They are maybe among the most frightened so-called adults I've ever heard of, or among the most weirdly "moral" idiots on the face of the planet. In fact, I'm not sure what to think of this kind of "morality." In one way, it's none of my business what two consenting adults do not get up to in the privacy of their separate bedrooms. But they did go on television (okay, so on cable) to proclaim their mutual silliness. They actually did offer it up for the delight (entertainment) and profit (education and edification) of the less moral, less strictly disciplined sinners among us.

I mean, yes, every "first time" is its own set of revelations, in my own humbling experience, and anticipation has been part of the revelation, but really...

I just hope they are not hugely disappointed in each others' physical ignorance and fumblings on their wedding night. And I hope that if they are disappointed, they don't turn that popgun peep show of Lilliputian proportions into their next twelve minutes of fame (or that I'm tuned into a program on cajun alligator hunting or some other more profitable pastime when they do).

Then again, is their celebration of their lack of experience any worse than the narcissism of couples who hire porno producers to film them at their pleasure? Or who invite company to the consummation, to keep it exciting?

Slackers and swingers: the extremes that help to define the abundantly average. 

Got it Covered

Conversations one never could anticipate, but that make getting up worthwhile:

One of the bright spots in my teaching assignment these days is a course called Write 298: Introduction to Writing Nonfiction.  Part of it is looking at how other writers deal with their topics, the genre choices, voices, etc. Part of it is practice for the students in generating topics for themselves, so they can also practice genre and voice, etc., on things that matter to them.
            Right now, the class is re-engaging with a project begun back in January, to write on the one topic they never find anything written about, because it's really their topic. The idea comes from Annie Dillard: "Why do you never find anything interesting written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment"  (“Push It”).

         We had gone through Sondra Perl's "guided writing" steps in mid-January, and returned once or twice since to feel out the boundaries, but now it's the last thing in the course, and time to focus. 
          One student this morning, his laptop broken so he really cannot participate in some idea-generating exercises (he has vision problems, and needs the super-large type font and voice synthesizer), sat there and twisted and turned and otherwise manipulated one of those plastic banana covers--the kind you put a real banana inside so that it will not get mushed and pulped in your lunch bag or back pack. I won't describe the scene, but it shouldn't be hard to imagine.
          Anyway, after a few minutes, he made his cautious way over to where I was standing, and asked if writing was all we would be doing in class today. I explained that it was, and he decided to leave, since he could not really produce much with no writing equipment. Then he said something about "I don't know why I thought this banana would be such a good topic." I chuckled an unhelpfully sympathetic reply: "Yeah--there can be only so much inspiration in a plastic banana."

           He came back towards the end of the class period to meet with one of the other students. He resumed his plaint: "I can't remember now why I thought it was such a good idea at the time." It seems he got this thing as a Christmas present, so in January it had been an item of fresh fascination and "astonishment." Not so much by mid-March. So I reversed my original position of about an hour earlier, because one should try to be positive about such choices. 
         After all, a couple of years ago, a student had fussed that after hours of exploration of her options, the only topic she had was that she did not like having brown eyes. And what kind of topic was that? I had answered: "I don't know, but it's yours. Go to it." And she did. The piece won a prize.
         So I tried this supportive gambit: "If there can be a universe in a grain of sand, there can be eight pages in a plastic banana." 
         Easy for me to say: I need only fill this window.

Heart to Heart

I was reading a poem by Carol Light; "Raynaud's Weather." The first part is prose poem, the second a series of linked haiku-formed stanzas. Since I usually work in prose, I thought some deliberate practice with haiku form might be useful, at least as a way to break out of a habit.

 So, I fixed (by what process I cannot recall--if there was a process--maybe it was just that that's how the first one went) on a series in which the fifth syllable would always be the word "heart." And away I went. 

To try, to take, heart

beat the drums loudly and lordly

say "no" nevermore

Lonely hunter, heart

less an organ, pure idea

seeking company

Matter has, needs, heart

strong nucleus, moving core

streaming particles

Lifetime measured heart

starts continues flutters stops

soars throbs sore goes out

Take it all to heart

attack root causes affect

ranges of choices

Supporting rings, heart

wood pithy prone to decay

devalues timber

Without love no heart

break without numbing heart break

no recovery

Back-slapping joy heart-

y zealous greeting betrays

fear of loneliness

Action, stasis, heart

stopping each in its own way

silence follows thumping

Home of all homes heart

land, place from, destination

radiates ways back

Drums imitate heart

throb stimulate call to arms

destroying loving

 

Post-nasal drippings

Not the most attractive title, but not the most attractive symptoms, either. I don't know what this virus is--but virus I'm sure it must be. It kept me home from work for two days two weeks ago--and I haven't taken a sick day in at least five years. Eva, who usually just wills herself to ignore the symptoms, picked it up a week after I did, and she took sick time, too. She's even willing to cut a walk short, which is unheard of, but her knees wobble a bit, even when she tries to pretend she's feeling better.

The heart of it all is a steady discharge of bright red snot, filling enough tissues to keep Scotties in dividends for the quarter, and slipping in gluey strings down the back of the throat. Coughing it all up is not much of an improvement. The symptoms also got to me when I tried to take George for a walk--the not-very-cold winter air just caught my throat and upper lungs and squeezed until breathing became too painful to do without an act of the will. I can only imagine what the cold was turning that red muck to, in my bronchial tubes.

Recovery is a bit hit and miss--but at least people are no longer laughing at my attempts to talk--other than to laugh at what I say, of course, even when I'm not trying for a laugh. The effects have been startling. The other day, I was trying to explain to my pop culture class on the Imaginary Indian the impact of the voice of the Chief in Disney's Peter Pan, and to my surprise, I could just do the voice, all the way down to the bottom of "burn 'um at staaaaaaaaake...." When I was little and seeing the movie for the first time, that threat, in that rumble, scared the willies out of me. Now, it's the symptoms that make it possible that have me worried.

But I can finally again take George out in the dark-again mornings--dark because daylight savings has pushed the morning sunrise back out of season. (Holt from my morning class offered a joke he'd heard about DST: "Only the government could take a perfectly good blanket, cut it in half, and sew the bottom half back on top of the top half, and say it had now made a longer blanket.")

And two things are clear about the turning of the seasons: the bunnies are beginning to turn grey along their backs, and they are not in small knots of  four to seven anymore.  Pairs are even rare. Snowshoe hare mating season must be over. Richard considered that thought at my office door today, then offered this little bon mot: "Did you know a doe rabbit can get pregnant again the same day she gives birth?" No, I had not known that. I'm not sure what to do with the fact, other than file it away to drop into another conversation with someone else, some other time. A sure-fire attention-grabber.