celebrate the mundane

There is so much pressure in our society to excel. Being “average” is somehow less than acceptable. Yet by definition, the majority of us must be average, and this is true in all aspects of our lives. Most of us are of average intelligence. We earn average incomes. We enjoy average health and live an average lifespan. And this will always be true, because even as norms increase or decrease, so does the measurement of what we call typical. Average is always in the majority.

So today, this not-particularly-special Friday after Thanksgiving, I’m celebrating all that we call average. Being in the middle of the bell curve in any regard is not only “okay,” it is absolutely normal and expected.

Sure, I can strive to do more, feel better, have more, be happier, live longer, etc. Superlative experiences will occur on occasion, too. But if I am honest with myself, I know that for every day I mark as an eight on my 43T Morale-O-Meter there will be a corresponding three at some point to balance it out. Tens and ones will be rare; fives will be common. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, fives are just fine with me. Here’s to all that is unexceptional. Here’s to being unsurprisingly, dependably, marvelously in the middle.

Men’s clothing is pretty boring, by and large. We don’t have anything like the variety of women’s wear, from styles, to fabrics, to colors. The one mundane exception is the necktie.

I did a little research and discovered that this bit of attire has quite a history. The earliest known version has been found in the mausoleum of Shih Huang Ti, China’s first emperor, who was buried in 210 B.C. But it’s a mystery why his guards wore carefully wrapped silk cloths around their necks. Historians say other records indicate the Chinese did not wear ties.

In 113 A.D., Roman military genius Trajan erected a marble column featuring 2,500 realistic figures. They sport no fewer than three different styles of neckwear: shorter versions of the modern necktie; cloth wound around the neck and tucked into armor; and knotted kerchiefs much like cowboy bandannas.

It’s known that Roman orators often wore cloths to keep their throats warm, but soldiers did not typically do so. Ancient writers have suggested that only effeminate men covered their necks. Was this military neckwear some form of badge, perhaps?

No doubt the modern necktie owes its popularity to France’s “Sun King,” Louis XIV, circa 1660. Highly skilled Croatian mercenaries in his army wore silk kerchiefs around their necks. King Louis liked the style and adopted it as his own. The French word for tie, cravat, may be a corruption of “Croat” or rabat, which is French for a hanging collar.

As courtiers began copying the Croatians, ordinary soldiers began adorning their necks with lace and officers would sport muslin or silk cravats, often trimmed with embroidery. Soon commoners began wearing cotton versions, sometimes made of pleated black taffeta. The style spread to England and then the Americas in the 18th century.

The first time I wore a tie, it was a clip-on I wore to church in the 1960s. Later, my father taught me how to tie the four-in-hand knot that he always used. Although it’s worn widely in the United States, it’s not seen much elsewhere. I only learned the half and full Windsor knots when I began working Japan in 1975, and I’ve stayed with the symmetrical full Windsor ever since.

For a long time, I would wear anything but solid colors or striped ties, finding them much too traditional. I wore novelty ties (cartoons, abstracts, paisley, etc.) made of cotton or polyesther when I was teaching English in the late 1970s. When I became a copywriter in 1980, I started wearing silk floral patterns. I had one, in particular, that I loved and wore only on special occasions; it was sky blue, handpainted silk with cherry blossoms from a masterpiece by Van Gogh. I had bought it in Amsterdam and it cost me $120.

At one time, I must have owned several dozen ties. Choosing which one to wear for a day was an expression of my mood or the statement I wanted to make. I used to call the necktie my “leash on life.”

By the time I got into management in 1985, I had learned to appreciate conservative stripes and designer patterns, Kenzo, Ermenegildo Zegna, et alia. But to this day, the only solid-color ties I have ever worn were white for weddings or black for funerals. And I stopped wearing artificial fabrics, cotton or wool. Since 1990, all of my ties have been silk.

When I moved to Las Vegas in 2000, I gave away most of my collection. I now own only ten ties, the oldest being a Father’s Day gift from more than a dozen years ago. I have one “lucky” tie, one political tie, and one holiday season tie. The rest are pretty simple, color-coordinated to match my shirts and slacks.

Whenever I substitute teach at middle schools, I always wear a tie, even on casual Fridays. It’s a statement that says: “I’m here to work. This is my business attire.” The students seem to respect that. I’ve even received some nice compliments on my ties from them.

If anyone had asked me forty years ago whether I would ever enjoy wearing a necktie, I would have laughed and pretended it was like putting a noose around my neck. Today, I admit, the necktie is the one piece of men’s clothing I feel is worthy of celebration. Bless those Croatian mercenaries. Viva la cravat!

I’ve got digital cable TV now, and I pay a pretty penny for it. But I didn’t have it when I moved back to the United States in the summer of 2000. In fact, I didn’t even have a television for the first four months I lived here. I got my news through the Internet and the newspaper. I listened to sports and music on the radio. If I wanted entertainment, I went to a movie.

Then I got an inexpensive 14” TV and a VCR. I used the old rabbit ears to watch snowy pictures of the major broadcast stations. I rented videos tapes. I couldn’t rationalize paying the cable company or satellite providers for better quality or more variety. Broadcast television had been “free” for as long as I could remember. Commercial advertising ensured that there was no additional cost to me.

But in February 2009, nationwide Digital TV is coming, and it’s all going to change everything. Our old sets will no longer work without special tuners. Nearly 20 million American households are going to have to pay for new digital televisions, or converters, or cable/satellite, if they want to continue to watch the tube. Free access TV is going the way of free air at gas stations. An era is coming to a close.

So while it still exists, I want to celebrate all the decades we’ve been able to watch programming on NBC, ABC, and CBS (and later on, FOX), without paying for the priviledge. We took it for granted, didn’t we? I imagine generations of the future will marvel at such quaint technologies as analog broadcasting and terrestrial television, much the way we already look back with nostalgia at old B&W programs. But it sure was nice while it lasted.

I fell in love with the dictionary when I was about eight years old. Just imagine: Every word in the English language explained…and more! Synonyms, antonyms, parts of speech, pronunciation, spelling, etymology… wow! A treasure chest to delve into whenever I wanted.

Over the years, my love of dictionaries has continued undiminished. I still use Merriam-Webster’s as my primary reference book. I also own a Random House version with thumb indices that I won in a contest (actually, I won a gift card at a bookstore and I used it to get a new dictionary). I once convinced a publisher to buy me a huge Oxford English Dictionary when I was working on a project that involved editing the Australian version of our mother tongue. I still have it and find endless delight in the differences and commonalities that abound in our shared language.

How much work goes into creating a well-bound and thorough dictionary? It challenges the imagination. The proofreading of a single volume must require an army of sharp-eyed word warriors.

Nowdays, of course, the Internet offers up an electronic version of my old stalwart. But how much more satisfying it is to thumb through one of the thick books and stumble across a word prevously unknown, or one long forgotten and now rediscovered.

Here’s a fun game I’ve often played: Look up the definition of a word and follow it through the dictionary by looking up the words used to define it. Wonderful connections pop up, such as the linkage of “inspire” to deity, influence, star, and breath. A delightful journey through the world of words – The Dictionary!

Over the past week, I have been slowly aerating the lawn in front of our house. Doing it by hand using a four-prong spading fork (pictured) is a lot of work, but preparing the soil for winter is a necessary task.

Much to my surprise, a lot of the work uncompacting the turf had already been done for me. As I dug into the thatch at short intervals, up from the grass came dozens of earthworms. Imagine that! All year long they’ve been silently tilling the soil, composting the dead cuttings, and helping the grass roots get moisture and nutrients.

As a child, I used to marvel at these odd creatures. We called them “nightcrawlers” and they were easy to find in puddles after a rainstorm. If you cut one in two, both halves would continue wiggling, so the big ones were particularly good for baiting our hooks when we went fishing.

But I live in a desert climate now. I don’t think I’ve seen a worm here in seven years, what with all the densely packed clay and xeriscaping, the lack of rain and the absence of flower gardens. I’ve been growing cactii mostly. Then suddenly, to see a virtual army of these “megadriles” appear, disturbed by my vigorous attack of their home ground… well, it really surprised me and took me back to those childhood days when playing in the dirt was just about the most fun a boy could have.

I’ll finish aerating by next week. Next month I’ll apply winter fertilizers. And as I do, I’ll be mindful of our little tennants down there, ever working behind the scenes to keep the grass green and the earth fertile. Earthworms – so simple, so ignored, and so worthy of a bit of celebrating.

It is so prevalent, I pretty much take glass for granted. The computer screen in front of me as I write this, the compact fluorescent bulb that lights my work space, the beverage container I sip water from, the window on the north end of my study… glass is all around me, so important, yet so underappreciated. In fact, I wear glasses and think of the lenses only when they are dirty and need to be cleaned, a bothersome little task, nothing I typically celebrate.

So I did a little reading about glass and discovered that its origins are unknown, dating back at least to the third millenium BC, when artisans in Mesopotamia made glasswork so well that bits of it still exist today. In the Bible, lead glass (crystal) has been compared to gold (Job 28:17). By the time Christ was born, the glassblowers of Rome had taken their craft to a high art form and spread it far and wide throughout the Roman empire. By the 12th century, stained glass windows became popular in churches and monasteries. In the 15th century, Venetian glassmakers were “forbidden to leave the Island of Murano” for fear that their secret techniques might be spread abroad. So the idea of glass as commonplace is still quite a modern concept.

In my research, I found that glass has been mistakenly called a super-cooled liquid. In fact, it is an amorphous solid, silicon-based sand that has melted and rehardened in a new state. To melt sand to make glass, a special furnace is used, generating a temperature of about 3,600°F (1,982°C). Iron present in sand gives glass a naturally greenish color, so only sand of exceptional purity, white sand, is used.

I tap on the computer screen – solid enough – and rediscover a feeling I had as a small child, when the transparency of glass amazed me. I can see right through it; it’s “invisible!” How can that be? I used to marvel at that property of glass. When did I forget how magical glass seems?

So today, I am celebrating it. Plain old glass. So mundane. So functional. So much a part of my everyday life.

Today I am expressing appreciation for the newspaper that is delivered each day to our porch (or somewhere not far from it). It amazes me that this is one of the very last right-to-you-door retail services left in America. Gone is the milk man and the bread truck. Even the vaccuum salesman is a dying breed. But the news just keeps on coming, and for less than 40 cents a day, seven days a week.

To get a pound of newsprint to my home by 6am each day, thousands of people are involved. There are people who write the stories, edit them, lay them out, proofread them, and print them, then insert paid advertising, fold and secure the paper with a rubberband, drive it to my house and toss it (with more or less accuracy) on the walk leading to my door. And that’s all done within 24 hours, with shifts of employees working right through the night, just so I can read the results of a trial or a vote in Congress, baseball scores, weather reports, help wanted ads and entertainment news.

I must admit, I am an off-again/on-again subscriber. Home-delivered newspapers are a bit archaic in this day and age of cable TV news 24/7 and the Internet. And it’s certainly wasteful to have a paper delivered if I don’t read most of it. But I’m “between jobs” right now, and my mornings are relatively free, so I do go through most of the paper.

And there is something very comforting about sitting on the back patio in your bathrobe and sipping a cup of coffee while quietly leafing through the sports section on a Wednesday morning. Future generations may not have this experience. I’m grateful that I do today.

I want to reflect on something simple, tangible and largely ignored, as a form of meditation and mindfulness. I want to celebrate that which is ordinary and uncompelling. It is so easy to be in awe of things great and new while forgeting the bedrock upon which all joy and sorrow exists. The simple. The plain. The mundane. The everyday. How deeply can I experience a moment, an object, or a word?

I’m reminded of Nabokov’s thin novel, Transparent Things, in which the stub of a pencil found inside an otherwise empty drawer conjures up an incredibly rich tapestry of events. He wrote, “When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the very act of attention may lead to our involuntarily sinking into the history of that object. Novices learn to skim over matter if they want matter to stay at the exact level of the moment. Transparent things, through which the past shines!”