Tacking

A comment from CPC to the Worlds Collide post:

[S]peaking as an observer who goes neither to church or to strip clubs, this posting helps to put your life into perspective. To me, your life seems to swing a bit like a big pendulum; there’s the meat phase, then the vegetarian phase; the heavy drinking phase then the more sober phase, the stripper phase, then the renewed Catholicism phase, and other phases that I’m sure that I’ve missed. Each seems like a correction — overcorrection? of the former. You’re certainly not the only one. Several of my wilder friends have turned to the church now, particularly those with kids. I guess I’ve taken a different tack; if one believes in moderation is all things (maybe except for root beer) the big swing, the big correction, is not needed. So, observing you fondly as I have all these years, I have to wonder, is the religious fascination a permanent thing, or another temporary swing of the pendulum? I have to wonder if a correction of the correction is in your future. Where will the pendulum rest?

Ouch. I am stunned when I read this. I try to think that it’s not true. But it is true, isn’t it?

But I suppose I never really like to do anything halfway. (Trust me, I’ve had to do a lot of things half-assed, but I never like doing things that way.) So, consequently, when I go about something, anything, I like to just dive right it. Perhaps I don’t recognize at the time that I’m doing so, or even much notice if I later decide to do something ostensibly opposite. Apparently it’s just what I do. Takes a good friend to point these things out sometimes.

But then I also like to think that I’m not just this way or that way, then or now, but that I’m all of these things all at once. I’m the sum total of all these things that I’ve been over time, becoming me now.

I’m a vegetarian, generally, by choice. Or I am at home anyway where my wife is strictly veggie. But I’ll eat meat if you put it in front of me, which kinda makes me not a vegetarian, even though I’ll feel guilty about eating the cute little animals. So I’m a non-vegetarian vegetarian.

I’m a sober guy, too. I’ve been to a couple of work happy hours, and seen the kids downing beers and doing shots, but none of that for me thanks. But I drink wine with dinner, and I have a beer about three o’clock on weekend afternoons. I even like to get drunk sometimes. I’m a sober drinker.

I’m a Catholic, but I still admire the strippers. Well, I don’t like literally admire them, as in to the point of actually going to see them. But I’ve also got nothing against them either. Heck, they’re just naked and we’re all born naked, in God’s image even. But strip clubs are just too smoky, now that I don’t smoke, and I’ve got no money to spend on strippers nowadays, what with the house and all. So, okay, I don’t truly have like much actual desire to hang out with strippers anymore, really. But, dammit, strippers are still just plain cool.

So, therefore, I’m sorry but I’m just not going to be able to quite fully accept the penduluum analogy. It’s close, but not exactly right.

However, CPC also uses the term tack, which gets me to thinking, maybe he’s on to something. Tack is a sailing term, a noun describing the position of the bow of a boat with respect to the wind. (I’m reading Horatio books, so I’ve got sailing on the brain.) He says that he’s taken a different tack in life, one of moderation. And I admire that. I totally do.

But in sailing terms, however, there’s also the verb form, tacking, which describes bringing the bow through the eye of the wind. It’s a way of sailing into the wind, of sailing upwind. So, there, exactly, I think, that’s what it is. I’ve always just had to necessarily go tacking like this, like I have, from one side to the other, because I’ve always been sailing to that point upwind, where I need to go.

That’s what I’ve been doing. Not swinging like a penduluum. I’ve been tacking.

5 thoughts on “Tacking

  1. Well, I suppose that it was a bit “tacky” for me to come off all holier than thou, so all-knowing. I had second thoughts about whether I should even voice my opinions, but we’ve always been candid in our conversations, and we know that we would never mean each other harm, so I figure that it’s OK. It’s just an intillectual exercise, really.

    To be honest, I implied that I believe in moderation in all things, but Heaven knows I often don’t live up to that belief. It’s true that I never drank (due to my dad’s alcoholism), and I never took any drugs. I’m glad of it; it’s probably helped me in the long run, although I’m sad sometimes when I hear about how nice wines can compliment a dinner. I don’t dare try them. Because of my family history, because I have had the misfortune of seeing my father act like an insane person while battling through the D.T.s, alcohol is my enemy. But I do consume way too much sugar, particularly when I am stressed out, and I’ve been pretty stressed so far this year. I’d like to lose about 10 to 15 pounds.

    So, what is my comment really about, if I strip all of the extraneous b.s. away? Hmm. I was always rather amused by the swings or tacks of your life before, even when I feared that we might have to stop the car and cook turkeys if you hit them on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I may not have understood all of them, but they were always interesting.

    So, what’s different this time? One word: Catholicsm. It hits me where I live, and I’m threatened by it. I was taught what I would call an almost Victorian version of the faith, one which implied that you were either in the right club, or you were going to Hell. You didn’t question the faith, you just did as your father did, as his mother did, and so on. Questions were out of the question. As you well know, I ran from it as soon as I turned 18. I never read the bible; instead, I listened to the counsel of my mother, one who was brought up in the church of the Nazarene, one with very, very strict rules. She told me, “I came to believe that I could be a good person without all of the restrictions placed.” She saved me in my youth; she balanced out the extremes in our household. Her common sense was the antidote for the type of Catholicism that I was taught. Catholicsm, like alcohol, equaled fear and anger and stress in my youth. I don’t want anything to do with it.

    As I have gotten older, I find that I have surrounded myself with certain types of friends; almost all of them are erudite, liberal thinkers, more educated than I. (Almost all of us tend to think, “How could Bush win? I don’t know anyone who voted for him!”) Most of these friends are also non-religious; secular. I don’t know if I desired to hang out with such people, or if we simply gravitated toward each other, but it’s a fact. It’s comfortable.

    I suppose that “Old Ed” was one of these people, one of the coolest people I’ve ever known. “Older Ed” is still one of the coolest people I’ve ever known, but has recently gone through some radical changes, and has gone places where I can’t follow, or where I don’t choose to follow. That’s OK, I suppose; it would be selfish to deny anyone his opportunity to grow; but due to my particular past, I’m threatened by it, and have a mental picture of you breaking off from the pack of ice and floating “over there” on your own floe, to become one of “those people,” of whom I am suspicious. Sometimes I miss new-wave-spiky-haired-Ed-with-the-jean-jacket-and-the-rough-edges. (I’m glad you stopped smoking, though.) (Then again, I miss straw-hat-and-thin-red-leather-tie-wearing Paul, too.)

    So, to paraphrase George Costanza, “It’s not you, it’s me.” I always look backward and miss my younger days. I dislike growing up, and dislike watching my friends grow up and change. I know, you can’t fight the ticking of the clock, it’s only going in one direction, but it bugs me anyway.

    It’s time for me to leave your religious reawakening alone. I can’t go there with you, but I’m happy that you are happy.

    And I’m really, really impressed by the way that you do throw yourself into new things. You have the capacity to absorb so much information about saws and miter boxes and ships and whatnot. I could never comprehend all of that stuff.

    So, consider my previous comment a full force gale, a gust of hot air. I don’t know any more than you do, and probably know considerably less, particularly about religious matters. At least now you know why the most recent percieved “swing of the pendulum” elicited so much commentary from yours truly. Oh, well. Enough from me. Back to my station at the starboard quaterdeck…

  2. Today it seems absurd that I wrote yesterday that I was “threatened” by your renewed interest in religion. I am NOT threatened by it. I was threatened by my dad’s interest in it, but you’ve never tried to convert me or hit me over the head with it, etc. If anything I should have written that your new interest seemed sudden; unexpected; quixotic; but it never threatened me. So, I’m sorry about that. It’s none of my business anyway. If I could I’d probably erase yesterday’s comment altogether. My mouth runneth over. You’re a great person, Eddie boy. Don’t pay too much attention to my musings.

  3. P,

    Ah, and here I was feeling bad, thinking I’d been too hard on you, with my rejection of the penduluum analogy. And re-reading my Tacking post, my explanation now just sounds like one great big rationalization.

    e

  4. We are both so darn sensitive, aren’t we? After all, we do watch the Home and Garden network. 🙂

    So often I regret my spewing of ideas. At least I can go back into my own blog and hack them down to size. My wife has cautioned me to be less impulsive in my own age, particularly in dealing with clients in my business, etc. It usually gets me into trouble.

  5. That’s my “old” age, not “own” age. Impulsive again, hitting “send” before re-reading…

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