{"id":170,"date":"2006-05-22T17:01:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-23T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/wordpress\/?p=170"},"modified":"2006-05-22T17:01:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-23T00:01:00","slug":"tacking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/22\/tacking\/","title":{"rendered":"Tacking"},"content":{"rendered":"

A comment from CPC to the Worlds Collide<\/em> post:<\/p>\n

[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?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ouch. I am stunned when I read this. I try to think that it’s not true. But it is<\/em> true, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

But I suppose I never really like to do anything halfway. (Trust me, I’ve had<\/em> to do a lot of things half-assed, but I never like<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> of these things all at once. I’m the sum total of all these things that I’ve been over time, becoming me now.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I’m a Catholic, but I still admire the strippers. Well, I don’t like literally <\/em>admire them, as in to the point of actually going to see<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

However, CPC also uses the term tack<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

But in sailing terms, however, there’s also the verb form, tacking<\/em>, which describes bringing the bow through the eye of the wind. It’s a way of sailing into<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

That’s what I’ve been doing. Not swinging like a penduluum. I’ve been tacking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading Tacking<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}