The Curious Habits of Man: Essays and Effluence

By Brian Kenneth Swain

What is the one true secret to weight loss? What is the correct way to make a grilled cheese sandwich? Is the designated hitter rule the salvation of baseball or its undoing? Is it rational to be an optimist? Andthe question that haunts us all should toilet paper unwind over the top of the roll or from underneath?

In his first collection of essays, author Brian Kenneth Swain tackles hundreds of lifes questions while exploring a vast array of subjectsfrom tubas to two year-olds, from field goals to child labor laws, and from high school shop class to the worst round of golf ever played. With an acerbic wit and an honest approach, Swain shares his perspective on such pivotal matters as how to ski without losing a limb or your self-esteem, how to correctly prepare and consume lobster according to Maine standards, and whether marketing ploys hypnotically convince consumers to replace perfectly functioning items without a second thought. Swain encourages a kind of tongue-in-cheek thinking that prompts us to take a second look at the world around us.

The Curious Habits of Man shares an amusing glimpse at life as one man contemplates many of our greatestand smallestquestions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475996647

Brian Kenneth Swain

BRIAN KENNETH SWAIN is the author of nine previous books, including the novels World Hunger, Alone in the Light, and Sistina; the poetry collections Secret Places, My America, and Chicken Feet; the essay collection The Curious Habits of Man; the short story collection The Book of Names; and the children’s book Hegel and Hobbes Have an Adventure. Brian is a graduate of Columbia University and The Wharton School. He grew up in Brunswick, Maine and now lives in San Antonio with his black chow chows Maya and Loki.

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Contents

Introduction

THE SPORTING LIFE

A Day on the Mountain

The Impossibility of the Field Goal

On Why the Designated Hitter Rule Is an Abomination and Should Be Abolished Forthwith

A Good Walk Spoiled

FOOD AND DIET

On the Societal and

Metaphysical Importance of the

Grilled Cheese Sandwich

The Maine Attraction

The Swain Diet

GROWING UP (or something like it)

Looking Back

Being in Band

An Early Harvest

Shop

The Miracle

Consequence

RANDOM PIECES THAT DEFY CATEGORIZATION

Over the Top

Creativity and Its Aftermath

Why I Don’t Have Children

Marketing 101

The Pessimist Within

Also by Brian Kenneth Swain

Novels

World Hunger

Alone in the Light

Poetry

Secret Places

My America

For Catia, who makes everything beautiful.

The Curious Habits of Man

Essays and Effluence

Acknowledgments

I am, first and foremost, extremely grateful to Catia for her endless love, support, and tolerance of my own curious habits. I am also, as ever, in enormous debt to the unflagging editing skills of Susan Ciancio, without whose perspicacity my writing would doubtless look like something submitted for a seventh grade comp assignment (if it does anyway, the fault is strictly my own). Sincere thanks to Stephanie Carter, Philip Dobard, and the good folks at OKRA Magazine and the Southern Food and Beverage Museum for their willingness to publish a few of the pieces that appear in this collection. I should acknowledge, as well, three individuals with whom I spent a significant portion of my childhood—Bill Donovan, Neal Donovan, and Wayne Watson. They played integral, if uncelebrated, roles in many of the adventures described in this book, but should suffer no ill effects from being so identified, what with all relevant statutes of limitation having long since expired by Maine state law. If any of you are troubled by being named here, simply contact me, and I will remove your name forthwith. And, finally, special thanks to anyone who takes the time to read my work—you’ve got plenty of alternative ways to occupy your time and I am thrilled and honored that you chose to spend a bit of it with me.

Meditatio

When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs

I am compelled to conclude

That man is the superior animal.

When I consider the curious habits of man

I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.

Ezra Pound

Introduction

What is the point of an essay really? It depends, at a minimum, on who you are and when you’re writing. If there happens to be a war going on or there exists some sort of tyrannical state of affairs that seems like it could lead to war, a trenchant essay by a Thomas Paine or Ben Franklin can be a call to action for a lethargic population. In less heady times, if you’re, say, Ralph Waldo Emerson, an essay can espouse a set of profound philosophical perspectives intended, one supposes, to make one’s fellow citizens think twice about how they’re living their lives. If it’s the present day and you’re David Sedaris, then your primary objective might be to make people turn a mirror on themselves for a few minutes and, hopefully, laugh a bit at what they see. And if you’re David Foster Wallace, who was, in my estimation, the finest essayist of my lifetime, then you’re likely employing your boundless talent and insight to shine a light on the quotidian and, in the process, striving desperately to deflect a bit of focus from your own deep and ultimately mortal struggles.

Sadly, most of us gained our very first exposure to the essay at the cruel hands of an elementary school teacher who demanded that we produce two or three cogent pages describing how we spent our summer vacation, what we wanted to be when we grew up, or other such pithy topic. For ninety-nine percent of us, the greatest challenge of that assignment was not figuring out how to make the account a compelling one but, rather, agonizing over how wide we could credibly make the margins and how large a font size we could get away with. All of which goes some way to explaining why published essay collections are so seldom produced and even less frequently purchased from your local bookstore or website. Even for wildly successful essayists like Wallace and Sedaris, the sales figures pale in comparison to what a modestly successful novelist enjoys.

Of course, grim early-life experiences with the form cannot explain all the animosity—or, at best, indifference—readers seem to have toward essays. I suspect there is at least one other force at work. People live in the everyday world. Their lives are consumed with jobs that need doing, babies who need changing, and taxes that need paying. While there are precious few minutes we can manage to eke out for entertainment, a myriad of alternatives is now available for the purpose. Among those who choose to read, most quite reasonably opt for writing that transports them away from their daily travails rather than something that shines an even brighter light on the banal lives they’re already so deeply familiar and likely frustrated with.

People want stories. They have, by all accounts, wanted stories at least since the time of Homer, though the fascination probably dates back even further, back to a group of cavemen huddled around a campfire swapping tales of imagined deities or the mastodon that got away in the previous day’s hunt. Whether these stories are passed down orally, committed to print, or displayed on a television or computer screen, the human fascination with storytelling appears to be an enduring one. This makes the challenge of the essayist all the more daunting—how to take a real-life, everyday theme or concept and turn it into a narrative, while at the same time managing to get across your intended point, hypothesis, or thought.

Your junior high English teacher harped on this latter item ad nauseum. What is your thesis? What is it you are trying to say? But, unfortunately, with a few worthy exceptions, most teachers spent their energy trying to get you to focus on articulating that theme rather than on telling a story—the principal skill that would have vastly increased the likelihood of someone actually wanting to read what you had written. Which brings us back to writers like Wallace and Sedaris who, for all their expository skills, are really good storytellers. They just happen to be dealing in real-world subject matter rather than ghosts, vampires, or zombies. When Sedaris tells us about his seasonal job as a Christmas elf or Wallace expounds on a Caribbean cruise, each is sharing a truth wrapped in all of the classic elements of great storytelling, which include believable characters who find themselves in challenging situations to which they respond in ways consistent with the character traits established early on in the story. With a little luck, the characters grow and evolve throughout the account, or at least learn a painful lesson or two that will help them in future adventures. Like I said, storytelling.

It’s truly unfortunate that so many get off to such a wretched start with essays. For the great majority of us whose only exposure to the essay has been in the form of print news sources like TIME or The Economist (themselves dangerously tenuous media these days), we see only the rudiments of an attempt at storytelling, as though the journalists understand its value but are compelled to provide only the barest taste before moving on to the hard brutal facts of the matter. Think about the format of most of the news stories you’ve read in the past twenty years. It’s the primary way journalists have been taught to do it since the first graduate journalism school was founded. You bookend the factual elements of the story with opening and closing paragraphs that describe a real person or family and explain how the disaster or political issue affects them. If it’s coverage of the latest hurricane, start with an image of Bill Johnson rocking pensively on his porch, watching as the sky darkens in the east. At the end, after vividly describing the carnage and the financial cost of the cleanup, revisit Bill, now standing amid the devastation of his home, wondering how he can possibly rebuild it all again or whether he should even try. The same approach works with congressional budget debates, territorial strife in Cambodia, or the latest strike at the GM plant. By invoking the pathos of real people, the writer makes at least a cursory effort to tell a story instead of simply relating facts or espousing a point of view designed to change your mind about something.

Which brings us to the volume you’re holding in your hand. Does it live up to the standard set forth in the preceding discussion? The topics are far ranging—from pedestrian matters like cooking the perfect grilled cheese sandwich or playing in the high school band to more evocative subjects like child labor and artist suicide—and on into the realm of genuine controversy with explorations of pessimism and the morality of conceiving and raising children. I’ve been told by more than one person that I have the attention span of a parakeet, which probably helps to explain the eclectic nature of the collection, if not the potentially disjointed feel of the pieces when stitched together. I actually did struggle a bit with order, ultimately opting for an attempt at grouping by logical categories. When all was said and done, maybe alphabetical would have been the way to go.

There’s also the slightly nagging question of why a relatively unknown writer would bother going to the trouble of creating and publishing an essay collection in the first place, particularly if extremely famous people can’t even sell more than a handful of copies. For me it goes back, I think, to the parakeet thing. Though I work more or less regularly on long projects, I am frequently interrupted by inexplicable bursts of inspiration on particular topics that either come up in random conversation or that I encounter in magazines or on websites. I’m not going to get all lyrical and drone on about muses or any of that, except to say that when these notions hit me, they tend to hit pretty hard, more or less demanding that I drop the project I’m supposed to be working on, at least for a day or two. If the parakeet image isn’t working for you, think of these episodes as squirrel moments. If you have a dog, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

And, of course, once a suitable mass of these expository outbursts¹ has been created, the natural instinct of a writer is to gather them into a bound collection and publish the thing, even if every pecuniary (and possibly literary) bone in his body cries out against the logic of doing so. Whatever strand of DNA it is that causes us to write these things down in the first place is also likely responsible for compelling us to assemble them into books from time to time. After all, why does the parakeet ring that bell every so often? He just has to. It’s part of being a parakeet.

THE SPORTING LIFE

A Day on the Mountain

Or

Why Skiing Is an Especially Apt Metaphor

for Life Itself

What do you get when you combine the annoyance of golf, the vast expense of scuba, and the bodily risk of skydiving? That’s right—skiing, a pastime whose origins are lost to antiquity, but which, in all likelihood, involved some Swiss or Austrian misanthrope—let’s agree to call him Gunther—living high on a mountain, who awakens one day to discover he is snowed in by a couple feet of fresh powder from the previous night’s storm, and on the very day he had meant to go into the village at the base of the mountain for his semi-annual consignment of groceries. Well, shucks, our antiquarian hero² says to himself, looks like the only way I’m going to make it into town today is if I strap a couple pieces of wood to my feet, rub a little goose grease on the bottoms to slick them up a bit, and slide down on top of all that snow. And so, for the moment neglecting to consider how he is going to make his way back up the hill with all those groceries, Gunther deftly navigates his way down the mountain and into the village, to the astonishment of his fellow citizens, who stop and stare in awe at the grace and speed with which he makes his way down the village’s main street. And thus (at least for the purposes of this discussion) skiing is born.³

Fast forward a few hundred years and you will find at your typical modern ski resort not socially-challenged mountaineers,⁴ but half-hour queues, hundred-dollar lift passes, and eight-dollar cardboard hamburgers. But, like a first-time skier staring over the precipice of a double-black diamond, I am getting rather far ahead of myself here. I mean to explain all of the nuances of the sport in good time, but first a bit of backstory is required so that you understand the context for what might otherwise come across as an unnecessarily negative exposition into what is, admittedly, a wildly popular pastime.

It will not be news to those who have participated in a sport of any kind that the earlier in life one begins said participation, the better at it one tends to be throughout the remainder of one’s life, most especially if that early start is augmented with some quality instruction, and if, of course, the individual is amenable to that instruction. All of which is a long and obtusely structured way of suggesting that I achieved none of these objectives, at least as far as skiing goes. The fact that I grew up in Maine probably counts for something in all of this. Goodness knows, I came of age no stranger to snow, though all of the terrain on which its copious quantities lay during my upbringing was unremarkably flat.⁵

I not only grew up in Maine, but also lived in the same house for my entire memorable childhood. Our family was on the decidedly lower end of the economic scale, and we didn’t engage in any of the sorts of recreation that required one to actually pay money. In fact, upon reflection, it still astounds me that I managed to grow up in Maine without once doing any of the things that people travel great distances and spend enormous sums to come from other parts of the world to do.⁶ Oddly enough, I do not even recall having any friends in school who were skiers. I include this apparent biographical digression only to help explain why it is that I took up skiing at such a relatively late age.

It was only when I got to college, at the lofty age of twenty-four,⁷ that I first had the opportunity to give skiing a try. Once I mustered the verve to strap on a pair of boards and hit the slopes, I quickly⁸ discovered a few things, the lessons of which I mean to impart in the paragraphs that follow. If you have never skied and are keen to give it a try, these insights will serve you well.

The very first thing you need to know is that skiing is expensive. If there existed a sliding scale that compared the prices of the various athletic and recreational activities available to the average American,⁹ skiing would easily reside in the upper decile. In fact, there are two related but distinct components that comprise the overall budget for ski gear. The first has to do with the skiing itself, meaning the equipment needed to make one’s way from the top to the bottom of the mountain.¹⁰ The second tranche of expense has less to do with skiing per se, and more to do with surviving the abysmally cold temperatures during which most skiing takes place. Into the former category fall three primary items—skis, bindings, and boots.¹¹ Bindings, for the uninitiated, are the items used to connect the former to the latter, and whose secondary but equally important function is to facilitate the separation of you from your skis in the event of a spill, on which topic more and copious details will soon follow. Without getting too deeply into the recondite technological details here, suffice it to say that a respectable set of new ski equipment can easily set you back in excess of a thousand dollars, though it can be had for a good deal less through judicious shopping and a willingness to own something other than the current year’s equipment.

As counter-intuitive as it may, at first, seem, the sartorial expense associated with skiing can easily surpass that of the equipment, particularly if you’re the fashion-conscious sort. It’s actually surprising how many people will scrimp on gear, but then break the bank buying the down jackets, pants, socks, thermal underwear, hats, helmets, gloves, scarves, face masks, backpacks, and endless other accoutrements¹² that are (possibly) necessary in order to survive a day on a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain. But the critical thing to keep in mind about these decisions is not so much the fashion element, though this is frequently the bigger driver of cost. Rather, the principal concern should be the efficacy of one’s purchases. How warm will that five-hundred-dollar jacket keep you when you’re sitting on a stuck chair lift, in a twenty-knot wind, fifty feet up in the air, for fifteen minutes on a cold, cloudy day? Will your socks slide down and bunch up in the toes of your ski boot? Will your mask fog up just as you’re approaching a bump at high speed? Unfortunately, the answers to many of these critical questions are unknowable until you’ve committed to the purchase and are actually out there on the slopes freezing to death and cursing the salesman back at Sun & Ski who assured you that this was the finest jacket money could buy because of its synthetic Argentinian beaver-skin lining and state-of-the-art solar-cell rear panels, or whatever. Suffice it to say that judicious research and active solicitation of the opinions of knowledgeable friends can save you from some very pricey and frustrating mistakes down the road.

Having outfitted yourself appropriately, your sense of anticipation will, no doubt, have risen to a fever pitch as you try to sleep the night before your impending assault on the mountain. Once the big day arrives, the first thing you will notice about the skiing experience is that it takes a rather extraordinary amount of time and effort to actually transport all that clothing and gear you’ve spent the past few weeks buying. Assuming, though, that with a good deal of creative packing you’ve managed to fit it all into (or on top of) the car, the next significant challenge for any new skier is getting from the car in the parking lot to the point where you’re in a position to actually join a lift line.

Getting from the car to the lift is sufficiently challenging to almost qualify as a sport in its own right. It goes something like this: You pull into your parking spot, daunted perhaps for just a moment by the sound of the tires crunching and squeaking on the hard-packed snow. Understand that by this point you’ve typically been riding in the car for a good long while¹³ after having stopped at McDonald’s™ and quaffed a couple of Egg McMuffins™ and a quart or so of coffee. You’re comfortable, warm, and likely half asleep. When you reluctantly push open the car door, the first sensation that hits you is the biting cold and rarified air of what is already a pretty high-up place, even at the altitude of the parking lot. You grudgingly step from the car, remove your ungainly skis from either the roof rack or back of the car, taking care in the rapidly growing cold not to ding the cars around you (or your own) with those freshly sharpened edges. You then proceed to spend five minutes or so zipping up, buttoning down, tying together, and generally ensconcing yourself in all the clothing you purchased in preparation for this adventure, but which you did not wear in the car on the ride up. At some point, as you’re wrapping yourself in layer upon layer, it will occur to you that you at last understand why that little boy in A Christmas Story¹⁴ couldn’t get back up once he’d fallen over into the snow bank near his house. The first sobering lesson the new skier discovers at this point is that it is a challenging thing indeed to walk across an icy parking lot wrapped in several layers of winter survival gear while carrying skis, boots, poles, and a backpack. The second insightful thing you learn is that skiing has, as one of its more charming attributes, the very real possibility of your becoming completely exhausted before even beginning the actual sport.

Having made your way safely into the lodge, you now discover two new and daunting obstacles.¹⁵ The first is that you must get your boots on. The seasoned skier will make this look easy. If, on the other hand, you are an infrequent skier or totally new, this will be the moment when you get your first inkling of how the rest of the day is going to go. Assuming you were prescient enough to have brought with you the same socks you wore when you tried on your boots back at the shop, you should be okay. If not, you may well end up with boots that are too tight or too loose. Without belaboring the point, suffice it to say that you can expect to spend ten minutes or so getting the boots to slide on, figuring out the byzantine clipping mechanism that holds them closed, and finding the precise sweet spot at which the ski pants and boot tops will meet without pinching your ankles, cutting off circulation to your feet, or allowing snow to get inside. If, once you’ve got everything jammed into place, it turns out you have gotten boots a size too small, or put on one too many pairs of socks, you can look forward to poor circulation in your toes all day and a resulting case of frozen lower extremities.

But let’s say, just for laughs, that you’ve managed to get your boots on with a minimum of invective, there isn’t too much pain, and you aren’t sweating that profusely yet, despite having put forth all this effort while wearing a full ensemble of Arctic clothing that precludes nearly all joint flexure—and all in an eighty-degree ski lodge. When you first stand, you will notice an interesting and slightly awkward sensation. Your boots have been designed so