“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” — William Morris
This year, my New Year’s resolution is that everything in my house must be either useful, beautiful, or both. If successful, I will waste less money and leave a smaller eco-footprint, simply by cutting out unnecessary spending on unnecessary products.
But I’ll be honest: while those are two goals that I very much aspire to, the only reason I am confident of keeping to it is because of a third reason, which is the joy I get from having things that I love, and the relief I feel once I finally rid myself of things that I don’t love. It’s a strategy that usually works well for me. I don’t do well with being told what to do, even when I’m the one doing the telling. So I’ve given up doing that, and instead look for better, more enjoyable alternatives. Rather than force myself to eat less dessert, for example, I buy better, more satisfying desserts that don’t leave me wanting more when I’m done.
Christmas is of course an excellent time to do this, providing an immediate source of both good and bad examples. The satisfaction that comes from a genuinely useful or beautiful item compared with the disappointment of taking home something that you neither want nor need has provided the necessary motivation.
So this year, rather than going down the self-control route in order to deal with the guilt of over-consumption and an always messy house, I’m just going to celebrate great purchases to positively reinforce the idea that bad and pointless ones bring no joy. Hopefully by the end of the year, I’ll also be over the guilt of hanging on to things I don’t like or need.
So sorry, Clive Hamilton, this year I’m going to embrace my inner materialist and celebrate glorious stuff. There are many things that are sometimes used (or abused) as happiness substitutes: food, drugs, gambling, shopping, sex… But there’s no sense in denying the intrinsic pleasure that one can find from these things when they’re simply enjoyed for what they are. Sometimes it’s guilt or self-denial that can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction and overconsumption in an attempt to find the pleasure.
Satisfaction usually comes from fully enjoying something, and only doing it for as long as it is enjoyable. It works for all the other things, so why not the purchasing of material goods? Below are some things I acquired throughout the year that make me happy to know are mine. Some are gifts, some were wonderful bargains, one in particular made a fairly large (but tax deductible) dent in the credit card. But none of them involved guilt, annoyance, mixed feelings or remorse. All of them have me swearing off ever buying something that’s not quite right ever again. Not when there are so many good things to buy instead.
Cool. Well done, Anna. There’s a lot of wisdom in this post. Naturally there’s also things with which one could choose to take issue, but… who cares? Meanwhile, good job!! And happy New Year while I’m at it!!
Mmm, Hendrick’s.
There are few examples of design perfection.
Here is one of them.
And Anna, I share your pleasure of Apple products.
Excellent post, Anna. Think I try to love that way, but not intentionally, if you know what I mean. (For one, I’m not usually a big eater.) But what do you do when you accidentally buy a book, usually, though not always, from o/s, that is trash. I have 6 books at the moment I need to get to the 2nd hand book shop, but I never know when he’s open and they’re too heavy to carry into town on spec, only to find the bookshop closed, or not buying. The problem of disposing of unwanted items.
Questions one should consider when shopping or for musing on when on a window-shopping reverie, (on a wet day when the shop is shut).
Do I really need it?
Is it really really so beautiful, I need to own it?
Does my life depend on it?
Does my growth depend on it?
Where was it made?
How much is it? (back to) do I really need it?
As for purges, Louise Hay said to throw out everything you hadn’t used/worn in 6 months or you didn’t like the look of, and that worked well.
On a loftier note I am glad to have been influenced by the Minimalists and ideas of Zen and the moveable feast and the fullness of the great outdoors.
Is it Zen?
Does it go with the Tao?
and a pithy quote from a Nancy Clifford Barney (whoever she is)
Why grab possessions
like thieves, or divide
them like socialists
when you can ignore them
like wise men?
“This year, my New Year’s resolution is that everything in my house must be either useful, beautiful, or both”
I wouldn’t dare let hannah’s mum see that comment, I could be the first thing to be rendered redundant.
My problem is that our house is cluttered with the things my wife thinks are beautiful or potentially useful. (And “potentially useful” means the probability of ever being used is anything above vanishingly small.) If we would only get rid of this junk we could live a much simpler life in a much smaller house.
Unfortunately, my wife has a different version of this story…..
Australia will have to reduce it’s emissions by about 92.5% if we are to match the world per capita target required to reduce emissions to 50% of the 1990 figure. (Based on 2007 figures) So I have been asking myself what things I think are really important to my quality of life and to what extent could I retain these important things if I were to reduce my carbon footprint by 92.5% (or 96% if we double our population. Part of the answer lies in some of the thinking of this article – a few high quality, durable things that I periodically sell or exchange with friends is one way of moving in this direction.
PB @ 4, meant live that way.
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”
Wise words. I like to surround myself with beautiful things. So much so that I’m a stickler for buying a nice painting, then only to find that I have no wall space to put them.
The problem I have is with stuff that is supposedly ‘useful’.
I once bought an ice-cream maker. It was useful for the one time that I used it. Now it is no longer useful (now that the novelty of making one’s own ice cream has worn off).
In much the same way that a salad spinner might be useful on the odd occasion that one need’s a quick and convenient way to dry lettuce.
Apart from that. Useless.
Great post Anna – really captures some basic relationship w stuff that we, the time-poor, are encouraged to get wrong.
I intend to explore some new directions in meaning in 2010. Dont know what yet, but this post actually helped me kick it off- so cheers!
Now… on to the NYE shitfacing!
I share your love for Chanel No 5, Anna. I do a big clean up at the start of every year and throw as much stuff out as possible. That of course is not the answer, unless someone else is re-using it.
I’ve always had an aversion to stuff. I feel weighed down by things I buy, but I still do it. So, I guess it’s about being mindful about our purchases. This also reminds me of the relationship to food French people tend to have. nothing is off the menu, but you just eat a small amount of high quality produce. Chocolate is the perfect exmaple of that.
Yeah. Getting rid of the crap we already have is going to be the harder of the two parts of the project!
“Now… on to the NYE shitfacing!”
Y’know, I’ve just realised I’ve got a bottle of vodka and a slab of Coopers’ just lying around cluttering up the place.
That’s useful!
Not for long it ain’t.
Chanel No. 5 is my mother’s perfume…can’t go there… But I often spray Miss Dior as I walk past the counter. Pity, No. 5 is not an option.
I’m swapping between an Annick Goutal scent for daytimey, social occasions and a Jo Malone one for night-time parties. The Jo Malone, I find so strangely intoxicating that I spend much time smelling my own wrists, which I didn’t think was the point of the exercise, but I am more of the view that it is.
Am off later to watch the big firecrackers at a friend’s who has a view looking back at the Bridge from the west. I usually party at Potts Point with a view that looks exactly like the one on the front page of the next day’s papers, but sadly they are sick of hosting New Year Eve parties. Selfish bastards.
Vodka can be beautiful as well.
I’ve done that with the perfume too, Jo. No 5 always seems to react especially well to being warmed up, which makes it just gorgeous for summer nights.
Fine – I think the rule should be both beautiful and useful when it comes to booze. No point otherwise.
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”
I thought of that once but then I looked in the mirror……
I’m just about to start on some very minor house renovations in the New Year (just the thought of dealing with tradies again has put me off from starting the project)…anyway, once finished, the house will be ship-shape finally, and worth putting up with patronising blokes who run off to other jobs having promised the earth, or at least a deadline.
I got all the interiors painted last year and am still *totally in love* with the paint job and just how much of a difference it has made to the house and all contents and my view of both.
It’s been so much easier to assess items, or move or toss or replace if required, when the background is sooo good.
I spent about a month doing colour tests – buying sample pots and it was so worth getting it 110% right. Each colour blends perfectly, the way the light both natural and artificial changes the colours and reflections from, and amplifies the contents or not etc.
My big tip – see if you can locate the Dulux Master Palette (the full swatch and companion book of bigger sized swatches) They don’t make them anymore apparently and are becoming rare as and the computer version is pretty useless, as you can imagine with so different monitor variations.
Anyway, the palette has just about every colour in the spectrum with the formula, so that any good paint shop can mix it up. It means you don’t have to choose from whatever this year’s colour scheme is in vogue, ie. from those two page guides from the paint shop which offer colours and shades/hues etc. that can be totally wrong for you and/or your home.
And last tip: ‘Stowe White’ – it’s a classic white to use inside on walls and woodwork, decorators have been using it for yonks. If you are planning on painting – check it out.
What kind of shoes are they?
Well, that’s all every well in theory, Billy boy, but I’ve already sent out the invitations for my NYE party.
Great piece. I reckon the ‘advertisement’ pictures at the bottom actually detract from a good piece of writing. Nice design and a bit of ‘non-greedy’ materialism is a good thing and human beings would be a lot worse off without it. Hairshirt Hamilton can take a dose of his own medicine and go and find a cave to live in somewhere.
Michael, at the risk of ruining your day I thought this quote from ole Hairshirt was apposite:
“In the era of hyper-consumerism the urge to satisfy any desire has reached sublime levels. It is now possible to buy capsules filled with 24-carat gold leaf which, when swallowed, make your excrement sparkle. Created by New York designer Tobias Wong, the gold pills are promoted as a signifier of excess and a means of “increasing your self-worth” — although presumably for only as long as the digestion process takes. At $425 each, they are the ultimate confirmation of the ancient association, often noted by anthropologists, between gold and excrement.”
He’s also into sex. Check this:
“This third aspect of sex ? hidden rather than lost ? concerns the idea of union, both emotional union and what might be called metaphysical union, the direct expression and joining of our inner selves, our essence as humans. The evocation through sexual union of some mysterious power that holds the promise of ecstatic merger gives sex a significance that transcends everyday experience. I think this little-discussed but everpresent aspect of sexual engagement explains our society’s astonishing preoccupation with sex in all of its manifestations.”
Mmmm. Don’t throw out the condoms.
Ditch Apple, it’s the biggest con since … AGW. OK, I’m kidding about AGW.
http://www.motorcyclemuseum.org/classics/bike.asp?id=47
Nothing more to say really.
Thanks for the painting tips Jo. There’s no such thing as consumer guilt in this house. My 2010 consumption (investment?) plans:
1. Security Doors
2. Window Frames
3. Window Tinting
4. Landscaping
5. Kitchen
6. Scrim & Drapes
7. Alarm System
8. Flooring
9. Painting
That lot should keep the economy ticking over. A new MacPro might be on the cards too.
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”
There goes my three-legged dog.
There goes my three-legged dog.
He sounds beautiful to me!
The great thing about old age is that over time one easily sloughs off anything in one’s life (home?) which is neither useful nor beautiful. Beauty of course being in the eye of the beholder there’s no problem in retaining three legged dogs or slightly beer bellied mates.
Paul, I assumed that was a Freudian slip. Loving that way is the only way to live, after all.
What a great post for the New Year, Anna. A helpful thought to carry around in 2010. My major pre-occupation these days is about retaining mental sharpness. Is a similar uncluttering of the mind likely to help, I wonder.
“There goes my three-legged dog”
Four legs good, two legs bad! Four legs good, two legs bad! Three legs…?
jo, try Chanel Gardenia or No. 18 – they’re much harder to find than No. 5, but available from some Chanel outlets – you may love them if you’re “not allowed” No. 5!
Anthony Nolan @24, somehow I suspect that Tobias Wong is getting a huge kick out of imagining all those rich people inspecting their turds! Wonder has it turned up on Stuff White People Like yet?
I’ve always loved that William Morris aphorism. And yes, there are degrees of usefulness. I have a feeling that Morris meant one-room cottage usefulness: the potato peeler and washing machine variety, not the ice-cream maker variety.
Some of my favourite blogs on simple living etc are:
Down to Earth
The Greening of Gavin
Musings from a Stonehead
Simple Green Frugal Co-op
Most of these have good collections of links.
Chookie, thanks for those really interesting leads. I was amazed by today’s entry on Down to Earth! How about the young couple expecting a baby who have just lost the wife’s job. The hints given for budgeting on his wage to cope with that seem so obvious. Their margin for savings is huge and goes some way to explaining why so many people are in debt these days! Why have that second wage if all it does is pay for another car, two mobile phones and Pay TV! Rather than commiserating with them I felt like congratulating them on their good luck!
Judging by the number of pre-loved prams and other used but well cared for baby paraphernalia available for weeks on end in the Op Shops I go to browsing for books for my grandkids there’s not a lot of hardship here in Oz. My own kids were born in Kenya but if I’d had the chance I would certainly have bought second hand from Vinnies and Save the Children not out of necessity but out of common sense and wanting to help the charities. The shine of buying new lasts just a few days until the first food spill or bang against the front door frame.
Interesting that “recycling” was fairly high up on Stuff That White People Like, though Op Shops per se were not mentioned. It was quite close to “giving advice to the poor”. Oops!
Waaaayyyyy too much clutter here. Need to get rid of that and then at last find an icecream making machine–anyone know where you can get one of these?
Some clutter is my own, nice bits of china or copper etc I can’t resist buying.
Chanel no 5 smells like cat’s pee on me and to be honest I’ve never understood the allure of smells made so over-complicated and often clearly artificial. Plus there’s the rather awful downsides of the associated cosmetics industry some of which is pretty pertinent to the perfume biz as well.
The William Morris saying is a lovely one; the person I know who epitomises it best is my mother. Her house is small but well designed & ample space for her, she has no clutter at all, but much loved antique furniture and some precious objects and mementos, most of which have uses. It’s often not safe to tell mum you like something as she’s likely to give it to you. She actually saves money on the pension because her list of wants and needs has been honed so finely. She’s about to head off to India again, a place she has been travelling and working in (as a nurse for various charities) since she was 21, and the experience more than any other (plus a methodist upbringing long eschewed) that gave her the insight and will to live this way.
There’s nothing like a visit to a developing nation to be reminded in a multitude of ways just how hooked we are for a whole range of reasons on stuff. I personally suspect a big one is that it’s really the only tangible reward for signing up to work 40+ hours a week.
I think your resolution is overall a good one Anna, but find your links relating to Hamilton neither insightful or compelling as critiques. The one in particular in praise of consumerism is horribly shallow and flawed – to whit the key problem with consumerism being that pesky environmental one which the author never articulates because presumably he doesn’t want readers to get stuck on the fact that the fabulous western middle class is consuming more earth than there is, faster and faster, matched now only by the rising middle classes of Asia. As Jared Diamond succinctly pointed out, it will take 90% of the world’s resources for the Chinese alone to have the same consumer-based standard of living as us. Oops.
On the artificiality of Chanel perfumes:
I’m sorry that you smelled like cat-piss myriad, how awful.
Synthetic perfumes are interesting. I’ve always liked commercial perfumes, although I spent many decades using only natural essential oils. These days, I have a few synthetic perfumes which often last years, and a range of natural essential oils. And the ones I mentioned above – one was a present and the other found in this instance.
Most commercial perfumes have synthetic scents which are totally indistinguishable from their natural equivalent, others deliberately highlight scents which are artificial as per Chanel No. 5. The perfume industry, of course trots out that they are protecting the natural environment (sandalwood forests, musk deer etc) by producing these scents in a lab.
As to their longer effects on the wearer and the environment – this should be the province of the good science. If certain chemicals are effecting the wider environment or health of the user, they should be banned of course. Are we there yet? So much of our modern lives, so many of the products we use/buy/consume have deleterious effects on the environment.
It’s not an easy issue.
You are of course, using a computer and communications network and electricity to write that you smelt like cat-piss. I don’t know if you drive a car and take lots of planes or have a mobile phone, a DVD player or CD player etc. But who gets to cast the first environmental stone and decide which bits of our modern lifestyles are beyond the pale?
This is the dilemma of our times.
As to your mother’s lifestyle, most of the older and elderly people I know, have few consumer needs having done their major consuming while raising families or having already accumulated whatever it was they needed/wanted etc. My parent’s response to anything we buy them, and this now only as a replacement for something completely worn out is “what did you buy that for”, as if it wasn’t totally obvious. Their disinterest in consuming for it’s own sake is generational to a large degree. And btw. isn’t India – ‘teh nation’ of small manufacturers and crafts-people churning out the most amazing array of ‘stuff’ even if a goodly proportion can’t afford to buy it although most would be for domestic consumption?
As to Anna’ post – there are a whole number of related issues, including in relation to the way products are manufactured these days – in the developing world and first.
It doesn’t always cost a bomb to be stylish. But unfortunately, the start up costs to buy a product which is beautifully designed and well manufactured or crafted is beyond many folks unless they choose to go without and save for longer. ….and um, yeah sure.
On the other hand, the well designed/manufactured product will outlast by factors the crappy one, will perform better, will be so much more of a pleasure to use and will also look fabulous etc, so the return on investment is more often worth the 30/40/50/100/200+% whatever more at purchase.
But how often are we given the choice to even buy an electrical product for instance that has a warranty over 12 months and if so, the superior product is triple or quadruple the price and still no guarantees it will last any longer even if it it has a superior external design. I have one of those classic rectangular 70′s Electrolux vacuum cleaners, which still has suction to rival the brand new cheapies and it’s still switching on and doing the job more than 35 years later.
And then taste in design is a whole other thang. I didn’t like 80′s clothes or styling the first time they came around. Meh.
I’ve just spent 24 hours with an old friend, an ex-rock singer, whose main occupation these days is gleaning. Her rented flat is full of found objects often found in lanes/chuck outs/garage sales etc. The range of stuff she finds is quite amazing, kooky and v. collectible. And she also ‘finds’ quite a bit of her food foraging from trees hanging over fences etc. Some of this is through circumstance ie. poverty and other – choice, but it was v. interesting in the light of this thread, to have sat in her flat surrounded on all sides by the totally weird, kooky & cute stuff that humans make, buy and then throw away.
I have two “materialism guides”.
Was it Ralph Nader who had a “policy” of only owning as many goods as will fit in a station wagon? I haven’t achieved that level of finesse, but I aim to have few possessions by the time I get old.
In the meantime, my main “guide” is the de-accessioning policies practised by major collecting institutions. Every time I acquire an object, something has to leave my house. That way, my personal collection of things gets progressively better and more beautiful. Anything chipped or cracked has long been jettisoned, and now I hesitate before I acquire things.
As to the bitchin’ about scent: No. 5 will smell like cat’s pee on some skins, and heavenly on others. There’s also the factor that Chanel definitely produce a different standard of “No. 5″ for various markets. The No. 5 you buy at a duty-free in Singapore may well not the same as if you buy it from Chanel in Paris. Hence my comment about No 18 and other Chanels earlier. The rarer scents are generally to the original standard, as they are manufacturing to a more sophisticated market and not having to produce massive quantities.
Most of the big-name perfume houses are producing cr*p versions for the mass market. Miss Dior is a prime example. Look through your mum’s scents and compare with the new version. Nuh. Ditto Lancome Tresor and any number of others.
Smaller-name perfumiers also change their recipes surprisingly quickly, or discontinue and substitute with lesser ones. Stella McCartney’s Stella is an example – she did a sublime floral, but it’s already been discontinued. Presumably it was too expensive to mass-market once it found success.
The skin is an important part of the perfume. Rive Gauche is lovely until it goes on me – then it smells like fly spray.
A couple of years ago I complimented a friend on her perfume and asked what it was. No 5 apparently. I didn’t recognise it!
adamtucker, ain’t bitchin, I was *responding* to myriad.
As to the issue of synthetic perfumes and their environmental effects, which I believe is myriad’s main concern – I stated my view above.
Why would chemical A be worth so much more than chemical B esp. when nearly all synthetic scent ingredients are manufactured in just five factories. Do many commercial fragrances still have any natural ingredients included?
My old mum btw. is a bit beyond putting on the Chanel at the moment, struggling to get her singlet over head in under five minutes. And interesting your point about manufacturers making different blends for different markets. To my untutored nose the Chanel No. 5 at the shops doesn’t smell much different to what I first smelt more than 40 years ago. I’ll definitely take a good whiff next time.
And I *could* wear it, it’s just that I wouldn’t. Perfume has such a evocative nature and resonance, wearing a scent that is purely linked to my mother…ah, no.
Just a whiff of a perfume or fragrance that one wore at a certain time etc. can transport one back immediately to a range of memories and feelings. (I can imagine that some men might find this side discussion on scent somewhat odd/frivolous, but there you go, we can’t always be sidetracked into discussing machinery. And I don’t have a problem with machinery btw.)
Gotta go. Dinner Party. Hmm, which perfume?
I’m enjoying Cinema by Yves St. Laurent as well.
Jo, which Jo Malone do you wear?
I still find patchouli oil somewhat evocative of an earlier time in my life on the few occasions I rub it into my beard – motorcycles, weed, shared housing, and (rare) casual sex.
Casey
This is the one that I have trouble not devouring my own flesh when wearing!
And will try to locate the No. 18, you mentioned adam.
Moi for Chanel No. 5 aussi — I’ve never smelt like piss de chat, at least not as a result of wearing perfume, but most perfumes make me smell like burnt tyres. Except Estee Lauder’s Beautiful, which is my other classic favourite.
We were talking about this on New Year’s Eve, when I realised more or less as I was saying it that my main decluttering stumbling block is a form of magical thinking whereby I can’t throw out old letters or cards or things that other people gave me, especially if they are no longer with us, because if I do I will somehow hurt the person, or diminish his or her memory.
I have both an ice-cream maker and a salad spinner and don’t ever intend to part with either of them, but then I also have a butter-curler, a cake pan for making kugelhopf, a cat-shaped cookie cutter, three different sized star nozzles for the cake decorating thingy and a tray that makes ice cubes shaped like the map of Australia. I specifically bought the ice-cream maker to make Stephanie Alexander’s chocolate sorbet, which also contains notes of coffee and cinnamon. Which reminds me, there are still plenty of cherries around and it’s not too late to make this.
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” — William Morris
Morris apparently doesn’t believe we can Know things to be Beautiful, even though we can Know them to be Useful. Interesting. But how come he believes this?
After all, we can know some things (various actions, in particular) to be Good (or, even easier, Bad). If knowing the good is possible, why not knowing the beautiful?
Anyway, back to his advice. Clearly anything could remain in one’s house if the only criterion were Believing it to be beautiful. Dog turds, heck, even cat turds. His advice here is, ultimately and simply, ‘Have in your home anything you bloody like’. I mean: What if somebody thought Everything was Beautiful? The object of Morris’ (Thoreau-like) advice here is plainly Simplification, but the advice itself is poorly designed for its intended object. It doesn’t do its intended job.
Can it be improved upon? The topic – ‘Knowledge of beauty’ – doth invite.
And are Utility and Beauty really the Only likely benchmarks for retention (or acquisition)? What about sentiment? Yes, as in Sentimentality. What’s wrong with Sentimentality – as a benchmark? Something? What?
LOL Jo. I know how you feel. I have to stop myself from licking my wrists at the DJ’s counter every time.
jo: “some men might find this discussion odd/frivolous…”
Not this one. Vive la difference!, for one thing. Also, this sort of stuff is a pleasnt (and maybe also an important) part of life to many people, which makes it inherently interesting.
As to the useful/beautiful thing, here’s a bit of a ponder… I’m pretty sure the poetry of Alexander Pope is quite useful — but is it beautiful? I’ve always been undecided on that score.
No.
No, huh. Hmm, I was unable to guess which way you’d come down on that question, Doc. What’s your reason? Or do you see it as self-evident?
(“Thy exquisite reason, sir knight?” “I have no ‘exquisite’ reason… but I have reason enough.” — 12th Night)
I’m glad I’m not the only one who dislikes Pope.
Well, disliked actually – I haven’t read any since I matriculated in 1967.
Oh I don’t know, I guess I see no beauty in the combination of clever-clogs logic and wordy 18thC wit with tum-ti-tum rhythm and rhyme. As FBD once deathlessly remarked in an impromptu verse competition somewhere on this admirable blog:
Rhyming couplets:
Give them up, let’s.
Me for the untidy charismatic visionaries — Donne, Coleridge, Rilke, Emily Dickinson, you know the kind of thing.
Rilke
David Irving, I’ve just lit a cone of patchouli on your remembering and it brings back memories for me too but slightly younger ones – you’re about 5 years closer to croaking than me.
I have so much material stuff in my sheds. What’s a good formula there? So many tools and so much equipment. All my toolmaking stuff, unusual things to most people and some of it high precision, now used only for maintenance on the orchard equipment.
So many cheap chinese power tools, used occasionally and certainly make a job easier but it’s never used to do a job I want to do, only jobs which must be done. No time to enjoy them.
Well, everything in a shed is useful, and if you want beautiful there are all those old playboy calendars.
Thanks, Salient. (Feelings of passing on a torch – patchouli-scented, of course.)
I nearly bought a volume of Poe’s Collected works the other week. Might still, if its still in the bookshop. I’ve read a couple of his individual poems, and, at about aged 15 or 16, out of ignorance, Pope’s translation of the Iliad. (Which I did not like, but I pewreasvered till I got to the end of it.)
Prefer Donne .
Pope’s Collected Work’s. I love Edgar Allen Poe.
Thanks Paul Burns for reminding me. I’ve been meaning to get some of the Alan Parsons Projects on CD and had forgotten about his Tales of Mystery and Imagination album. “thus quote the raven, never more” I don’t mean to demean your appreciation of the literature which is probably far more culturally advanced than Alan Parsons Projects but they are enjoyable albums.
David Irving, you are most welcome and I am lighting another cone for a patchouli loving lady who was like a tiger in bed and incredibly annoying out of it.
Heh heh — Edgar Allan Pope, or maybe Alexander Poe. That might make for an interesting mashup. Hmm, would their opposing qualities just cancel each other out, or augment each other?
Sort of like combining CS Lewis and HP Lovecraft.
In a way, John Lennon might be the model of that — the combination of witty clarity and mad unruly excitability. Well it worked for him for a while, anyway.
Gimme some Chanel Coco (the Parfum not the toilet water, ick!) and some Christian Louboutin pumps &, hey, things are looking pretty good!
j_p_z,
There was something slightly Gothic about Pope; hunch-back Catholic and all, and I gather he had a scoriating [?] wit. I have a few years to live yet, and one omission in my reading I intend to correct between now and the grave is getting into the works of Pope.
Of course, if I don’t achieve this, somebody could always put some matches, a candle and the collected works of Pope in my coffin. Just in case.
Paul B, I’m guessing your word is an amalgam of coruscating (to sparkle and glitter), scarifying (to scar) and excoriating (to rip the skin off, flay). All of which were the case, depending on what kind of mood he was in and sometimes all three at once.
Eeh, Paul, I reckon you should avoid Pope, and just read Donne again. (Much better poet, imo. At least as clever, and did erotic soooo much better. I still remember getting a chubby listening to someone read To his mistress going to bed on the radio many years ago.)
Eeh, Mr Irving, I love Donne too.
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
**********************************
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
**********************************
The unbridled sensuality of the first and, of course, the carpe diem of the second just blows me away. Both are profound, beautiful and the yearning both evoke is a universal one.
Possibly because you’re reading him wrongly, Roger39
Have nothing in your house you [merely] believe to be beautiful. Crappy decoratives etc. Things that “look nice”.
PC @ 64,
Excellent. I wasn’t sure if the word existed or not or if it was one of those words I made up when I didn’t even know I’d done it. Sometimes I think the language is inadequate, sometimes I don’t know the language well enough, sometimes I just like coining new words, (I think that’s the poet in me just busting to get out, but not as often as it used to). And sometimes I just mishear them or mispronounce them.
(So far as I can work out my English comes from Aussie English,Yorkshire English, and Irish English,a touch of very ill-digested schoolboy three year French Latin and three months of German, plus being self-educated working class for thirty years (and what a delight that was), before I got to uni. How people come to speak English the way they do is a topic that fascinates me.
(I did try Latin again at uni, but it got in the way of my social life, so I dropped it. The tutorial was in the lunch-hour, when all my friends were in the bistro pissing up. Uni taught me about the three hour lunch.)
Hey Jo
clearly I should have used an emoticon after my cat pee comment! – I actually thought it was rather funny, and a big relief. IIRC I was about 16 and it neatly put pay to a nasty burgeoning period of being bought stereotypical gifts for women (when anyone with half a brain could see what made me happy was books and music).
Probably because I don’t wear scents except via indulging in the use of Lush soaps I can smell artificial scents very clearly even when they are mimicking natural and like many people many of them give me a stonking headache. And just to round it out, ironically I was offered a job as an apprentice nose while living in Europe.
What differentiates my mother from other boomers up that you describe is that she’s aways lived this way – her biggest indulgence is the travel, but she’s rarely been just a tourist. I know we’re all biased towards those we love, but many people other than me admire my mother’s example. She does things like sit down and work out what money she needs for the next 5 years, put aside mney fr majr bills in labeled envelopes, then cheerfully donates her remainng capital to build an orphanage in India.
On India, I would not agree with your characterisation of it particularly as it’s far too old and complex a place – for eg your description misses out the fact that certainly in earlier times and still hanging on to some extent today many Indian people had family traditions as artisans with highly prized skills that paid a decent living, and most of what they produced was either practical (eg kitchenware) or spiritually related. This stands in stark contrast to producing vast volume as cheaply as possible and working to convince the populous that they all really need three of them.
I don’t know if you’ve travelled much in the developing world, but aside from the shocking experience of true poverty, the other aspect that strikes many people when they come home is just how much entirely unnecessary crap we all habitually accumulate – and by unnecessary crap I don’t mean well-made items that fit the Morris quote, I mean crap. It’s almost unavoidable in western countries without significant conscious effort.
WRT consumption that it’s an enormous dilemma particularly because the west has successfully convinced everyone this is the only way to structure an economy and pave a path to prosperity (for some), is probably an understatement.
You nicely touch on two fundamental characteristics of western consumption, ie built obsolescence and perceived obsolescence.
I regularly recommend the story of stuff as a good synopsis.
As excellent thinking pieces towards working out the answers, I’ve loved E.F Schumacher’s Small is Beautful since I first read it as a teen, which is very pertinent to this thread. The wiki synopsis is good, and has some relevant quotes – I particularly like
“A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption…. The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity.”
Anna’s points about manufacture etc. that you picked up are also very worthy of exploration. Cradle to Cradle is an easy and enjoyable read that handles this aspect particularly well and dovetails with Schumacher’s earlier work.
So no, it’s not about casting stones or crying for the donning of hair shirts, but I do think that any thinking about personal and societal materialism at this point in global history is better for thinking about these core points. I think it would be great if along with enjoying our Iphones (guilty!) we also thought about where the coltan came from (the Congo almost certainly) and how it’s linked t some of the most appallingly brutal and depraved warfare in the world, and what we can do about that. If we’re going to consume, thinking about how we can reform it as a practice from the bottom up – which happily would deliver products that very much conform to William Morris’ vision and leave the world a much better place seems a worthy one – rather like Anna’s resolution.
and clearly we can see I need a new keyboard and a thesaurus.
Thanks for your reply, myriad, I re-read mine after I submitted and wondered whether there was a missing smiley face in yours and I’d um, etc..
Busy as today and with a hangover, eerhhh, so no time for a considered reply to the issues you’ve raised, and your mother btw. doesn’t sound like someone’s mum… but our second saint.
But just quickly, Australia is I believe, the big world miner of tantalum (a coltan extract) amongst a number of other countries, notwithstanding, the role the coltan (and the diamond) trade played in the DRC esp. in the Second Congo War and the issues around extractive industries in the DRC and the region are still on-going, though I’ve been trying to follow the passage of the now named “Energy Security Through Transparency Act of 2009″ through Congress.
It was re-introduced in Sept 09, with bipartisan support. I’m sure you know the provenance of the Bill and the role it will hopefully play in providing citizens in developing countries with the information they need to hold their domestic Govts accountable for the royalties paid to them by TNC miners.
…..aah…aspirin.
…..”it would apply not only to U.S. firms, but to all oil, gas and mining companies registered in the U.S. This includes most significant extractive industry multi-nationals, including European, Canadian and Australian companies as well as those from emerging markets such as China, Africa, Brazil and Russia”.
thanks for the reply Jo – feel better!
Re: coltan unfortunately the Wodonga mine which is the one you’re thinking of closed, and I don’t think it has reopened. Note that one of the reasons it shut is the availability of cheap conflict coltan sources, such as DRC. There has been a great deal of fluctuation in the tantalum market & hence sourcing practices. The biggest unknown of course is the quantum of the illegal trade, but many human rights watch groups believe it to be considerable, particularly between China and the DRC.
So yes the EITI is incredibly important and I’m watching with interest, although must admit rather lost track of it what with Copenhagen etc. Thanks for the reminder.
Wince to see mum described as a saint, not so. She just lives a simple life based on common sense really and is one of the most content people I know.