Topical Guide 209
Mark Dorset
Anticipation
Pride
ON THE NIGHT BEFORE the first official meeting of the Babbington Flotilla of the Young Tars, I paced the floor of my attic bedroom, certain that, the next day, as the first official piece of business at the first official meeting, I would be demoted from the rank of Commodore, probably all the way down to Swabby. The likelihood of my being demoted didn’t worry me half as much as the likelihood that I wouldn’t take it well. I had prepared some remarks for the occasion and copied them into a small spiral-bound notebook that I could carry in my pocket, at the ready in case I needed to prompt myself while I was taking the demotion like a man.
Little Follies, “The Young Tars”
Pride is the consciousness (right or wrong) of our own worth, vanity the consciousness (right or wrong) of the obviousness of our own worth to others. A man may be proud without being vain, he may be both vain and proud, he may be—for such is human nature—vain without being proud. It is at first sight difficult to understand how we can be conscious of the obviousness of our worth to others, without the consciousness of our worth itself. If human nature were rational, there would be no explanation at all. Yet man lives first an outer, afterwards an inner, life; notion of effect precedes, in the evolution of mind, the notion of the inner cause of effect. Man prefers being rated high for what he is not, to being rated half-high for what he is. This is vanity’s working.
As in every man the universal qualities of mankind all exist, in however low a degree of one or another, so all are to some extent proud and to some extent vain.
Pride is, of itself, timid and contractive; vanity bold and expansive. He who is sure (however wrongly) that he will win or conquer, cannot fear. Fear—where it is not a morbid disposition, rooted in neurosis—is no more than want of confidence in ourselves to overcome a danger.Fernando Pessoa, “Shakespeare,” in A Centenary Pessoa, edited by Eugénio Lisboa with L. C. Taylor
Real Objects in Fiction
Life Lessons
Fortune Cookie Wisdom
“Suppose you’re walking along one day on your way to school, and you find a dollar bill on the sidewalk in front of you. You bend over and pick it up. What do you do with it? Put it in the bank? No. Turn it in to the principal? Uh-uh. Stick it into the Red Cross box outside the nurse’s office? Heck, no. I’ll tell you what you probably do. You probably stop at the candy store and spend the dollar buying wax teeth for the whole gang. Later, when you get home after school, you tell your mother how lucky you were.
“‘Hey Mom!’ you shout. ‘I found a dollar on the way to school!’
“‘Aren’t you lucky!’ she says. ‘Where is it?’
“‘Huh?’ you say. ‘Oh, I spent it on wax teeth.’
“She gives you a look you’ve seen before, and suddenly the truth hits you. You realize that the dollar is gone and you’ll never get it back again. You’re left standing there with a mouthful of wax teeth and an empty pocket, wondering how you can sum up the lesson you’ve learned. Well, the next time you find a dollar and spend it on wax teeth, or the next time a mixup in uniforms makes you a Commodore until a new uniform comes in and you’re demoted to Swabby, I hope you’ll shrug and grin and say what my grandfather would say: ‘Easy come, easy go.’”Little Follies, “The Young Tars”
Wishful Thinking
Fame, Acclaim, Respect: Desire for
I was sure there would be applause after these remarks. I planned to drop my head and, with a swift movement I’d been practicing all week, slip a set of wax teeth into my mouth. When I raised my head, shrugged, and grinned, I would, I hoped, ignite a blaze of esteem and good humor in the heart of every Tar. The Tars might, I thought, gather around me to shake my hand and punch my shoulder and clap me on the back. It wasn’t inconceivable, it seemed to me, that they might hoist me onto their shoulders and carry me around the room for a while, singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” There was even at least a slim chance that, in a frenzy of admiration for my gumption and my ability to take the long view of things, the Tars might rise up in a body, demand in a single voice my reinstatement as Commodore, rip the insignia from Robby Haskins’s uniform, and drum him out of the flotilla.
Little Follies, “The Young Tars”
The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is.
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (translated by Michael Hery Heim)
I am too fond of myself to be able to see myself objectively. I wish I knew for certain what I am and how much I am worth. There are such possibilities about the situation; it may turn out tremendously, or else explode in a soap bubble. It is the torture of Tantalus to be so uncertain. I should be relieved to know even the worst. I would almost gladly burn my MSS in the pleasure of having my curiosity satisfied. I go from the nadir of disappointment to the zenith of hope and back several times a week, and all the time I am additionally harassed by the perfect consciousness that it is all petty and pusillanimous to desire to be known and appreciated, that my ambition is a morbid diathesis of the mind. I am not such a fool either as not to see that there is but little satisfaction in posthumous fame, and I am not such a fool as not to realise that all fame is fleeting, and that the whole world itself is passing.
Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion (Bruce Frederick Cummings), The Journal of a Disappointed Man
See also: Anticipation, Disappointment TG 98; Pride TG 104; Fortune Cookie Wisdom TG 37; TG 74; TG 109; Wishful Thinking TG 43; TG 91; Fame, Desire for Enduring TG 96; Yearning for Lasting TG 100
Listening in the evening:
From his experience as a pneumonia patient, Zenta Sato has created a concept album, a miniature opera, called “Views From 13th Floor East.” Intensely personal and profoundly universal, it is lyrical, powerful, and musically rich, combining elements of rock and pop with passages of intricately lush orchestral textures. In thirty minutes and twenty-six seconds it takes the listener through the ordeal of hospitalization, evoking the fear, hope, sorrow—and, ultimately, joy—of one man suffering from pneumonia, but also of anyone or everyone who has suffered during the Covid pandemic. It’s a masterpiece.
Sample it here: https://asagayans.net/news/archives/279
[more to come on Monday, March 7, 2022]
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