Much to my dismay and–let’s be honest–complete relief, I discovered just now that “A Day in Pompeii,” a months-long exhibit about the famous doomed city, had left uptown almost two weeks ago. I guess I figured a spread about a society perfectly preserved in ash for two millennia would itself stick around for at least a thousand years, but that’s museum programming for you. The new exhibit, “Circus,” looks slightly out of my age group.
It’s for the best, too, because in my case the idea of engaging in cultural enrichment invariably proves more engrossing than the events themselves. If I step into a museum, I’ll make good on the educational promise initially, milling around, reading plaques, pressing buttons to elicit earnest audio clips, but not 14 minutes into the trip, the urge to jam those same buttons rapidly will seize me, my eyes will glaze over, and rather than reading plaques I’ll simply be looking at them, diligently trying to give a shit. Similarly, you could drop me into a dress shirt, tie, fancy pants, and then a mezzanine seat at the local symphony, and within eight minutes I’ll be wondering why, if this is indeed Brahms’s first movement, nothing seems to be moving at all. You could say there’s a deficit of attention here.
That’s not to say attentiveness and full engagement are always preferred, of course. I remember the last time I partook of high culture. It was either at the Chicago Cultural Center or a gallery of some sort, in a large room filled with artwork. After casting a critical eye on a few choice pieces, I wondered in hushed tones to Cicero what kind of retards could possibly have painted these monstrosities. I wasn’t hushed enough, apparently, because the security guard shot me a withering look, and duly rebuked I returned to browsing. Turns out I was right, upon closer inspection of the placards. The entire exhibit consisted of artwork produced by the mentally challenged–mentally challenged children, to be exact. I felt horrible.
Fortunately I replaced my heart with a fusion generator shortly thereafter, so let me coldly guide us back to the prior train of thought. Attention span. I find myself surfing over to Wikipedia almost daily. I suppose I’m learning every time I do so, though there’s something disingenuous about it. Sure, I could read the entry on Pompeii and probably learn more than I would’ve from the exhibit, but the convenience of having knowledge on demand just doesn’t seem right. It’s like a youseum rather than a museum, the educational equivalent of Splenda, and intuitively I know it’d be more valuable to hop the train and step through those doors. But it’s a moot point because Pompeii’s gone, again, and with a chilly Saturday on the horizon, coupled with John Adams and Freaks and Geeks on tap, I’m ready to watch television until my eyes bleed.
When you boil it down, much as you would a few industrial-sized pots of spaghetti, volunteering is the act of pouring time into a cause. Whereas normally you’re trading minutes for dollars or entertainment or some other commodity, there’s nothing changing hands here, at least overtly, and sure enough what I culled from this weekend was intangible but valuable: a different way of thinking, along with a better understanding of why I volunteer so rarely.
I went with the Professor to a shelter for recovering alcoholics on Saturday, not to discuss with the tenants how much I dislike drinking, nor to ponder why every bartender mysteriously runs out of mint leaves whenever I order a mojito, or why I shouldn’t tell those same bartenders to march out back and grow me a few goddamned sprigs, but to serve lunch. That’s it. A good ol’ fashioned spaghetti plate. We were merely cooking a meal, not saving the world, and I was pleased to find the experience much as I pictured it, simply by taking past volunteer work and overlaying some foodservice memories on top of it.
Initially I tried preparing the pile of ground beef in piecemeal, hastily darting from one quadrant to the next, until it was revealed to me that flattening out the whole business would be far more elegant. It was a revelation, a reminder to reduce reality to its main ideas. I was preoccupied with browning every inch, when I should’ve viewed it as a gigantic burger. I had gained a handy new thought pattern. And it’s always been about the beef, I suppose. I remember clocking in grill time at the dining hall in college and needing to make, say, a dozen cheeseburgers. My inclination was to assemble them individually. The preferred way to do it, though, was to lay out twelve pieces of bread, then slap on twelve patties, then the cheese, and so on. It was this idea of thinking in layers, and it’s proven repeatedly useful since then.
It was also refreshing to take a break from the corporate mindset, where reports and crazy numbers fly every which where, and measure progress differently. Obviously I wasn’t whipping up rosemary-seasoned flank au jus here. Just seven pounds of beef. Metrics for success? I counted two: browned beef. And nobody dies from eating the browned beef. I’m still standing after finishing a plate, plus enough days have elapsed without any dire phone calls from the shelter, so I can safely declare mission accomplished.
Having said all this, when am I going back? Tough to say. One reason for why I tend to avoid volunteering is a potential allergy to that ooey-gooey feeling of camaraderie. It’s, like, I just want to brown this meat and dish out some lunch, you know? I don’t want to empathize with the other volunteers or chat about my aspirations or engage in small talk about where I’m from. But I realize I’m the odd duck out here. Community. It’s the Rubik’s Cube with the same color on every side.
There is a Mexican siren who summons me sometimes, pressing me to consume unspeakably delicious burritos, and tonight I found her secret music too compelling to resist. Of course, I had to hop in my car, tear down the highway, and peel off four exits later in order to even heed the call, but consider me allured and, a hearty pound of food later, absolutely satisfied.
I needed to have dinner, on one hand, but on the other hand I also set into motion a healthier lifestyle a few weeks ago, complete with reasonable bedtimes, exercise, even a new organic multivitamin that’s been energizing. Call them resolutions, if you must, though I’ve grown to despise New Year’s resolutions. They’re destined to fizzle, you know, and why wouldn’t they? How could lists predicated on a completely arbitrary unit of time possibly fail? It’s no wonder most only have a shelf-life of a month, and woe be to January for shouldering this burden. I mean, look at October. The only resolution there is to power down shitloads of candy.
You could call it a diet, I suppose. For me, though, a good portion of the word evokes images of mortality or, even worse, the ancient art of treating cloth to specified colors. Handicrafts are utterly terrifying to me. Instead of “diet,” I’m going to call it a correction. All I know is, somewhere in between the cajun-rubbed bleu cheese burger and the fried pickles and the holiday treats and the Big Block, something broke and I started feeling terrible. Pants still fit, fortunately, but it’s time for action, the likes of which will tip the scale without necessarily breaking it.