You know what I want, that is ridiculously expensive, and that I can in no way practically justify, but which I still have a serious hankering for?
A sword cane.
At least twice a week for the last couple of months, I’ve spent some time looking at the photos at the Burger Knives sword cane pages–especially the titanium “Stilletto” model.
The thing costs $1200, is probably illegal where I live, and my acquiring one would probably end up with me in the hospital with some kind of serious self-inflicted accidental wound… and I still want it. Even knowing that it would probably end up in a closet, or holding up a wall…
Hell, I want to get a swanky custom-detailed one, with fancy scrollwork and blade etchings, and Clan MacLaren
I blame Lester Dent. See, I read a lot of Doc Savage stories when I was a kid, and I always really liked the character of “Ham” Brooks, the sophisticated lawyer of Doc’s team.
And Ham carried that sword cane.
It’s fundamentally tied to the notion of the intelligent, sardonic, sophisticated man of adventure in my mind.
My heart rebels against my generation,
That talks of freedom and is slave to riches,
And, toiling ‘neath each day’s ignoble burden,
Boasts of the morrow.
No space for noonday rest or midnight watches,
No purest joy of breathing under heaven!
Wretched themselves, they heap, to make them happy,
Many possessions.
One of the ongoing stories of my life is my fascination with wanting things that have little or no practical value. I think this is primarily due to my having read a lot as a kid–I read about lots of lives that were very different from the one I lived or saw people around me living, and I wanted to make my world more like the ones I saw in the stories. Except that I had a child’s understanding of the differences, and a child’s inability to distinguish the trappings from the life.
I think this may have started with the Consumers Distributing catalog when I was a kid. I have firm and clear memories of looking through that catalogue every year to make Christmas lists, and deciding every year that when I was “grown up” I would buy things like a freestanding coat rack/hat stand and a combination pants press/valet, because the sort of sophisticate I imagined I would be would naturally have such things in his house.
While I never actually got either of those items–and why didn’t I buy a coat rack when I bought my first house?–I have certainly been guilty of accumulating various things that seem to me now to be artefacts of different ideas of what my life “should be” like, but which don’t serve any practical value in my life as it is.
I always thought I should have Guinness on tap in my house, so I have the keg fridge and all the Guinness connectors, but I haven’t actually had a keg in it since we left Ontario–now that I’m a family man, not someone with roommates and regular sets of people dropping in just to drink… well, I just don’t drink beer at home, aside from the occasional bottle while barbecuing. The keg fridge has no practical value for who I am now, although it once did.
The keg fridge is behind a full bar. I always thought a man should have a bar in his house, and should keep it stocked with enough things to make most cocktails, and supply the vast majority of whatever any guest might want to drink. And so I have the bar, and it’s fully stocked with all the basics, and there’s a couple of “top shelves” behind it that hold the “good stuff” I’ve accumulated. And if I didn’t have cleaning ladies, the whole thing would be lost under the dust. Again, I don’t really drink anything from the bar at home. I’m still a fan of single malt, and can pass for a connoisseur, but I rarely sit down for the evening and pour myself a glass–drinking is a social activity for me, and if there isn’t someone else to drink with I’d just as soon have a soft drink. The bar, and all the setup that goes with it (not just the various kinds of alcohol, but the jiggers and shakers and strainers and fancy glassware…), well those have never really had a practical value in my life–when I do drink with people in my home they mostly want beer or wine; I’ve never had someone ask me to mix them a Tom Collins or an Old Fashioned, much less a pousse-cafe. The bar is necessary equipment for a life I thought I would live, but never have, and probably don’t actually want to.
A look in my closets would reveal hundreds of other examples. Hell, just looking on top my dresser I’ve got two pocketwatches, neither of which I ever wear, and about six different pairs of very nice cufflinks–but I haven’t worn a shirt with French cuffs in… well, it’s got to be six years anyway. At some point I thought I wanted to be the kind of man who would wear cufflinks, or a pocketwatch. Hell, I still want to be–and I’d love to have a sword cane to complete the ensemble. But that’s really not who I am.
There are lots of other examples (although I don’t think the art or the books are examples–the practical value of owning them, as opposed to say getting them from a library or gallery, may be arguable, but they are essential to the life I actually lead) around the house, and I’m sure my wife could list dozens that I wouldn’t think of. I recognize this characteristic in myself.
And yet…
And yet…
Buy, Always Consume
Buy, buy more than you can
consume. Consume. Fuck over
any relationship.
Step on everything and always
buy everything up. Carry home
as much as you can.
Stuff, stuff yourself with greed.
Don’t look anybody in
the eyes.
Surround yourself with high walls
so neither grass nor human
voices can reach you;
sink, sink into the shit as deep
as you can go.
You must be on your guard;
buy away, carry it home
always consume.
Look around, make sure
they’re not robbing you;
trample
any flower
any plant.
Buy, always buy
carry home
more than you can carry ;
consume, consume,
sink, sink into the shit,
shit, shit shit.
—Ferruccio Brugnaro translation by Jack Hirschman
Any similar artefacts in your life that you want to confess?
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