The greatest temptation, when one becomes on Old Man, is to be a curmudgeon. There's a lot to be said for it: you can become a Character, and bop people over the head with your cane. But in the first place it means you become a bore. 'Oh, there's old RK on his hobby-horse again, waffling on about the decline of the world,' people say, and avoid you....I dunno about that. What RK in his later sentences describes isn't (at least in my terminology) a "curmudgeon" per se, but a crank. This blog has always found curmudgeonly types rather distinct, and certainly never boring: cranks (and you can infer the repetitive insinuation in the word itself, the idea of operating a crank implying repetition) are intolerable; curmudgeons-- again, at least in this blog's experience and operating vocabulary-- are another story altogether. (My apologies for the overly-convoluted sentence-structure there.) Despite the various definitions given over the years (especially those associating the term with churlishness), in this age it's attached, at least to this mind (such as it is) to a kind of doggedness and persistence. It's also developed-- again, and perhaps only to this churled head-- the idea of concealment (and so it comforts me somewhat to see that dimension included in the etymological associations outlined in the attached link). Curmudgeons tend to be allegorists, though often cantankerous and usually guarded ones: stubbornness has become their trademark (and often eccentricity their outward facades); they're the deeper dimension of what I call cynics, those who expect the worst 90% of the time but secretly root for the 10% of the time they might be wrong. Admittedly, that's a personal definition, or a (perhaps) overly-personal determination. That's because, I think, (and it comes down to my own experience) curmudgeons really are among the most idealistic among us, but they don't ever want any of us to think of them in that way. My father is a curmudgeon, but he's not a crank, by this definition; he'd never, ever, ever admit to optimism, or to hope, or anything of that gird; but everyone who knows him knows it's there, lurking beneath every grumbling glare. And I'd be a liar if I said I didn't inherit any of that.
But in the end, I have come to respect it, at least as I define it (and perhaps some of you out there might have better terminology than I possess, especially as I write this, uncharacteristically over a bottle of mezza-mezza Merlot). Curmudgeons, unlike cranks, always share space with the miles gloriosus, or the braggart-warrior. They're always attached to another ideal, whether or not they ever represented or stood for it; but theirs is the idea of longeur, a not entirely inappropriate thing, even if it's more often than not couched in bristling terms.
I admit, I may have-- somewhere along the line-- redefined the term in regard to my own experience (and-- p'shaw!-- my own self-image). If so, well, there we are. But a curmudgeon, in my knowledge, will, when the situation demands it, admit error, will (like the true cynic) admit when he's been proven wrong-- which the crank would never do. The curmudgeon seldom has to eat crow because (s)he's usually right, but (s)he will if the situation calls for it-- and (s)he will do it more in swallowed gladness than usurped pride.
But maybe here I've Doctor Johnsoned myself into a fallacy, though, like a curmudgeon, I'd hesitate to admit so. What I will say is this-- that some people that I've known that others have described with that particular C word have been as idealistic, though generally cautiously so, as anyone else, and perhaps moreso idealistic for knowing what slings and arrows will assail when given the chance. And still they persist, perhaps scarred, but never entirely as jaded as they may purport. And in that fact alone-- or that interpetation alone, if you'll allow-- matters are telling. Sometimes the curmudgeon is the veteran who's been driven into the closet (or the cave, if you wish to avoid the homophilial implications of the previous association) and wants nothing more than to be able to come out.
All of this is probably a very long way to saying this: curmudgeons don't bore me; more often than not, they inspire-- even if that's a liberty of definition I have taken with time and experience. Curmudgeons crank, I've learned, because they love something-- some idea, some principle, some fact-- so much they dare not trespass upon a meaning that betrays them, or that which they love. You can see it in their defensiveness, you can see it their recalcitrance; it's the skunk's stripe, if only any of us dare to see it-- and not flee from it prematurely.
(POST-SCRIPT: And YES, it's okay to be arbitary, as long as you acknowledge that you're being arbitrary. It's like handing out that grain of salt before you dare to speak. I give said salt out in chunks-- and this time, in cases.)
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