Generalissimo

Rediscovered this recently, written longhand by lantern-light during a weekend camping trip that turned... well... a little odd...

26 August 2005

Naturally enough, I favor in theory the practice and preservation of ancient folkways and handicrafts—smithery, beadwork, tanning and the like.

But seeing this translate into a freak parade of nicotine-stained trucker caps, one-drop Ojibway saddoes in porno ‘taches and embarrassing buckskins, Civil War re-enactors with hateful bumper-stickers, and a beardy would-be mountain man on his day off from the Ren Faire tromping across the state park parade grounds in his stupid fucking wooden shoes—well, it’s almost enough to make me believe that progress should mean no looking back.

It’s hard to say this without feeling a little churlish.

Of course, hobbies in general tend to strike me this way. Perhaps it is because I am a fox by nature, and know lots of little things, that the hedgehog mindset is so alien to me: but to know a lot about any one thing—be it flint-knapping, model trains, or the Beatles—seems to me an objective sign of a disordered mind.

Such people are necessary, of course—without them, how would our flints get knapped, after all?—but they’re no-one I’d want to have a drink with. Of course they’d probably be drinking mead anyway, which they made themselves with honey from their own hives. That’s the rub: Everything that should be fun, they make so much work.