12.04.01I've been cocooning lately. This is the urge to wrap up in a down comforter, watch gentle television shows, and eat soft food that doesn't have to be chewed. I blame this partly on my cold and partly on all the bad, bad nightly news. Israel hates Palestine, Palestine hates Israel, terrorists hate us, and the media hates everything but its own smug skepticism (what Lileks calls "Virtuous Defeatism").
Something like fear is crouching somewhere in my head, like a toad in the garden, making little burping sounds from time to time. I think it's not there, but then it pops up. I don't stand at the bottom of the stairs shouting goodbye to my husband in the morning anymore. I make sure there is a hug and a kiss. I swallow more of my pettiness, try harder to be grateful for everything, take snapshots in my head of good things to block out the bad images coming from t.v.
On Saturday I painted our living room a color called "Cozy Room." It is a warm yellow that replaces a tasteful yet uncomforting beige. I made macaroni and cheese, drank chamomile tea, and watched decorating shows.
There are few conflicts on Home and Garden television, and they is why it has become my default channel. Professional hosts and decorators speak in soothing tones about creating welcoming, warm environments to cocoon in. There are flowers and paints and textures and a general aura of safety and order and goodness.
Hey! You could suffocate in a cocoon. I have always been a homebody, anyway, but I am suddenly aware of the danger of becoming truly agoraphobic.
Charles Schultz was also a homebody who struggled with depression and agoraphobia. Friends say he adored his five kids, played hockey to win, and liked to sit at home in an old blue leather chair with his dog on his lap and eat fish and chips and watch "Jeopardy."
Yay for life's simple pleasures. Nobody wants the self-righteous Taliban or similar, who banned kite-flying and snowmen-making, and equated virtue with lack of joy. God shouts "Blasphemy!" at the very idea.
But my own enjoyment of life's simple pleasures threatens to turn into something sinister and selfish. I don't want to wallow in the comfort of 70 degrees Fahrenheit/gentle background music/hot chocolate.
Charles Schultz started most of his mornings at the Warm Puppy snack shop with coffee and an English muffin with grape jelly before he walked to his studio. When he was diagnosed with colon cancer in December 1999, he drew an analogy to schoolyard bullies:
Here I am, sitting on the bench, having my lunch, and you come over and bop me on the head with a rock.
That's the toad in the back of my head, starting to croak. I don't want to get bopped on the head with a rock. I will stay here in my house.
Then again, who does want to get bopped on the head with a rock? What, am I special in my desire for self-preservation and comfort? What if everybody hid in their houses all the time? I'm flopping the idea round and round in my head that this cocooning can turn so quickly into simple hedonism, which is just a fancy way of saying lazy materialistic piggy. It is not much of a way of life, if you ask me.
"Your shyness," my sister once told me firmly, "is not an apostolic virtue, Suzie. It's got to go." I'm guessing ditto to the lurking Toad of Fear. Charles Schultz brought so much joy to so many people by making that trek to the studio every day, and by getting his whole soul right into that world of Peanuts. I'm glad he struggled with his fears, instead of just hiding under a comforter.
|
