i beg to differ

Normal people use their weekends to do relaxing things. They spend long mornings reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. They go for a stroll around town and pop into a flea market. They sit out in sidewalk cafes and let the hours pass, chatting and sipping drinks.

Normal people. Normal, upper middle-class New Yorkers. Les bourgeois.

I don't know if I'm worried, but I am changing. The first paragraph of this entry is a relatively accurate description of the weekend I just had. I did a couple of other "less normal" things -- such as attending a teacher training for a volunteer arts school for disadvantaged young people, and taking some time (not enough) to work on revisions of a play of mine. But my bourgie buzzer has been sounding a lot more frequently these days and I don't quite know what to make of it.

It all has to do with settling in. It's a form of cultural tropism, through which you gradually and involuntarily acquire habits and attitudes characteristic of your environment. The pull of Manhattan living is just too strong.

Come to think of it, I went through a similar evolution when I was studying at Oxford. I arrived relatively militant and countercultural, rejecting the culture of weeknight pub-going, fancy dinners and overall lounging as an affront to productivity, even morality. We'd been given all of this privilege, this time removed from the hustle and bustle of the workaday world, in order to think deep and work hard and contemplate serious issues, not just to sample life's pleasures like latter day Sebastian Flytes! By the end of my stay there, of course, I was sipping champagne on the manicured lawns with the rest of them, eating strawberries in a punt and justifying it all by saying, "You only live once."

The point, I guess, is that when you first move to a new place you come with a set of assumptions -- and, if you're me, those assumptions often form the basis of an immediate cultural critique. I arrive in Oxford or Manhattan or wherever with a goal or a purpose in mind that is somehow contributive to my greater personal trajectory, the ongoing project of my artistic/professional vocation. And I have no time for whatever the local manifestations of the irrelevant hedonism of late capitalist culture happen to be. I arrive with my internal metronome set on a rhythm that does not stop. I try to cram in so much that weekends become precious resources -- "outside-of-work" time that's available for developing all kinds of side projects. It becomes time to accomplish something, not time to just enjoy.

But then, at a certain point (often around 1.5 years in), I start to realize why all those people around me are enjoying all of those pleasures. Because it is really nice to sleep in on a Sunday morning (especially if there's a nubile, recent Columbia graduate in the bed with you) and to get up and have breakfast and stroll around and do nothing and pop in and out of stores and read things and discuss. At times, I live my life as if Henry Ford were looking over my shoulder, urging me onward to be more productive. This syndrome is different from conventional "workaholism." It's the psychological predisposition towards activities that have impact, that will change society, better something, contribute something.

What a lot of people -- a lot of privileged urbanites, whether they live in New York or Europe -- have been raised on, though, and come to value is a culture of digestion. It's not just about sampling all of those pleasures, it's about savoring them, sitting and letting them work through your system. It's about appreciating the good things in life.

(Doesn't Martha Stewart always say that? "That's a good thing." I've come to realize that for a certain class of people the default use of good is almost always an aesthetic one, as you would apply the word to a wine. I'm more inclined to use the word in a grander, Kantian sense, with moral and social justice implications: "Sure this is all nice, but is it really good??")

I started out my life in New York self-consciously trying to be different. Different from my fellow Ivy League graduates, different from the other returning Rhodes Scholars and the grad school students. Different, too, from my fellow young aspiring artists whose main social goal so often seems to be conceived only in aesthetic terms. I wasn't going to live as other people do and whenever people asked me questions -- about where I worked or how I lived -- I wanted the answers, on some level, to raise eyebrows.

"Really? You have a communal living situation -- with Mennonites?" "You work 40 hours a week trying to 'end homelessness' while you're also trying to build a career in the theater?" My fundamental motives for living and working as I have been are genuine ones, but there's also an element of trying to live as differently as possible from everyone else around me, even my friends. To be in the culture, but not of it. And to an extent that's a worthy goal; taken to its self-serving extreme, it can become perverse.

Now, as I face the impending inevitability of my finding a new place to live (most likely a much more conventional place, where I have my own apartment and my own bourgeois trappings), I feel as if I'm at risk of over-normalization. Why not live communally forever? I love it so. The answer is, of course, that I could do that if I wanted to, but that would be a choice -- a choice that is not only different, but also difficult. My situation at Menno House doesn't put a lot of burdens on me -- it's cheap rent, a few minor obligations and really nice people. It's really a great deal, but it comes with the air of living on the edge, of challenging the cultural norm. Perpetuating that is a harder thing to do.

Bringing people back to where I live or telling them about how I live (whether they're friends or potential lovers) causes raised eyebrows and expressions of admiration, yes, but also sometimes responses of confusion. Why not take advantage of certain comforts if they're there? You're not a monk. What's so great about renunciation? "A lot!" I'm inclined to whine, and I still believe that. But there's also a lot that's great (and healthy) about enjoying yourself. It's a balancing act: when does enjoyment become indulgence? Especially since I was raised Catholic, this issue will probably always plague me.

The conclusion to draw, though, is probably that living counterculturally is not more worthy in and of itself. Things defined in opposition to something else tend, at their core, to possess a fundamental emptiness. What the heck do I value most of all? That's the question to ask. Little quotidian calculations of worthiness and justification, having faith that I'm being honest with myself and not being seduced into bourgeois self-delusion...

Well, I think and talk so much about the moral justification for every damn little thing I do that at least I know this much: it's not going to creep up on me. I'm gonna be choosing every step of the way.