Curmudgeon

As I age, like many, I take mild delight in being a curmudgeon. There are some issues that just make me a bit cranky and I don't feel like apologizing for them. One such issue involves television. I'm not a fan. Don't have a big flat screen. My living room, with its hardwood floor, teal walls and hand-tinted landscape photos, is a salon, a spot for reading, talking or playing the musical instruments stored there: native American flutes made by my sweetie, conga drum, and small hand drums. It is living room, not a watching room.

Not a TV watcher, I spend my time at home reading, grading papers, writing, cleaning, cooking, gardening, knitting, or playing with my dog. I do not spend my time at home watching TV. Television's main function, in my world, is to serve as a vehicle for NetFlix. The house's two TVs are located at the east end of the place, in rooms with doors that can be closed, so the rest of the house can be quiet, which is how it is most of the time.

My daughter is the same way, seeing TV primarily as a movie-viewing tool. She was regarded with pity by a loved one when he discovered that, as recently as 2007, she had a TV with no remote control system...a TV with an on/off switch that was a knob to be pulled! How could the poor dear get by with such an appliance?

I know there are lots of wonderful people who do not share this approach to television, people I love a lot. In deference to them, I am tempering my observations, couching them in terms that may belie the intensity of my feelings. Hope I am successful at this modulation.

I do not need to have TV as background, finding it actually bothersome, rather than relaxing. I do not need to keep up on the latest news, whether it's from MSNBC, Fox, CNN, or PBS. I do not need to listen to rants about the left or the right. I do not need to know where Angelina and Brad are at a given moment. I do not need to be yelled at by advertisers.

My crankiness about TV surfaces in public spots, as well as the privacy of my home. In airports, I try to sit well away from TVs, though that's a challenge. Same thing goes for restaurants and bars, again a challenge. I was disappointed this week, as I went into a very upscale bar/restaurant located along a beautiful river. A key selling point of this place is the river view. I stopped in for happy hour beverage and appetizer, seeking a light early dinner in an elegant setting. Amazingly, this fancy spot, with its sleek modern architure and stunning black and white photographs, had a blaring TV hung above the glass wall with the river view in the bar! An oxymoron of sorts.

A friend who was traveling posted her annoyance at having to endure booming TV in the hotel's continental breakfast room. She wanted to eat breakfast while visiting with her husband, not eat breakfast while enduring the blast of Fox news. I share her disdain for TV's invasion of personal space during mealtime.

A clear indication of just how TV averse I really am occurred this week. Staying in a very nice hotel, I refused to open the huge mahogany credenza housing the TV. After I'd been in the room for two days, I finally opened it up and found an amazingly clever set-up for making coffee. I'd gone two days without in-room coffee and done so needlessly, all because I'm not a TV fan.

My annoyance about TV occurs, in part, because I have really sensitive hearing. In motels, this is not a good thing, as I can hear folks talking or TV playing rooms away. Outdoors, this is a very good thing, as I can hear owls hooting several houses away. Walking along a river this week, I was able to hear one of my favorite birds, the bashful rufous-sided towhee, as it scratched in the maze of blackberry bramble draping the bank. Could only see the towhees occasionally, but knew they were there. I was able to hear the wingbeats of cormorants as they dashed over my head and hear their amazing splashdowns out in the middle of the river.

I like listening to noises that aren't necessarily man-made. I like being fully present in my environment, taking in all the magic that is offered us each day. For me, television can disrupt that process. And today, the curmudgeon in me offers little apology for that view.

The Un-Known

This week I thought about things we maybe don't need to know, maybe the un-known. I say this after watching my mother undergo cataract surgery four feet away from me. Glass separated us. I could choose to watch the procedure either in "person" by turning my head to the left or "up close" by looking straight ahead at the TV screen, where the surgery took place and was recorded, with edifying narration.

Okay, so what did I need to know about my mom's cataract surgery? That it worked. That she didn't hurt. That it was a good decision. Did I need to see the emulsification of her cataract and the subsequent vaccuming of its debris? Maybe. Did I need to watch as the surgeon cut her eye? No. Especially no if I were looking to my left and actually watching the surgeon slice my mother's eyeball. No.

That got me thinking about the pop phrase TMI (Too Much Information). It's all around us. We don't ask for all the data shared with us, non-stop, nearly everywhere we go. Even though I was flattered with my gut doctor telling me, as we reviewed my colonoscopy pix, that my colon was one of the most beautiful he'd seen, I'm not sure I needed to discuss the appearance of my colon with him. I would probably have been fine with his saying "Everything looks great" and not jointly trekking through the curving highway of my scoped entrails.

When I'm shopping, I really don't need to see the details of that woman's body, squished as it is in undergarments too small and knit outerwear that's too thin. I really don't need to see the details of that man's body, who is apparently choosing to not wear undergarments under his sweats. Nor do I need to see the forms of my co-workers who just finished their workouts, all wrapped up in Spandex. I do not need to see that woman's expensive implants, as perfectly pert as they are. I do not need to see that young man's underwear as he bends down in front of me at the checkstand.


There is much on television I do not need to see. I do not need to know the details of daily life of Snoop Dog, the Osbornes and even the Kardashians, as beautiful as they are. I do not need to know how Sandra is doing now that Jesse is "out" with his inked floozy. I do not need to know what angst Jen is going through without a man. Spare me, please. And I REALLY don't need to know the details of Kate Gosselin's new body. Really.

At work I learn more about employees than I want to know, including their sad realms of health and domestic relations, as well as the pieces that are missing from their ability to determine what behavior is appropriate for the workplace and what is not.

At home I learn more about my neighbors than I need to know. Please spare me the late night staggering about in the driveway or the ramped up diatribe of an unhappy adult child.

In the political realm, I shudder at the excess info I receive, starting with LBJ's scar, through Bill's philandering cigar work, to Palin's sad saga of unwed child hooked to a narcissistic stud.

Spare me, please.

I think of a mentor I had in graduate school, a very reserved, pretty much up-tight Renaissance scholar. To him, Milton was cool ("bomb"). To him, Herrick was racily erotic. To him, the courtly love tradition was where it's at. I savored his observations, in person and, after leaving campus, in more than a decade of joyous correspondence. I appreciated his shock at the impudence of full and unsolicited disclosure. He yearned for coyness, for the valor that is discretion, for the ability to hold back information that may be unsettling and unnecessary. He liked nuance and hints and serendipidous revelation.

Maybe I'm more like him than I think. Maybe the overload of skin and disfunction is more offensive to me than I typically let on. I'm thinking that there is some profound joy in discovery, in mystery, in hesitation. Though I appreciate all the wonders of immediacy that technology and the web allow us, maybe I long for the day when imagination was given a chance to work, before graphic full-face video exploded any doubt. Maybe I long for the more refined, graceful days of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, when less really was more.