My Cups Runneth Over

Moderation in all things.

 ― Terence

Some men collect women; some, guns; some, cars and trucks.

I collect British cups.

Specifically, blue and white porcelain cups made in Worcester in the mid-18th century by a one Dr. Wall.

Like Colonel Sanders later did for fried chicken, Dr. Wall perfected a "secret recipe" for making porcelain that rocketed his pottery to fame throughout England.

Collecting is a mania, according to psychologists, but an innocuous one.

Until it slides into the form of slavery known as compulsion.

Then, what began as a hobby looks like pathology.

Mine might be termed cuppamania.

I have it badly, but not as badly as British porcelain scholar Michael Berthoud. He owns 1,743 British cups.

Book collectors are also prone to compulsion.

They can swiftly slide from bibliophilia into bibliomania.

They can slide even further into bibliophagy (eating books), bibliotaphy (burying books) and bibliokleptomania (stealing books).

The notorious "Book Bandit" Stephen Blumberg clearly suffered from bibliokleptomania. 

He stole over 23,600 books before he was caught and convicted in 1991. A forensic psychiatrist claimed at the trial Blumberg was schizophrenic, but the judge didn't buy it and gave him four and a half years.

Psychoanalysts note that the collecting bug bites men more than women, except when it comes to shoes.

When my wife cracks wise about my cups, I can point to her shoes.

And if that doesn't work, I can point to her books.

She owns nearly as many books as Michael Berthoud owns cups. Most, for some reason, are about Charlemagne.

That makes her officially a francobioliomaniac.

Shoes

Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.

― Marilyn Monroe

Fashion footwear―boots, shoes, sandals and slippers―no longer captures the bulk of consumer spending in the category, according to retail analysts. 

"Athleisure"―sneakers, flats, slip-ons and flip-flops―has walked off with it.

The reasons for the shift lie deep in women's psyches. 

I suspect they're taking over the world, and need the proper gear.

But who knows where this will end?

Will women acquire even more pairs of shoes?

The average American female, surveys show, already owns 17 pairs of fashion shoes; and many own three times that number.

How many pairs of world-dominion footwear will they buy?

Psychologists, of course, have puzzled for more than a century over women's shoe-fetish. 

Sigmund Freud thought shoes symbolized vaginas; and feet, penises. So for Freud, trying on shoes was a sex act. 

Jacques Lacan thought buying shoes represented an act of domestic defiance. You're proving to yourself you're a master, not a slave. (If you're old enough, you'll remember Nancy Sinatra's hit song.)

Psychologists today are more apt to point to the physical "high" that buying shoes triggers.

Trying on shoes releases a flood of dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin; and paying for them tickles the part of the prefrontal cortex psychologists call our "collecting spot."

But I think the mystique assigned to women's footwear is overblown. 

Most women, if you asked them, would say that buying lots of shoes is simply practical. 

Like belts and purses, shoes are a cheap way to stay abreast of fashion trends without replacing your whole wardrobe every year.

Which leads me to Vincent van Gogh...

A Pair of Shoes by Vincent van Gogh

In the year 1886, Vincent bought a pair of old shoes at a flea market in Montmartre and took them home to use as prop.

That prop turned into one of of art history's most renowned paintings.

Philosophers in particular have celebrated "A Pair of Shoes."

In "The Origin of the Work of Art" (1935), the Existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger―who exalted German peasants―claimed Vincent's painting was the very embodiment of the peasant's fate: food insecurity, ceaseless poverty, over-size families, and premature death.

The shoes, Heidegger wrote, are "pervaded by uncomplaining anxiety as to the certainty of bread, the wordless joy of having once more withstood want, the trembling before the impending child-bed, and shivering at the surrounding menace of death."

Heidegger's interpretation came under fire 30 years later in "The Still Life as a Personal Object" (1968), by the philosopher Meyer Schapiro.

Schapiro―a Marxist who exalted the urban poor―claimed that "A Pair of Shoes" didn't depict a peasant's shoes at all. 

It depicted the artist's own shoes.

Vincent always painted peasants' shoes in a "clear, unworn shape," Shapiro wrote, because (like Heidegger) he believed peasants were noble. 

But Vincent depicted his own shoes as rumpled and ratty, because―down and out in Paris―he was rumpled and ratty.

Shoes don't star only in paintings, however. 

They star in countless fairy tales, story books and motion pictures, as well. 

Just think of all the plots that feature shoes: Cinderella, The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, Puss in Boots, The Red Shoes, The Wizard of Oz, The Absent-Minded Professor, The Devil Wears Prada, Kinky Boots, Barefoot in the Park, Forrest Gump, Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Get Smart, to name but a few.

That's a lot of shoes!

Hiking Boots by Bob James

Lace Curtain

The greatest generation was formed first by the Great Depression.

— Tom Brokaw

My parents both experienced the Great Depression.

But their experiences could not have been more different.

My mother's was a "lace curtain" home. As a 10-year old, she was hardly aware, much less affected, by the disquiet outside.

But she did recall vividly that strange men often appeared at the back door, asking for a sandwich.

She also recalled a Thanksgiving when her grandparents fed hot turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes to strangers they gathered in the cellar.

My father's was a much different home.

He never spoke of it, not once, nor of the Great Depression.

I only know things turned so desperate, his dad sent the baby sister to an orphanage.

If you don't believe there are years of pain ahead for countless millions, I envy you.

You're in the camp that hopes this interregnum is V- or W-shaped.

Perhaps you're an optimist, misinformed by leaders, or simply "lace curtain."

Whatever the case, spend a few moments with MOMA's new video.

PS: Read my most-popular post ever. It's also based on a life experience of my mother.

Changes Ahead

We have it within our deepest powers not only to change ourselves
but to change our culture.

— Gary Snyder

Fifty years ago, San Francisco Beat poet Gary Snyder published Four Changes, a hippy-dippy broadside that fast became environmentalism's manifesto.

Who'd ever have guessed fifty years later that not men, but microbes, would trigger the "total transformation" he envisioned.

Snyder conjured a world blessed with a healthy and diverse global population which is governed not by national leaders but a "world tribal council." A world blessed with a "technology of communication, education, and quiet transportation." A world blessed with societies that inhibit power and greed and encourage instead "music, meditation, mathematics, mountaineering, magic, and all other ways of authentic being-in-the-world." And a world where women are "totally free and equal."

Listen to Gary Snyder read his remarkable statement.

Because there's something in the air.

Getting Real

The order of our perceptions shows the goodness of God, but affords no proof of the existence of matter.

— George Berkeley

A new paper published in the science journal Entropy says consciousness underlies the universe.

The paper seeks to unify quantum mechanics and immaterialism.

The paper claims that, in reality, everything—you, your spouse, your kids, your dog, your house, your car, your office, your boss—everything is... pure thought.

The universe "self-actualizes" into existence through an algorithmic rule the authors call the "principle of efficient language." 

Everything, they claim, is a single "grand thought." 

Human beings—as well as animals, houses, cars, offices and bosses—are just "emergent sub-thoughts."

"The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" is the product of a team of scientists led by the Los Angeles-based entrepreneur and cannabidiol-promoter Klee Irwin.

Sound too woo-woo for you?

Well, in the words of Yogi Berra, it's déjà vu all over again.

Eighteenth century philosopher George Berkeley—namesake of the California college-town and woo-woo world headquarters—also maintained that reality is a mental construct.

In his 1710 book A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley explained how things are actually thoughts, and that the thoughts composing the universe persist through time—even after we're dead—because God is keeping her eye on them.

Berkeley was an Anglican bishop, not an entrepreneur; and he lived in London, not LA.

But, oddly enough, Bishop Berkeley was a promoter—not of CBD but of "tar-water."

Indeed, his best-selling philosophical work, Siris, published in 1744, sought to prove the elixir was a panacea: it could lead you to perfect health and (special bonus offer!) to the contemplation of God.

Here's a handy one-minute guide to Bishop Berkeley.