The Battle of Maladroit in 1066

On the Plains of Maladroit, in the year 1066, two armies of the night and day, clashed. One won, one lost, and life on Harm was never the same. (Correction: The two opposing armies were bolstered by myriad subarmies: paramilitary tribes and militias loosely organized and even more loosely controlled. In effect, every man, woman, and child on Harm was either conscripted or forced to align with one side or the other. No escaping allegiances, imposed or chosen.)

It comes as no surprise to know that neither side — in fact, no two Harmian individuals — can agree on the battle’s causes, either proximate or remote. Theories abound: which letters to keep in the alphabet; how to pronounce disputed diphthongs, syllables, or words; how to define love, hate, or chartreuse; when to speak or keep silent; how to kiss; how to kill; what to eat; the best method for boiling water; optimal positions for procreation; opposing views on sleep hygiene; disagreement on the need for clothing; disputes over child-rearing; origin narratives; questions on the value of iambic pentameter; opposing views on evangelism (scientific or religious); the propriety of the Designated Hitter role in military strategy; fissures on the practical effect of human sacrifice as sport; debate over chess openings; et cetera.
In real-life quotidian terms, what difference does it make whether either side or all sides, one individual or some individuals, reach consensus on the causes of this seminal conflict? Would it erase present-day conflict on Harm? Would it usher in a Pax Romana (a Pax Harmana or Pax Harmonica, if you will)?

Doubtful.

Owing to the findings of forensic archaeopsychohistorians over the course of Harmian centuries, we can agree upon and consequently itemize these indisputable impacts arising from the Battle of Maladroit in 1066:

• Those in the North embraced and spoke with the long A; those in the South, the short A.

• The umlaut, in sound and symbol, perished.

• Boiling olive oil was no longer used as a foreplay lotion.

• All those in the West insisted on left-handedness under penalty of execution; right-handedness in the East.

• On December 18, every Harmian — North, South, West, East — observes a full 24 hours of silence.

• On every quadri-annual February 29, a 24-hour period of compulsory sexual activity is prescribed, under penalty of death (unless, of course, such activity results in terminal exhaustion or fatal dehydration).

• Wearing, mentioning, referring to, spelling, painting, videotaping, recording, or photographing the color chartreuse is prohibited under penalty of life imprisonment (in a chartreuse cell). 

• Every written sentence must end with a preposition, or the word "preposition."
  

• The Great Migration began, though no consensus exists as to who the migrants were or are, or as to where they went or go.   

 

-lph-bet

Aside from linguists, archaeologists, and archaeolinguists, Earthlings are not aware that the Harmian alphabet lacks the letters h, a, r, and m. Naturally, Earthlings would not know this, since a cosmic app translates automatically into a selected Earthling language, in this case English. If you ask me it’s a sick joke, a perverse planetary editorial. What are we saying: eliminate those letters and we find comity, peace on Harm, good will toward Harmlings?

The calculated omission of these four letters insults any self-respecting diphthong, digraph, ligature, phoneme, or grapheme. Worse, it perpetuates a legacy, a mythos, centered on “harm” even as it struts and pretends to deny harm.

How can we Harmlings reverse this? How might we recalibrate our alphabetical history, alphabetical present moment, and alphabetical future?

The solution is so easy as to be laughable.

Our subversion literally (for once, literally means literally, not figuratively) is as easy as A-B-C, or in our case, h, a, r, m. 

The revolution begins by reinserting those four letters back into the slots they once occupied, eons ago. 

If they say, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step,” then let us confidently declare, “The rewriting of history begins with one letter.” 

Or: “Our sentence is commuted one letter at a time.”

Try: “The alphabet deserves all its letters.”

And: “Harmlings, alphabetize. You have nothing to lose but your apostrophes.”

name change / game change

In ancient times, it was said that the naming of a person, place, or thing conferred an identity. Ancient times? We still do it. All the time. Whether we are naming a child, a pet, a vehicle, or a street, we are conferring an identity, or trying to. (And look at the entanglement some sports teams have gotten into because of an offensive or disrespectful name.) Companies spend tons of money to create a name of a product that sends a subliminal message as well as a liminal and supraliminal enticement to buy, acquire, or possess. 

So, the inevitable question arises: why not simply rename the planet? Who says it has to be named Harm?

In other words, can we retrofit the identity-conferring naming process? Does it work inside out as well as outside in?

I say, it’s worth a try.

I expect risks and challenges. For one, reaching a consensus presents perhaps insurmountable challenges. Preceding consensus, how do Harmlings nominate new planet names? I can envision geographical districts voting upon alternatives, leading to a global referendum. But as I type these words, I am overwhelmed at how daunting this might be. Squabbles are bound to erupt over the renaming process, logistics, transparency, fairness, trust, objectivity, accuracy, et cetera ad finitum (infinitum is hyperbole). The whole enterprise seems like an invitation for adding layers of harm, new harm-laden permutations and configurations. 

For all we know, this is precisely how we got into this mess (mess is judgmental; after all, how do we know whether Harm’s status quo is any or worse or better than that on Earth, the moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn, or Proxima Centauri (allegedly the closest star)?

But as I said, it’s worth a try. That’s the subterranean optimist in me talking. What have we got to lose? (See above for potential loss scenarios.)

Just for kicks and giggles, what would be your new-planet-moniker nomination? Remember, this venture just might work. As they say, be careful for what you ask for. If renaming were to yield reframing, what would you suggest?

Harder than you thought, right?

As an example, take “love,” a natural choice. Planet Love. Idyllic, eh? Hold on. You can see the dissent already: love in its multitude of manifestations or masquerades: familial, parental, paternal, maternal, fraternal, sororal, platonic, erotic, romantic, asexual, collegial, sacrificial, communal, eternal, self-directed, patriotic, divine, satanic, psychotic, monogamous, polyamorous love.

Who knew we’d be pining for good ol’ Harm?

And don't forget: what is the guarantee that a planetary name change will result in a game change? We can't say with certainty that customs, practices, and actions on Harm will actually change.  

#climate #change

You hear about it a lot: on the airwaves, in print, online, offline, onshore, offshore, in the fields, the streets, along the boulevards, in the boardrooms and the barns, land, sea, and air.  

Climate change.

It’s undeniable, both the talk and the reality. Indisputable. Incontrovertible.

But here on planet Harm climate change is precisely what’s needed. We need urgent, radical, sustainable climate change. We live in an atmosphere (a biosphere, if you will) of too much heat, too many decibels, and too much acid rain spewing from our mouths. They say, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” How about, “It’s not the heat, it’s the harm.” 

Things have gotten so steamy (in discourse, taste, and discord) you can hardly breathe. The harmony is killing us, quickly or slowly. Please note that on Harm the word “harmony” has an etymology that differs from the one Earthlings embrace. For us, harmony comes from “harm”; from there, we share the same etymological lineage as Earthlings: Old English hearm "hurt, pain; evil, grief; insult," from Proto-Germanic harmaz, taken from Old Saxon harm and Old Norse harmr "grief, sorrow”; hearkening back to Old Frisian herm "insult; pain," Old High German harm, German harm "grief, sorrow, harm”; and so on. You get the point.)

It will surprise no resident of this planet that we have a dangerous level of toxic constituents of concern (COCs); harmful doses of pollutants; a cornucopia of contaminants, including contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). We find these silent killers in our foodweb, our worldwide web, our breatheweb, drinkweb, and most tellingly in our speechweb.

We daily ingest a menu of verbal criteria air pollutants, degrading both our ambient air and indoor air quality (IAQ). It’s a menu we can’t select from column A and column B. No, we are forced to eat the whole smorgasbord of scathing vitriol. Harm’s measurable air emissions emanate from heat and power generation, lies, deceptions, half-truths, dissemblings, distortions, and double dealing. The particulate matter dancing in the air we breathe matters. Particulate matter matters (PMM).

We suffer suffocation by syllables; no one can get a word in edgewise here.

What to do?

It’s not too late. almost, but not yet.

Naturally, source control is the most efficient and cost-effective means of remediation.

Here are other suggested interventions for atmospheric remediation, for salutary and salubrious climate control:

• mechanical collectors: AI-powered robotic devices that capture seemingly invisible harm-packed and potent dialogue bubbles (similar to the kind seen in comic strips and graphic novels)

• dispersion scrubbers: mega-fans that scatter the syllables into micro-phonemes (Note: the harm-laden words or actions become subdetectable, which many experts assert makes them more dangerous.)

• fabric filters: masks that muffle utterances into indecipherable gibberish (The inventors apologize for not having these available while Rush Limbaugh was scorching the airwaves.)

• electrostatic precipitators: devices that generate an avalanche of static so as to negate negative discourse

• combustion systems (thermal oxidizers): harmful words and actions are blown up at the point of origin

• condensers: harmative events or words are squashed like cockroaches

• absorbers/adsorbers: AI-choreographed and orchestrated WiFi devices that suck harmifacts from the atmosphere and marry them to each other, internally or surficially, respectively

• biological degradation: bioremediation processes whereby Nature takes its toll, breaks harm down, gets its revenge, or balances its karma

• selective catalytic reduction (SCR): spiritually lowers the temperature or renders impotent  harm-drenched discourse or detrimental action

• genetic retro engineering: attempts to nullify negative impacts Harmlings are prone to; also known as Edenic edification (experimental beta version in progress; volunteers sought for clinical trials) 
  

little Harmlings

Gimme that!

It’s mine!

I want it.

It’s mine.

No, mine. 

You can’t have it.

Give it to me.

No, you can’t have it.

Go away.

No. I don’t like you.

It’s mine. 

I don't like you.

Go away.

No, I won't.

Leave me alone.

I can hurt you.

No, you can’t.

Yes, I can.

Stop.

Stop it.

a list, not a litany

Suppose you have had enough? You are tired of the harm cycle. What can you do?

The short answer: I don't know.

I know, that's disappointing.

If I were asked (and I haven't been), what would I myself putatively do to halt the harm? 

(Can you imagine legions of demonstrators brandishing placards with the words HALT THE HARM instead of STOP THE STEAL? [Can a placard be brandished?])

A list, though not a litany:

• Do nothing. (Maybe the harmer or the harmful conditions will expire, tire, surrender, grow bored or disillusioned, or have a change of heart.)
• Try something, anything, different.
• Take up a new habit.
• Act as if.
• Practice a charm.
• Ask for help.
• Accept the help.
• Go deeper into the circle.
• Go undercover.
• Trick them.
• Employ magic.
  
• Pray.
• Ingest pharmaceuticals.
  
• Build a new social infrastructure.
• Surrender.
• Redefine harm.
• Accept the status quo (until it changes).
• Enlist allies.
• Turn the circle of harm into an oval, then a square, then a rhombus, then a triangle.
  
• Innovate circle-breaking technology.
• Self-induce a hypnotic trance, a hypno-selfie.
• Practice mental telepathy with harmers and harmees.
  
• Convert to their side.
  
• Undergo electroshock therapy.
  
• Deploy tanks and other heavy armor, physically, metaphysically, or both.

DISCLAIMER: Let's be clear: the author of this blog makes no claim or pretense to being any kind of authority or expert, professional or otherwise. In short, I have no advice or recommendation(s) to make about anything. So, why bother? Good question. I am merely listening to myself muse, seeing if the microphone works, testing to see how successful I am as a tightrope walker.

 

held harmless

If anyone or anyplace needs indemnification, it's Planet Harm. To indemnify: compensate for a hurt or injury; or to protect one against hurt or harm. From Latin, indemnis, unhurt. Here it gets tricky for us Harmlings. Who among us can be counted among the unhurt? Exactly. No one. That doesn't mean we're on a level playing field of harm. No, no, no. Harm glides on a continuum starting from the first infinitesimal, granular speck away from unhurt or unharm all the way to the end of the harm continuum: a nightmare beyond words or imagination. Worse than that, is there an endpoint to the harm continuum? Harmlings can always go darker, conjuring up new brews of bruises and agonies. 

Then again, surely it's not linear. Our paths of harm are zigs and zags, spins and turns, halts and balks. Same with unharm.

Let's not be so bleak. If we are to think that way about the worst of us, or the worst of the inclinations of any of us, then we should go to the other end of the spectrum. When does harmless leach into harm? In other words, who says anything or anyone is pure unhurt/unharm or pure hurt/harm? And whoever said it's static or immutable?

In real life on Planet Harm, it's typically, if not always, more gray. Harm competes and blends with unharm. Unharm flirts with harm; they may have a dalliance here or there. Unhurt and hurt, harmless and harm, might sport in the same bed in some riotous rampage of intertwining. They may even breed offspring. Or it might be more subtle than that: harmless and harm might merely exchange glances, or shake hands, or briefly embrace, or catch a cold from each other, a virus of harmlessness infecting harmfulness, or vice versa.

This is getting too confusing. The point is: it ain't all black or white.

We'll end on a buoyant note, a lifting of spirits, a poetic hymn to what Harmlings aspire to, sometime somehow somewhere:

Held harmless.

In the bosom of love. In a mother's arms. A father's grip. Embraced in the night. Sheltered from the storm. Under the brooding wing. Behind the fortress walls. Held harmless. Held without question or qualification. Held without cost or payment. Beyond all doubt, merit, or fear. Less harm. Free of harm. Banished. Forgotten harm. Erased. Ambrosia d'amnesia.  

 

the charm offensive

We've all done it. We've all done it, knowingly or not; with the best, or the worst, of intentions. (As the aphorism puts it, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.") We've all done what? We've wrapped ourselves in munificent intentions as a cloak of armor against giving or receiving harm. You've gone on The Charm Offensive, haven't you? Be more specific, you say. "Give us some examples we can remember, that we can take to the metaphorical moral bank, the one that kept open our bankrupt accounts in the hope the tide would turn," the populace proclaims.

The Charm Offensive.

The Charm Offensive wears a multitude of disguises, a whole wardrobe of masquerades projecting delight or fright. 

Such as what?

The compliment that distracts from a slight. The gift that's not a gift at all but a barter for something in return. A bouquet of penance or regret. The trinket of triumph over trouble, a trouble you inflicted. A totem of praise that diverts from the scars in the skin you carved. The ancient and venerable talisman that is in reality fake-shiny and store-bought, on sale. A poem that is a paean to their virtue or their pain (words you borrowed, copied, or rephrased without guile or shame). The fragrance of forgiveness, perfectly blended with its perfectly prescribed olfactory vocabulary. A portrait of her/him/them for the ages, commissioned by you and painted by a new generation of the Old Masters. An anthem of solidarity and compassion that you can hum--to yourself--on a starless, sleepness night in the small hours.

Yes, you know full well The Charm Offensive that serves as a juggernaut before which all negativity throws itself in abandon under the wheels of killing kindness, the juggernaut festooned with hibiscus and roses pulled by ropes gripped by all the devotees of your wounds, unstoppable as it cascades downward.

Is this what Planet Harm wants or needs?

hippocrats

"First, do no harm." 

That's the phrase on all our coins, paper currency, flag, coat of arms, the national anthem (those same words over and over and over), license plates, and government buildings.

People attribute those four words to the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors. It's not in there, not in those exact words. (Go ahead; look it up.) And Hippocrates himself did not likely write those precise words. No matter.

First, imagine how ironic, even hypocritical, it is to find this phrase omnipresent on planet Harm.

"First, do no harm"?

What happened? We don't know. The Institute of Archeohistoricalpsychosociology has been tasked to find answers. They've been at it 234 years with nothing to show for it. If you ask me, they're still trying to figure out what the name of their institute means.

Like many on the planet, I have some hunches, some theories, as to how we got here, and by "here" I mean this landscape-seascape-skyscape of haunting and harrowing harm. Here are theories floating in my head:

• "First, do no harm" became our ubiquitous catch phrase by mistake. Either its provenance was misunderstood or it was mistranslated. Translated from what language or communication system? No one knows. Mistranslated how? Again, we don't know. Allow me to posit: "Last, do no harm," "Alas, do no harm," "Do no more harm." Naturally, all of those suggested mistranslations carry the weight of vastly different meanings; each hints at a different story, an altogether different narrative. Would our history have turned out differently? Where would we be today? (Obviously, we're not talking about our position in the lunar system; we're talking about the here of how things are.)

• The saying evolved over the years, corrupted and altered by new dialects, dictators' dicta, strange tongues of invaders, linguistic earthquakes, and populist decrees.

• Somebody's been playing a mean joke on us since forever. It's simply a mysterious example of merciless sarcasm and satire. It continues "because that's the way we do things, it's always been that way, it's our tradition."         Thoughts invited.

says who

You hurt my feelings.

What?

You hurt me.

You, or your feelings?

You're doing it again.

Doing what?

Hurting me. Sowing harm.

"Sow" what.

It's not some big joke.

I didn't say it was.

You're acting that way, talking that way.

But you hurt me.

When? How?

That time. You remember.

No, I don't.

We're not going to start arguing about arguing.

Why not? 

It's like we got into our NASA spacesuits, buckled up, listened to the countdown as we waited on the launchpad, 4-3-2-1-0 ignition liftoff, traveled a few light years, and landed on Planet Harm.

Or Planet Hurt.

Anyway, we can agree on that, pretty much.

True.

. . . and then opened the hatch, climbed down the little ladder, more wobbly than expected, and planted our feet on the hardscrabble, arid harmscape, littered by empty promises, goodwill wrappers, and used condomeants.

Condomeants?

Prophylactic measures meant to prevent punctured egos, infertile ejaculations, and scrambled eggs.

Ewww.

You stepped on the surface first.

No, you did.

Not going to argue that. It's all on the tape.

"That's one small step for a gland, and one existential leap for love."

That wasn't it.

Close enough.

That was the problem: not close enough.

We were in those spacesuits. I couldn't reach you, touch you.

I couldn't find you.

You had G.P.S.

G.P.S.?

Guaranteed Personal Symmetry.

But it didn't work on Planet Harm. Doesn't work . . .

Why would it? How could it?

By design.

The atmosphere, the gravity, the loneliness.

And then they played the meanest trick in the history of the universe. Houston pulled up the ladder, turned the ignition on, and flew away. Without us.

Left us to our own devices.

And we don't mean handheld devices.

Left us to our own vices.

And virtues, what's left of them.

Right.

They must've figured we were the best lab rats misery could buy.

What now?

What then?

What when?

What next?

Hey, Planet Harm doesn't even have Wi-Fi!

What does Wi-Fi stand for, again?

 

whose harm is it, anyway

What is harm anyway? There's the obvious nightmare catalog of war, insurrection, repression, torture, and unimaginable, and all-too-observable, endless permutations of physical, mental, social, etc violence, passive or active. And everything in between along a continuum of horror. There's that. There are also ever more subtle acts or omissions of harm, a seemingly infinite inventory of our inhumanity.

But what about the debates that people wage, even on Planet Harm?

Debates about blame, responsibility, history, cause and effect, will, evil, social structures, philosophies, religions, anarchies?

What about cloudy or murky (in the eyes of some) instances of alleged harm? (Mere mention of the word "alleged" sparks debate in some circles.)

The gesture of holding the door open for someone: is it gallant, condescending, ahistorical, sexist, ageist, arrogant, presumptuous, kind, or neutral?

And the rebuff of such a gesture: is that a shade of harm in the form of hues yet named?

The list goes on. The lists go on. (Whose lists?)

The look from one to another, anonymous or intimate: affection, objectification, lust, compassion, anguish, remorse, regret, rage, curiosity, sadness, charity, solidarity, sincerity, lovingkindness . . . ad infinitum.

The same with the written word, the spoken word. The same (multiplied exponentially) with words or parts of words or emojis transmitted by short message service, or SMS, which we all call "text."

The same with the word or words not said.

And then there's the harm of history, the stain and weight of ancient or recent sins, horrors we inherit, a heritage that can't be disappeared, that we cannot escape, even if by association and lineage. 

So, we on Planet Harm live and breathe all this; it's our atmosphere. Some of us plead acceptance; others pray for amnesia; yet others cry for conversion, a magical metanoia; many crave escape (and they find it but only in passing, momentarily).

We Harmlings are standing on a plank over a crevice. We dream of wings. 

We Harmlings push a rope that is slack from use.

The elders sang sagas of a deus ex machina, a dea ex machina, come to the rescue.

We lost the words but remember the melody.

What now?

Planet Harm

You walk in the sands, the landscape you know by heart, the windswept dunes granular as sugar and almost as white. The screeching seagulls declare, "Water is somewhere, but where?" People say, "The sky's the limit." What kind of limit is that? The sands, the horizon, they're the limit. One echoes the other. You have no GPS, no bearings. One direction is the same as any other.

Legend has it we are on the planet Harm, meaning that is what we are taught from the earliest age. We are told that our world is round, not flat. We are taught that Harm is spherical but not circular. We are taught that Harm is the name of our planet.

Who came up with that, and when?

Who can say?

As a citizen, a resident, of planet Harm, your pain is nothing special, nor is your grief. All of us are in harm's way. It's our birthright. If everyone is in harm's way, who has a right to complain? Sure, differences of degree and scale exist. But they don't stand out. Harm is in the air, in our history, in our vocabulary, our line of sight. 

When someone (Anonymous, for our purposes and safety) entertained the idea of escaping the circle of pain, it made no sense. What circle? We see no markings, no signposts. How could there be a circle of harm when harm is all we know? How can we imagine an atmosphere other than our own?

No passports, no tickets, no travel vouchers.  

But no one has ever expressed a desire to leave. Nobody has ever voiced a need to flee. And to where would we go? What would we find there?

We perform our daily chores: melting the sand into glass, sculpting the glass into art, selling the art to the Harmageddonite who bids the highest.

The sharp bristly-minty tang of a dark pine forest. The shock of the chlorine choir of the salty sea, its ripples blinding you. The roar of a river halting you. A blanket of emerald meadow lulling you to sleep.

We hear rumors, murmurs. We dream, or fantasize. Our poets sang sagas.

Talk of escape, revolution, refuge. The elders memorized the chants and passed them on to our children's children.

We hear the secret and dangerous whispers about "charms." The unwritten subversive scriptures etched into our blood.

Charms: the coded hints of talismans, trinkets, fetishes, amulets, totems, periapts, tokens, incantations, chants, litanies, phylacteries, scapulas, beads.

The inscription on the desert rock quotes Empedocles: “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. ”

The priestesses debate whether this promises hope or despair.

beyond the harmed circle

Who doesn't want to escape a circle of harm? For that matter, who is not from a circle of harm? Freudians, perhaps Jungians, too, as well as anthropologists, sociologists, historians, biologists, theologians, philosophers, pornographers, and poets would note that the circle of harm we all experience is birth, the trauma of passage through the dark and narrow avenue of the womb to the rude light of day in the fresh and brutal but necessary air. (Some theologians would hearken farther back, all the way to the birth of the human race and its rupture from Paradise.) 

Harm might be the wrong word. How "harmful" could it be if we're all in the same boat (or ark)?

And why a harmed circle? Why not a harmed square, rectangle, oval, or triangle? That's easy. I hardly need to type it. Who hasn't at one moment or another (maybe many or most moments) felt like a hamster on a wheel of frustration, pain, or madness, in an inescapable loop? The circular treadmill might even be jubilant, pleasurable, or poignant. Good or bad, it's hard (impossible? barely possible?) to extract oneself from that furiously spinning circle.

It might not be harm at all! You might be in a circle of charm. You might be hamster-running under a spell, on an intravenous-magical-mystery drenching of espresso, sex, drugs, religion, righteousness, reason, anger, angst, success, failure, danger, or drama. 

Can the circle be unbroken?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Aha! I got it. Eureka. I have found out how to wed harm and charm (lucky or not), quirk and quark (charm, it turns out, is an elemental particle; don't ask me why they chose that word; channel Stephen Hawking). The enchantment of charm can dispel harm, singing an aria (that's right, charm circles back to song, incantation, chant, verse) of freedom and release.  

Before we get too excited about the charm bracelet of etymology, before we decide it always works like a charm, bear in mind that a charm can be a curse or a blessing. No less than Jakob Grimm, of the Brothers Grimm and their grim fairy tales, reminds us of this in 1883. To be effective, Grimm says, a charm "must be a choice." He claims it can't be a blessing and a curse. It's got to be one or the other, "either/or" (which is the title of a work by the philosopher-theologian Sören Kierkegaard). 

Take your pick.

Or flip a coin.

Charm or harm.

Give or take a letter.

Who said "spelling" wasn't important? 

 

The Clothes Make the Man, Woman, Etc.

"Let's play dress-up," I told myself, in words not so foppish or dandy. Home alone, I was not sure anyone was listening.

"I'm tired of nothing more fancy or formal than jeans, T-shirts (long- or short-sleeved), sweaters, casual summer shoes in winter, matching or unmatching socks, deodorant-off days, pajama bottoms off-screen from the Zoom camera, and the absence of mouthwash that would have played a supporting role in any 'normal' 3D encounter." 

Those were not my exact words. Hardly. (And what difference would it make? I was the only one here, talkin' to me is who I was talkin' to, to paraphrase Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver.") Besides, the sentence in my head was more meandering, sloppy, zig-zag, and self-referential, if you can picture that in your ears. Imagine a locution more or less halfway from the first sentence above to the second.

Why get dolled up? anyone would ask. To break up the monotonous habits of quarantine, isolation, or solitude during the coronavirus pandemic. This is not original. You hear people every day referring to "Groundhog Day," the movie. (Coincidentally, today, as I write this, it is Groundhog Day.) The Groundhog Day-ness of these days stems from the ceaseless repetition of customs and practices that no one observes or feels the effects of, except for yourself. These hamster-wheel marathons of déjà vu have become a shared code, a wordless nodding understanding, even if such recognition is only to yourself. Crazy, right? Will this sound crazier in years hence, assuming, Deo volente, that we get to the "years hence"?

So I got dressed up. I pretended I had an office to go to. Before leaving the apartment, I sprayed onto my neck an evanescent mist of Tom Ford Ombré Leather, because I like it, hope others do as well, and as a test for and a spur toward reacquiring my sense of smell post-Covid.

Again, this is not unique or singular in any way.

Is human dignity at the root of all this? I have a picture of my dad in a hospital bed, New Year's, 1958, when he nearly died of bleeding ulcers. I see shaving cream, a mirror, and the long single blade he used. Was he shaving himself, or was someone, one of his brothers, performing the kindly deed? And I see the same sort of image, with a more modern twin blade, of my dear friend Doug Sullivan in 2005. He would die a few days later. My mom, at a nursing home which she would never leave, became buoyant and brighter when the on-site hairdresser "did" Mom's hair. Whether it was cut or permed, it gave her a bounce, like a shot of espresso. The simple act of my combing her ever-matted bed-head hair, best as I could with her rake comb, yielded heart-breaking gratitude. A few days before my mother died, at 102, one of my daughters polished (painted? "did"; I don't know the technical term) her grandmother's nails. It elicited childlike pride and delight. Mom wasn't going anywhere. We knew the end was near, but uncertain as to exactly when, of course. I have a photo in my phone of her ancient, papery hand with its freshly done nails resting in my hand in her last hours.

Human dignity.

But that wasn't the primary motivation for me as I donned a blue dress shirt, a pale blue tie decorated with pink and lavender blossoms, a dark tweed sportcoat, olive-gray dress pants, and brown dress shoes (despite snow on the ground). I did not get an A+ in Proper Matching. Although the temperature was in the thirties, I wore no overcoat.

I stopped at Salt City Coffee to grab a cup to go and to visually strut and brag to Gabi, my barista-friend. She was not working.

No matter.

I swaggered back to my car as the boulevardier I have declared myself to be on my "business" card. Let's throw in "jaunty."

I carried this élan with me when I went to Spectrum to sign up with them and get a new iPhone. I kept my costume on when I went home and participated in a Zoom meeting that evening.

Outside in? Or inside out?

For me, the driving force was to "act as if." If the wearing of my uniform managed to lift me out of a rut, to raise me out of any lingering doldrums, all the better. In this unscientific experiment, I wanted to see if I could "act myself into a new way of thinking," as the saying goes. Although I won't be writing a peer-reviewed paper on my qualitative or quantitive (if that were possible) findings, I can report anecdotal evidence.

The episode planted seeds for future anecdotes that will surely be reviewed by peers, and others. Early drafts are positive.