Old Fashioned

I am more "old fashioned" than I would like to think.  What does that mean, anyway?  There are so many manifestations of thought and behavior from "the day" (whatever) that any value can be juxtaposed to its opposite and still be called "old fashioned."  My photographs, for instance, are "old fashioned" in a way, yet they represent a morality play of opposite forces.  They are classic "Vintage Sleaze" with an ironic eye.  I think so, anyway. 

But we might define "old fashioned" in terms of hierarchies and the postmodern break with them in the 1990s.  Hierarchical thinking is romantic.  It allows for things like the eternal verities, the authority of marriages. . . and well. . . just authority in general. 

I have to admit that I love to overturn the hierarchy.  It is a lot of fun.  But I need a hierarchy against which to bray. 

I am, though, "old fashioned" in my personal creeds and values in that I have internal hierarchies.  My life is full of values.  This is better than that.  Xs and Os.  Perhaps it is a habit of mind developed in a certain era. 

I think, for instance, that my pictures are "naughty."  I don't think otherwise.  I make them to resist a certain moral code, but I will always get that little guilty thrill when looking at them. 

That is not where I meant to go, though.  I meant to tell a tale.  Last night, I went to one of my favorite little Italian cocinas (can I use that term with Italian?) for dinner.  Two appetizers, a bottle of fairly good Chianti, and some entrees that didn't quite get eaten.  I was there with someone to whom I needed to make clear my values.  Myvalues, of course, not values.  My moral code is one that I've worked on, articulated, tested and tried and found most satisfying as a way of meeting the world in which I live.  The whole idea of "code," of course, is antiquated unless we are talking about science, and even there, codes are open to change.  Mine, too.  Remember, if you will, I have a degree in zoology and have done graduate work in anthropology.  Hypothesis, thesis, and all of that.  I always enjoyed the verification process and the scientific method.  It is a wonderfully plastic system.  My knowledge of zoology, for example, is very outdated.  Almost every "fact" I was taught has been displaced.  Still, even with its plasticity, science is hierarchical.  Information Theory.  Zeros and Ones.  All that. 

It was almost beautiful, really.  I didn't want to belabor the point.  It was just a difference of values, one, perhaps, more liberal than the other.  There is no right or wrong, of course, and I've learned it is fruitless to ever think you are going to change a person's mind about anything let alone about the standards by which one constructs his/her behavior.  I just wanted to be clear about the conflict of values. 

It was the classic walk out, movie style.  You have to admire such a thing, really.  I mean, when a conversation is over. . . all there is left to do is pay the bill.  It was an archetypal moment.  It strengthened my romantic beliefs.  It was an almost sacred act in that it is replicated throughout history, like mass, like Christmas, an act of eternal return, the timeless participation in myth. 

I got one part of my moral code from "The Sun Also Rises."  The bill always comes and you will be required to pay it.  The idea, of course, is to try to get your money's worth. 

The waiter was a swell guy, and I think he liked us, the visual manifestation of something, anyway.  He was forthcoming and friendly from the start.  He was from Mexico but went to college in Italy.  He wanted to know where we were from, somehow deciding that we were not from "here."  When he brought the check, I could see that he must have been watching the events during the span of our dinner.  It had been hard on him, I think.  He looked saddened somehow when he saw me finishing my wine alone.  "Que sera, amigo."  Whatever will be.  It was mildly expensive, but I paid up.  The bill was settled, and I walked to my car.  I'd like to say that I didn't look back. . . .