Punching Cows

I’ve been thinking about my life situation, as I’m inclined to do. In particular, I’ve been thinking about my life situation in relation to a cultural trope or three. Such as the cowboy, hence punching cows.

But we’re not quite ready to go to the tropes.

Me first. I’m a single male pushing the upper end of middle age. I’ve never been married and I have no kids. And I’m all but broke, though not busted, not yet anyhow.

I’ve lived my life for my intellectual and artistic pursuits, with the intellectual taking first priority. It’s not at all clear to me that, living as I have, I could have accommodated the needs of a wife and children. It’s not merely that I’ve lived near poverty level so I could pursue my interests. Even if I’d been independently wealthy, I’d have still have been pursuing the cognitive networks, the literary texts, jazz, cultural evolution, graffiti, photography, and so forth. Would I have been willing to cut back on that so as to participate in family life?

I don’t know.

And that’s a conflict our culture has problems with. Call it a conflict between family and, shall we say, vocation (a calling). The culture works very hard to come down on the side of marriage and family. But the alternatives, the Others, they haunt our mythology.

Consider the cowboy, the cowboy and the schoolmarm.

The cowboy wants to roam the wide-open spaces, sleep under the stars, herd the little dogies, and punch cows. 24/7/365. He generally does this in the name of freedom: Don’t fence me in.

But don’t kid yourself, it’s his vocation. He’s committed to it. Some might even say it’s an addiction. And what’s free about an addiction?

The schoolmarm wants him to settle down and raise a family. So he’s got to bring home the bacon, and he’s got to do it on a 9 to 5 schedule. She needs her lovin’ and her conversation. The kids need someone to smile at rubber duck time in the bathtub and to make home movies of first hesitant, but triumphal, steps. You can’t do that under the stars dreaming of cow punching.

Sometimes the movie ends when the cowboy and the schoolmarm agree to marry. It’s left up to us to imagine just how that will work out. But sometimes the cowboy rides off into the sunset, and the schoolmarm . . . . maybe she marries the owner of the general store.

There’s this very special version of this trope, where the vocational commitment isn’t about roaming free on the lone prairie, but about some artistic or intellectual pursuit. In this version, the cowboy (let’s call him that for just awhile) is really good at something that’s very difficult and that other people can’t do very well. Maybe it’s painting pictures, or maybe it’s making electronic gizmos, or maybe it’s just wielding a samurai sword. Whatever. This cowboy doesn’t fit in and is roundly puzzled over, despised and disrespected.

Until the Breakthrough, when he finally does something that’s important, that Benefits the Community. Then the rogue cowboy becomes the good citizen. He may or may not marry a schoolmarm. Or, he may have been married to the schoolmarm and she left him at the beginning of the movie. And she returns at the end and they live happily ever after.

Sherlock Holmes is an interesting variation. He’s a bachelor, never been married, never will be. But he’s aces at detecting. Better, much better, than the regular guys on the squad (who are married and have kids, though there’s no hint of that in the stories). Holmes solves crimes that they can’t. We tolerate him for that, and for the stories that Watson spins about him.

In any event, I’ve been living the life of the intellectual hero. But I’ve not had a breakthrough into any substantial institutional or social appreciation of my work. I’m just this odd character who thinks and writes and photographs and plays the trumpet and blogs, whatever. The intellectual breakthroughs I’ve had – there’s been a few – have been recognized a few people, some with far more presence in the world than I’ve managed to acquire. And their recognition is very very important to me. It’s a sign that I might, in fact, BE UP TO SOMETHING. But for the most part I’m just this odd character who thinks and writes and photographs and plays the trumpet and blogs, whatever.

And so it goes, punching cows.

The thing is, at least punching cows is a visible occupation. The cowboy’s doing something that other’s can see and recognize. What I do is mostly invisible. So it looks like I’m not doing anything.

That makes my situation incomprehensible. And that’s what I find most bothersome. I have no way of making my life comprehensible to the folks hanging out around the cracker barrel in front of the general store. As far as they can see, I’m a lazy time-wasting bum.

Now, maybe if I told them a story . . .