Endangered pleasure Assignment Using Endangered Pleasures as a text, pick one pleasure of your own choosing (don’t steal from Holland) that we need to enjo

Endangered pleasure Assignment Using Endangered Pleasures as a text, pick one pleasure of your own choosing (don’t steal from Holland) that we need to enjoy now. Use this to reflect overall on our theme questions of “How should we live?” Make an argumentative piece that convinces your reader about what they should appreciate or rethink in their lives. For models, use Endangered Pleasure to see how she writes about the specifics details, chooses evidence, and her argumentative moves that deal with qualifiers, counter arguments, and skeptics. Another model you could consider are Charles Baxter- You’re Really Something.pdf. Consider the choices you studied in Assignment 2 about craft, consider the lessons you learned about voice, tone, and style in Assignment 1 and put all of these together in the Final Essay. The piece should have MLA citations. Consider carefully what outside evidence you might need to support your arguments. The pieces should be at least 1250 words long. Waking Up
BVIOUSLY the best possible time to wake up is in the
June of our tenth year, on the first day of summer
vacation. Failing that, another good time is in winter,
facing east on the only bright morning in a long string
of dark ones.
I did it recently, while visiting a country friend. She’d thought-
fully put me to bed in a tiny southeastern room with deep windows,
so the bed was at sill level, and I woke up covered all over with the
low yellow winter sunlight, as if Zeus had descended in a shower of
gold and I would presently give birth to a minor goddess. Never
underestimate the power of daylight in December.
In a window is a good place to wake up. For years in the city 1
lived in a small old rowhouse with low windows and slept at the
windowsill, twelve feet straight up from the sidewalk. In the morn-
ing I could check the day from my pillow; the state of the sky,
whether the people across the street had raised their upstairs blinds
yet; whether the pedestrians wore their coats open or buttoned
tightly. A window is the world’s threshold, or vestibule. Some mis-
guided hearties claim to enjoy waking up outdoors, completely in
the world, participants instead of spectators, but this is too much
instead of
sleen rutside responsibility for me at that hour. Too much sky. The room around
us is our cave and protection = our sleep, so to speak — and the
window is the world and the day ahead, or the waking state, and we
lie there balanced at the transition between them. This is a good
and gentle way to reenter the daily life.
major
Which brings up the subject of how to wake painlessly at the
appointed hour. The same country friend, who has virtuously given
up eating eggs, keeps chickens around anyway because she likes to
hear the roosters crowing, rooster is the classic and one of the
pleasanter ways to be dragged out of sleep. would be if he were
more reliable. Some roosters don’t crow until noon, and then keep
it up till dinnertime. Most of them, in May and June, carry on
hysterically at the first gray of dawn, which is no time for sane folk
to be abroad. You can’t count on a rooster, and more
of us aren’t in
a position to keep one in the apartment anyway.
We have alarm
clocks, or clock radios.
Complication
tive warm body in the bed beside us, be inspired by bells and roost-
ers to make love instead of leaping out of bed, and having done so,
drift sweetly back to sleep.
The alternative to alarms is the clock radio, set the night before
to whichever station we choose to reach into our naked, bemused.
and vulnerable inner selves and snatch us forth like a snail winkled
from its shell. Set it to the wrong number and heavy-metal rock will
blast you across the room at dawn and leave you trembling like a
leaf, unable even to pour coffee. On the other hand, a symphony
may not do the trick at all. Glance around the concert hall. Many
people would actually rather sleep to classical music, even sitting
upright, than to silence. I tried the all-news station for a while, but
this wasn’t quite satisfactory either. A voice, usually a stern and
solemn, rather biblical voice, pounced on me, either from on high
or from under the bed, bearing inscrutable messages: “… thirteen
killed and twenty-three injured” or “… in the right-hand lane.
Traffic is backed up to Swedesford Road in Centerville. …” This
always snapped me to attention, bewildered: Why is he telling me? Is
it my fault? My responsibility? What must I do? Who is he and how did
he get into my room?
The only truly pleasurable answer is to sleep until we float grad-
ually, swinging in and out of consciousness, to the surface, and lie
there smiting at the ceiling, afloat under weightless goose down in
winter, a soft white cotton sheet in summer, until it seems good to
get out of bed. This is a joy we should seize whenever possible,
making a conscious effort not to think about money or errands or
anything at all until we’re actually up and at the coffee pot. Some
people — I was married to one of them – find this so enjoyable as
to be quite viciously decadent, and they spring up at once, checking
the clock and berating themselves, and rush to the shower, though
they have nothing at all to do until Monday morning
The rest of us count not getting out of bed as the best part of
waking up
Those who are seriously anti-pleasure go for a loud, angry, re-
lentless ringing or buzzing sound to rend the soft rosy fabric of
sleep and yank them into the day. This satisfies their masochism
and leaves their nerves twitching till noon. A modern variation on
this produces a thin electronic whine that can easily be silenced by
the sleeper and then, five minutes later, another, more insistent
whine. This has the advantage of letting us slip back into sleep –
one of life’s purer pleasures – over and over, with the disadvan-
tage of being a thoroughly mean and hateful sound. Why not bells,
for heaven’s sake? Distant church bells, or chimes, or a far-off trum-
pet solo, or a mockingbird, or a fife-and-drum corps, or even a
rooster, reliably prerecorded? Too pleasant, I suppose; inconsistent
with the stern realities of the day ahead. Besides, we might just lie
there happily listening to them for hours.
We might, if we’ve prudently supplied ourselves with an attrac-
4.
Barbara Holland
Endangered Pleasures is
Coffee
the bountiful friend, the kindly kitchen genie waiting, hot and [ra-
grant. All we need to do is lay our hands on a cup.
For you instant-collee drinkers who claim you use the savage
brew because you need only a single cup, the answer is equally
simple. Find yourself a plastic coffee-filter holder, probably some-
where near the coffee counter in the supermarket, and some ap-
propriately small paper filters. In the morning, boil the water as
usual, and while it’s coming to a boil, place the holder, with filter,
over an empty mug. Put a scoopful of ground coffee in the filter.
Pour boiling water into it. This is in no respect more difficult or
time-consuming than stirring chemical powders into the same mug.
and the result is pleasure as compared to pain.
For those who go visiting overnight at the homes of benighted
friends with only instant coffee in their cupboards, the holder, fil-
ters, and a sandwich bag full of coffee are easily packed and trans-
ported. If the friends take umbrage, tell them your doctor says
instant coffee aggravates your ulcer, which it almost certainly does.
Then offer them a sip. Pleasures shared are pleasures heightened –
not to mention the happiness of showing others that ours are more
refined than theirs.
I
NSTANT coffee is the measure of America’s anti-pleasure
bias. Since it’s no faster or easier to make than real coffee, it
apparently exists only as a kind of punishment, a ritual morn-
ing flagellation of the senses, to ready us for whatever nasti-
ness the day may bring. It also seems to be a measure of our
vulnerability to advertising: relentless campaigns assure us that,
not only is the stuff drinkable, it’s actually good, at least their brand
of it, and one even claims that many famous restaurants slip it to
their customers, who are delighted with its “richness” and amazed
to hear it’s instant. To anyone who has ever tasted the wretched
liquid, this is arrant nonsense. It tastes no more like coffee than like
orange juice, and its sour chemical smell can bring the thirstiest
morning mouth to a dead stop three inches from the cup’s rim. The
perfume of real coffee is a major component of its satisfaction; it
permeates the rooms, rousing sleepers with glad anticipation. The
miasma of instant coffee, luckily, remains hovered over the cup and
Breakfast
hard to offends only the disappointed would-be drinker.de
make.
Getting out of bed to find real coffee already made is a civilized
way to begin the day and an incentive to fling off the covers and
rise. It’s an easy pleasure, requiring only a coffeemaker with a timer,
to be filled with water and coffee the night before, when your mind
is clear and your hand steady. Purists object, claiming the water
should be freshly drawn and the coffee freshly ground, but few of
us are such exacting gourmets at dawn. Hair spiky, eyes crumbed,
we grope our way to the kitchen and lo, there it is, the earth mother,
THE breakfast hour is no time for creative experimenta-
tion, which is why everyone’s more or less content to eat
the same breakfast five or six days a week, while a dinner
repeated even once is an outrage. Breakfast was never
really supposed to be a pleasure anyway, it was nutrition, and
something of a moral litmus test for the lady of the house. For
T
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Endangered Pleasures
7
ray
of breakfason
-utilitarian
nutrition
cony or flagstone patio, in the company of a single well-behaved
honeybee and someone with whom you’re madly in love.
When you’ve finished the champagne, it’s correct to go back,
holding hands, to bed.
This doesn’t happen often. Still, it’s a vision to hold and savor in
the mind while we spoon up the Cheerios; imagined joys never get
rained on.
Exercise
generations the word was preceded – sometimes reproach-
fully by the adjectives “hot” and “nourishing.” which were syn-
Sonymous. Toasted bread, for instance, was a proper, if minimal,
breakfast, while a slice of the same stuff untoasted wasn’t much
better morally than a Hershey bar, and a crying shame to the
mother or wife who permitted it.
Breakfast has changed its clothes completely in the past decade;
“nutritious” has been replaced by “low-fat,” and “hot” means sinful,
as in eggs. Dry cereal moistened with skim milk is now the politi-
cally correct morning meal, and everything that cried out for butter,
including oatmeal, has been banished. In television commercials,
couples who presumably do their grocery shopping separately ar-
gue about the comparative virtues of their respective cereals. “You
say it’s ninety-eight-percent fat-free?” they ask incredulously. “Hey,
let me taste that!”
Conveniently, this revolution coincided with the rush of women
into the workforce; the lady of the house who used to be out in the
kitchen timing eggs and buttering toast for her family is now spong-
ing her pinstriped suit and frantically repacking her briefcase while
the family dumps its own cereal into bowls.
Here the new Spartanism has its advantages. For one thing, it
elevates a number of previously routine matters into the realm of
illicit thrills. What was once an ordinary, underappreciated break-
fast two eggs over easy, bacon, and a well-buttered English muf-
fin, for instance now packs the guilty wallop of adultery, or
starting the day with a slug of Napoleon brandy. In order to extract
its maximum enjoyment, many people eat the approved horse
chows during the working week and then celebrate Sunday morn-
ings with a groaning board of rosy ham slices, crisply browned little
sausages, platters mounded with bacon and home-fried potatoes,
bowls of eggs scrambled with cream. Greedily they survey the land-
scape of cholesterol and lap their napkins in glad anticipation. Only
the virtuous can truly appreciate sin.
To my way of thinking, the ideal breakfast is probably a glass of
cold champagne and a perfectly ripe pear, perhaps with a spoonful
of caviar eaten straight from the jar. This should be served with
sunlight spreading across the table, or, better, outdoors on a bal-
O
NCE, not needing to exercise in order to survive was
a privilege and the hallmark of gentlefolk, who were
identified by their soft white hands and merely ves-
tigial muscles. Well rested, heartily ?ed, and flushed
with excellent port, many of these sluggards lived to an overripe old
age, annoying their heirs, while for those who exercised all day life
was nasty, brutish, and mercifully short. We have failed to profit by
their example. We have, as a nation, embraced voluntary, non-
essential exercise.
For those of us left behind by the new wave, yawning, stretch-
ing, and reaching for the coffee cup are quite enough activity to
liven up the muscles for the day. For the au courant, however, only
violence will suffice. They rush out into the humid smog or the icy
darkness and run as if demons were after them, coming back pur-
plish, gasping, and awash in self-satisfaction and sweat. Sometimes,
to set the gold seal on their virtue, they suffer from pulled ham-
strings, tendinitis, shin-splints, and muggers. They support a whole
new branch of science called “sports medicine.”
Smugness is one of life’s basic joys, and for the altruistic exer-
9
Barbana Holland
Endangered Pleasures
drously awkward to sit on. For years my brother stabled a sort of
steel giraffe, called a NordicTrack, in the guest room. He was never
seen to operate the thing, but it was useful for hanging up one’s
jacket or drying one’s underwear, and effective in breaking the toes
of guests trying to find the light switch in the dark. Presently it
disappeared. I don’t know how; it was much too heavy to steal or
throw away. It had cost a fortune.
Even the runners, fleeing like purse-snatchers through the
morning streets, have spent money. They carry patented weights in
both hands, wear special running shorts or suits, dam the sweat
from their eyes with special headbands, and buy shoes so expensive
that simply contemplating them on the closet floor improves one’s
muscle tone.
Adhere to the rules and you too may find happiness. As I said,
I’m no authority on the joy of exercising; for some of us it lies more
in the breach than in the observance. We can stroll to the window
with our coffee cup. gaze down as the virtuous go laboring past,
and enjoy a wholesome flush of pleasure at not being numbered
ciser there’s also the amusement he gives to onlookers and the rest
of the family, who sit there dry and comfortable, reading the fun-
nies, buttering their muffins, and rejoicing in sloth. The family cat,
who stays fit as a fiddle on twenty-two hours of sleep a day, stretches
luxuriously, smiles, and gets on with his nap.
As an extra delight, I’m told the fleet-footed sometimes enjoy
what’s called a “runner’s high,” a fit of euphoria vouchsa?ed to those
who have pushed it clear to the edge of cardiac arrest. God knows
I’m in no position to report on this personally, but it sounds to me
like the diver’s problem, “Tapture of the deep,” which involves ni-
trogen poisoning or oxygen starvation or something. Pleasure is
where you find it.
The new, enlightened exercise is governed by a new, improved
set of rules, mysterious to the outsider.
First, if you’re having fun, as in dancing or skiing, no benefits
accrue. No proper runner has ever been seen to smile; no proper
lap-swimmer dangles at pool’s edge sipping a cool drink and chat-
ting with friends. Exercise, to qualify at all, must be lonely painful,
hurorless, and boring.
Second, it must produce no useful effect on anything exeept
four muscles or some say, your cardiovascular condition. Mowing
the lawn, sweeping the floor, and toiling up the basement stairs
with a basket of laundry are useless because of the irrelevant pur-
pose involved; rowing a boat gets you, with luck and a favorable
current, from point A to point B and is therefore not exercise. For
exercise, there are machines (called “equipment”) that simulate
mowing, rowing, sweeping, and stair-climbing, and these machines
perform miracles for the body because they were designed to do
nothing else; however long you labor at them, the laundry still
languishes in the dryer and sassafras saplings sprout in the lawn.
Perhaps you can hire someone to deal with them, thus doubling
your outlay.
Third, exercise should cost money. Money proves that you’re
‘really serious about this body business, and the body, flattered,
responds. There are dues to pay at the gyms and spas and pools, and
the truly serious buy their own machinery. Friends of mine re-
placed their living-room couch with a rowing machine, most won-
among them.
Showering, Bathing
VERY morning the proper American stands under a
heavy spray of running water and soaps off the dust and
sweat of the previous day or the morning’s three-mile
run. This is a duty, not a pleasure. The urgency of the
pounding water discourages toitering and, since all the other proper
people in the household want to do the same thing at roughly the
same time, there may be a line forming. The only joy involved
E
duty
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Endangered Pleasures
Barbara Holland

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