From the Shores of Pleasure

'Compartnormalization' is my new neologism to describe the world at the moment--a portmanteau of 'compartmentalization' (our strategies for 'code-switching' in social roles) and 'normalization' (a strategy for coping).

As I walk through the city each day I see people who I think may be in this state of mind, enjoying their lives and seemingly happy. But I feel a cognitive dissonance (or allow myself to feel it) given the firehose of information, real or fake.

Spiritualists talk about the value of being fully in the present moment, whatever life situations it may encompass. This year I have been enjoying present moments in my long walks on the Chicago lakefront, drinking in every second of summer. The present moment always involves some degree of normalization or the embracing of denial, as an attempt to reshape the present moment to my selfish desire for bliss, amid the thoughts about a world in extremis, or simply to assuage boredom.

“Boredom is not far from bliss; it is bliss seen from the shores of pleasure"--Roland Barthes

An old friend Wendy Gardner wrote a poem about such denials, which I wrote a song around in the mid-90s.

Embrace denial
Draw it ever so close...
This hopefulness, it deadens the pain.

Ideas for new writings come to me on the walks, i.e. ideas about normalization, denial, compartmentalization, and sometimes neologisms to define them.