Not Buying It

by Judith Levine

  The feast is like other gifting rituals, such as the potlatch: by definition an orgy of extravagance. Animal or human captive is sacrificed, gifts too numerous to count are spread before the guests; sometimes, to demonstrate the profligacy of the giver, they are smashed or burnt or thrown into the sea. By the time it’s all over, food, table, house, or village may lie in ruins.

  To the philosopher Georges Bataille, this devastation is not the unfortunate consequence of a celebration gone overboard, à la frat party. Devastation is the point. “It is not necessity but its contrary, ‘luxury,’ that presents living matter and mankind with their fundamental problems,” Bataille writes in his meditation on consumption,The Accursed Share. Classical economists are wrong, he argues, in assuming that humans act on an innate drive toward gain and that consumption is therefore “productive expenditure” in service of accumulation. No, consumption—Bataille uses the word literally, like an environmentalist economist—isdestructive expenditure, compelled by the need to diminish, to annihilate the excess energy that is around and in us, from the sun to sexuality. No matter how materially poor a society, it is driven to “squander,” he says, through gifts and feasts, sex, art, and war.

  Our Latke Bash aspires to such grand-scale squandering. It is a single-minded event. People greet and meet, but they are here to eat. Today, as every year, the guests arrive around four, throw off their coats, move straight to the table, load their plates, and gorge until a fatted stupor descends on the room.

  By the time they finally trickle out, it is late and dark. Paul and I survey the remains of the day: scattered paper plates and cups, empty wine and beer bottles, pools of latke grease, stray leaves of arugula, two clean fish skeletons, a dollop or two of applesauce and sour cream in the blue bowls. I open the refrigerator to put away some leftovers. Inside, like every year, the second pint of sour cream rests unopened.

  “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough,” wrote Blake. The year has taught Paul and me that where getting and having are concerned, enough is significantly less than we, and Americans generally, think it is. But giving is another matter. Today, there was more than we needed, more than anyone desired. That is, precisely enough.

  DECEMBER 14

  E-mail from Jim, a former co-worker atBusinessWeek, writing from the office to remind me of the bounty I’m missing:

  Christmas specials at the card shop downstairs: The Year in Kittens calendar, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg salt and pepper shakers.

  Another popular 2004 holiday special, I see on the eleven o’clock news, is the plastic-surgery gift certificate. Giving is self-interested, said the anthropologist Marcel Mauss; I find it hard to know whose interests are being served when a husband gives his wife a boob job for Christmas. Apparently, the plastic surgeons have also pondered this question (though not enough to interfere with marketing). It’s entertaining to watch the (all male) shrink-wrapped faces of the doctors on TV, playing down the relational hazards that face such a gift-giver.

  DECEMBER 15

  The Hardwick Zoning Board of Adjustments issues its decision on the Rinker’s Communications application to build a cell tower on Bridgman Hill. Going through the relevant bylaws one by one, the Board finds that the tower will not create new demands on community facilities, services, roads, or renewable energy resources. However, sited in an open hayfield amid farms and single-family houses, 120 feet taller than the highest tree, the structure would be “significantly out of scale,” “imposing,” and “industrial in appearance,” in short, “inconsistent with the appearance and character of the area.” Recognizing both the potential benefits to the town’s private phone users and emergency services and also the board’s own responsibility to preserve and protect the rural qualities of Bridgman Hill, in a four-to-three decision it compromises. The board gives Karl Rinker a permit to build a tower on the Shepards’ land, but limits the height to 100 feet and attaches conditions to its use.

  I’m sad that our beautiful hill will be marred by the structure, but I’m also proud of Paul for wrestling with the debate in town and wresting a majority decision from a divided board. It seems to me that Hardwick will gain and lose in more or less equal measure. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that this ratio—a wash—is about the best you can hope for when consuming anything.

  I may, however, be the only satisfied person in town. One side wanted nothing, the other wanted everything. Both feel they have lost, and both intend to appeal.

  DECEMBER 17

  As he does every Christmas, Paul has been baking for a week. Most of the thirty dozen biscotti will be divided into recycled boxes, labeled “I Famosi Biscotti di Paulo,” and mailed to our families in the provinces. The rest will be carried to parties and served at home. This year, Paul is also making twenty-four dozen raisin and nut rugalach. The recipe was chosen for its maximal use of sour cream.

  We pack a box for our neighbors Howard and Nanette, and they drop by a bottle of wine in return. They’ve also been leaving their empties in the hall for Paul, contributions to the March bottling of the 2004 Côte de Gowanus (after the putrid canal up the block). Paul brings one of the bottles into my office, where I am at the computer. He clears his throat dramatically and points to a quote printed on the label:Good wine is a necessity to me, allegedly from no less an authority on the aesthetic life than Thomas Jefferson. Paul lifts his chin. “I rest my case,” he says.

  DECEMBER 23

  UNICEF announces that over half the children in the world—more than a billion kids—suffer extreme deprivation due to war, HIV/AIDS, or poverty. The report notes that global military spending totaled $956 billion this year, while the cost of effectively combating poverty would be $40–$70 billion. The U.S. spent $450 billion on the military and $15 billion for development help to poor countries, a 30-to-1 ratio.

  Here in the U.S., self-gifting escalates. A Texan woman clones her deceased cat, Nicky, at a cost of $50,000. Rupert Murdoch buys a co-op on Fifth Avenue for $44 million.

  DECEMBER 24

  Emily has invited us for a late Christmas Eve dinner, so we decide to take a walk in the early evening, then return home, dress, and pick up some biscotti to bring with us. Strolling through Brooklyn Heights, we find ourselves at five-thirty in front of the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, the historic Congregationalist pulpit of the abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher and the first place Lincoln spoke when he came to New York. The doors are open and the ushers are welcoming in gay little groups for music and candle-lighting. Though we feel schleppy in our sweatshirts and jeans, Paul and I slip into the last pew.

  The sanctuary is small and simple, though not severe. Painted white throughout, its pews are trimmed with curved mahogany armrests, which echo the curves of the organ loft above the altar and the graceful staircases that ascend to it from either side of the chancel. Against the white, the mahogany seems to float.

  There is no vaulted ceiling, no raised pulpit—the room pulls attention to the congregation here on earth. You can practically smell the gladness in the evergreen bows that deck the hall, hear it in the voices of children, dressed in red velveteen, and in the gallop of their party shoes over the stone floors. Across the aisle from us, a tiny boy is squealing in uncontainable glee.

  The service is as earthbound as the architecture. “Come friends, and gather together on this long night in the year,” begins the minister in the Call to Worship, to which the people reply, “We come, seeking light.” “Come in from the cold and the approaching winter.” “We come, needing warmth.” It is a pagan prayer—asking refuge from the elements—and in this spirit, the collection will go to a neighborhood homeless shelter.

  As the singing starts, I am suffused with both happiness and longing. As usual when I hear music in churches, I am immediately brought to tears, which dribble through the ceremony. I never quite know what this is about. Tonight, it’s not the music that so moves me. The selection is conventional and the soloists are mostly amateur.
Maybe it’s the fact that (as the minister says) “the news from the world is bleak,” and (the congregants answer) “we come listening for the glad tidings of peace.” Tidings of peace have been sparse this year. Or perhaps I weep in envy of faith, the comfort of knowinganything without skepticism. An atheist never really comes in from the cold.

  This year, happiness wins out. When the choir rises to sing “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful,” I join lustily in the lyrics that no American Jain, Jew, or nonbeliever can avoid knowing by heart. “I really feel the holiday spirit,” I whisper to Paul. He looks at me as if I’d just announced I was moving to Colorado Springs to join a mega-church.

  “What’s thisholiday spirit stuff?” he asks as we stand in the foyer putting on our hats and gloves for the walk home.

  I’m hardly less surprised than he. “I don’t know. I feel peaceful. It’s all…easy.”

  At home, I shower, spritz on some basil and red-currant perfume by Fresh (purchased last December and applied judiciously during the year, so as not to run out), and don the black Eileen Fisher pants and sweater I’ve worn for every festive occasion in 2004. Then I dig out of my jewelry box a necklace made of shiny, bright-colored wrapping papers that have been rolled and saturated with resin into large, irregular cylindrical beads. I wear the necklace only at Christmas, since it makes me look a little like a decorated tree.

  Tying its satin string, I think about the diamond advertisements that are as ubiquitous this holiday season as every other. The actors in the ads look as if they have achieved a certain station in life. They are handsome and fit, but old enough and wealthy enough to go to Rome and bestow a major jewel on the wife (it’s always a husband giving to the wife). The ads tell us that love is a good investment, accruing material returns; in return for those returns, love accrues. The rich get richer.

  My necklace, made literally of paste, is a parody of the gem and of the very idea of the increasing value of things. Like the cowry shell that is worthless except as a ceremonial gift—and can be crushed into sand at any time—this bauble is worth only as much as it is cherished. The necklace is a package wrapped in itself. All scintillating surface, unable to be opened yet perpetually open, it holds nothing but the potential to please, the essence of the gift.

  DECEMBER 25

  Christmas Day dawns mild and cloudy. Waking, I feel a pang. Usually Paul and I make coffee, then unwrap the few presents we’ve bought for each other. He almost never expresses a desire for a particular thing, but I like figuring out what he’d like. Last year I bought him a Scalex MapWheel for measuring how far we’ve skied or walked, and two martini glasses. He got me martini glasses too, and my brother sent us a MapWheel. So either we’re good at expressing our wishes, or not good enough.

  I make shiitake mushroom omelets and we read the Saturday paper. My niece calls from San Francisco, where she has moved after graduation and is sharing an apartment not far from my brother’s house. Sarah reports that she’s working in a clothing store. She says she may be “interested in retail” and likes the clothes the shop sells. But the job pays minimum wage, so she’s looking for a second job, as a waitress. Sarah seems happy—she always does—but also is vague about what she might do with her life.

  The phone rings again and it’s Jon, calling to thank us for the cookies. We talk about his kids, and I tell him I wish I could help Sarah find something that really excites her. I feel lucky that my own ambitions were so passionate when I was her age. Lucky, too, that dreams were in the air and rents were cheap enough to allow their pursuit. I try to be philosophical. Sarah is not yet twenty-five. But I so want her to want something badly, whatever it is.

  I make a second pot of coffee and (talk about excess) bring out the biscotti. We settle in to do the difficult Saturday crossword puzzle and by the time we’ve given up it is afternoon. I take a shower and wash my hair with yet another of the hundreds of tiny plastic bottles of shampoo Paul amassed during his years of traveling for business (conclusion of our unscientific but massive study of shampoo brands: they’re all the same). We put on our sneakers and head out for a walk in the neighborhood. Within a few blocks, we run into some friends, Ron and Jill. They are having a “traditional Jewish Christmas,” they tell us, dim sum in Chinatown and a movie. What are we doing? they ask.

  Paul and I exchange glances and amiable shrugs. We’re having a traditional atheist Jewish/lapsed Catholic/nonconsumer’s Christmas. “Nothing special,” I answer.

  Did we get any good presents? Jill wants to know.

  Paul explains to them about the project that is just coming to an end.

  “You must have saved a lot of money,” comments Ron. It’s what most people say first when we tell them about Not Buying It.

  I respond that saving money wasn’t the goal, but in the end, we couldn’t help it. In fact, I’ve been going through my accounts and comparing 2004’s expenditures with those in 2003. My basic nut, including mortgage, utilities, health insurance, and the like, consumes about three-quarters of my gross income, which usually comes in between $40,000 and $45,000. But the remaining one-quarter, discretionary expenditures, have seen a noticeable drop. On my 2003 tax return, I claimed $2,701 for “professional books,” which include most of what I read; this year, thanks to increased library use, borrowing from friends, and second-hand purchases, that item will be $610. Last year, $719 went to “professional viewing tickets” and $1,494 to “meals and entertainment”; this year, I will enter a zero on both lines. Among other expenses, last year I dispensed $1,664 on clothing. This year the total dispensed during my two lapses, at Sack’s in Bozeman and Common Threads in Burlington, came to $105. “Walking-around money”—the cash I withdraw from the ATM for groceries, gas, subway fare, and sundries—totaled $5,500 in 2003. In 2004, the little door has so far dispensed $3,180, and I’ve got all the cash I need until New Year’s Day. Plus, I paid off a credit card balance of $7,956.21 in the first half of the year and did not run it up again. In all, I have spent about $8,000 less in 2004 than I did in 2003.

  Paul and I have learned to think thrice before handing over the cash, and I believe this lesson will last. For instance, in 2003, I spent $249 for a half-year gym membership that I used maybe six times, a fee of approximately $40 per hour-long workout. I hope not to do that again. On the other hand, a three-day weekend in Paris with my French teacher in the spring of that year was worth every sou of its $645 bill. I intend to begin squandering cash in equivalent fashion starting in 2005. But only now and then. When I describe this to an Alexander Technique practitioner, she says, “It’s mindfulness.”

  This kind of mindfulness is emotional as well as financial. By not assuaging transient needs, say, with a pack of whole-wheat fig bars from the Korean deli or a stick of blue ski wax, we’ve made ourselves available to a wider range of small experiences, including hunger and vulnerability. These feelings are not always comfortable. But they have their own unexpected rewards, such as the loss of a few pounds and the discovery that people like to help you.

  Paul and I have bickered about what is necessary and what is not—and learned that the line cannot easily be drawn. We’ve bickered about other things largely because I have been, not infrequently, in a cranky mood. But for the first time in our lives together, we have passed an entire year without a single worried discussion (okay, fight) about money.

  DECEMBER 27

  There’s another way of looking at what we have netted, aside from financial soundness or domestic tranquility: time. In twelve months, I have “banked” at least three months, for uses yet unspecified.

  Who does not work shall not eat.The complementary proposition to Paul’s much-quoted admonition to the Thessalonians is rarely invoked:Who does not eat shall not work. Paul and I are “eating” less this year, and if we continue to do so, could continue to work less, too. This is a comfort, since, barring a full-body stem-cell transplant, as we age we probably will have to slow down.

  Yet here I am, on the holiday Monday of a holiday
week, in my office. In this sense, I am pretty typically American: we work, as I’ve mentioned, more than almost anyone else in the industrialized world, an average of nine weeks more per year than Europeans. Juliet Schor blames the “upward creep of desire,” Robert Frank, “luxury fever.” As well, as I witnessed so chillingly in the Voluntary Simplicity Group, there’s plenty of blame to be placed on the upward creep of employers’ productivity demands and the downward creep of real wages and benefits.

  But there is more to it than all the above, if my own behavior is any clue. I mean, with three temptingly free months socked away, what am I doing buckling down on a holiday? To shed more light on the question—or maybe to cure myself of a case of this pandemic workaholism—I am buckling down in search of defenses of loafing. Not surprisingly, these are hard to find.

  ThroughoutWalden, Thoreau contemplates the work-eat equation. A chapter called “Brute Neighbors,” for instance, begins with an exchange between two personages, the Hermit (who, according toCliff’s Notes, represents Thoreau himself) and the Poet (who, according toLevine’s Notes, probably represents Thoreau, too). The Poet stops by the Hermit’s cabin, hungry and ready to fish; he wants company. The Hermit is absorbed in thought, loath to lose the train. “Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing?” he muses. While the Hermit tarries, pursuing his meditation andalmost grasping the “essence of things,” the Poet goes out and digs the worms, coming back with thirteen big ones and a mess of pieces for “smaller fry.” Having done enough thinking for the day, the Hermit picks up his pole and joins him.