An Elephant of One's Own

The other day, I stopped off at a local KFC and ordered chicken and fries. As I picked up my order and was about to head out to the car, the woman serving me glanced up and said, "Have a postmodernist day!" No, that's not true. What she did say was: "I'm afraid we're all out of regular chicken, so you've got postmodern chicken instead." Or - on reflection - maybe that was "spicy chicken", but she said it with a postmodernist expression. No, that's not true either. Actually, I didn't go to KFC at all. I was just trying to figure out how I might use "postmodern" or "postmodernist" in a sentence in a way that might convey something - anything really - to the reader. As you see, it's not easy. I think many people have the same problem. The true meaning of "postmodernist", assuming there is one, is fenced in by a wall of impenetrable books, invariably in French, that few people dare to read and non...

When you're not young, and have already forgotten most of what being young was about, there are still a few knotty recollections that serve to remind you that whatever being young was, it wasn't at all like being old. Sex is one of those things. When you're old, you can still keep a candle burning to sex if you want - and it seems somehow fitting to have some small shrine flickering away there, for nostalgia's sake if nothing else, and to dedicate the odd votive offering and yard of kleenex - but what shocks, and rankles, is the undeniable fact you used to be its slave. This is one of the surreal things about youth, that young people don't even see as odd because they're so used to it, and because the culture encourages them to see it as normal - this tyrannical power that sex, in whichever of its various manifestations, exercises over us. I won't go into this because I've talked enough about it elsewhere. But that's definitely one thing. Another t...