At the Watermark Quorum they call it "stepping on vapors." That's when the edifice of one's "fictional self" serves as a guiding principle for a misdirected life.
Or what my Cobble Hill neighbor Carmine might call "horseshit."
The streets of Brooklyn are no longer awash in Saddlebreds and Mustangs but Carmine still has an unerring ear for all manner of dissimulating feculence. I wonder what he'd make of the Watermark Quorum.
I've been taking courses at The Quorum for about a year now, ever since my beautiful and exotic girlfriend Noga assumed the distinguished position of girlfriend emeritus. She told me to "show some character," "grow up," that she was not my "mommy" and that I had - and this was the unkindest cut of all - "the aesthetic discernment of a postman." (I suppose in her native Israel, mailmen aren't known for their erudition or sophistication).
My friend Serge told me about the Quorum and how it changed his life so with half an open mind I decided to give it a go.
The whole thing is set up so that you are practically shamed into facing your vulnerabilities. You meet in small groups led by "team leaders" who "coach" you into small epiphanies that they encouragingly call "breakthroughs."
For example, when I admitted to my group that despite the admonitions of my dental hygienist I neglected to floss my teeth, they looked at me so sympathetically that I welled up with tears. When I came back the following week I joyfully announced that after facing all of my inhibiting fears I had successfully (though perhaps not thoroughly) flossed 5 of the previous 7 days.
The event was greeted as a dramatic success and indeed I felt flush with a sense of palpable accomplishment!
The most useful lesson I learned from the Quorum was to avoid what they call "feckless phrasings." (Alliteration is to self-help what photosynthesis is to plants). A feckless phrase is any idiomatic construction that contains irony, lyrical ambiguity, rhetorical flourish, double entendre, ornamental description, metrical cadences, extraneous adjectives or anything else that is not plainly transactional or utilitarian. The only possible exceptions would be cozy, homespun aphorisms and a limited number of uncomplicated similes, a list of which can be found on the Quorum's sensibly designed website.
I can't tell you how much this has helped my critical essays which are now featured semi-regularly in the Quorum's quarterly newsletter Extraordinary News for an Exceptional Life.
I sure hope Noga is reading this.
