Mark Twain, certainly one of the patron saints of hedonism, said that all our journeys have secret destinations of which we travelers are yet unaware. As a teller of tall tales myself, I consider that full of intriguing possibilities.
Before I report on Sarah Kay and Chuck traveling home together on separate airplanes, as well as explore Twain's core idea, we should come to agreement about the definition of what exactly an hedonist is. Isn't it as simple as one who seeks pleasure and avoids pain above all else? But somehow this lovely and charming premise has been twisted and perverted to the point where it is actually negative. Balderdash!! Twain advises that twenty years from now we'll be more disappointed by the things we didn't do than by the ones we did. "So throw off the bowlines," he says. "Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
When Sarah Kay's taxi pulls to a stop in front of the Swiss Air Terminal at Zurich Airport, it's her long bare legs swinging out of the backseat that are our first experience of Jesse's young daughter. She's headed back to California after five years away from her father. He will hardly recognize her given she's not 13-years old anymore. She's now tall, lean, remarkably voluptuous and especially gorgeous. Males of all ages turn to watch her pass as she heads inside to board her non-stop Airbus for San Francisco. We catch a quick glimpse of her A340 aircraft through the terminal window. It sports a colorful and flowery design together with striking "San Francisco" lettering as a tribute to the West Coast city's famed flower power past. Once she's cruising at 30,000 feet, if we were able to look inside at her window seat, we'd witness the young lady flirting with a man twice her age across the aisle.
Headed for the same final destination, Chuck is at the controls of his privately owned, 1956 DeHavilland Beaver - a meticulously maintained float-plane - as it rises from Lake Tahoe, his last stop before touching down on Lake Oroville and home after a decade away. He has gray, thinning hair that is in a carefully maintained Afro (yes, that's right, an Afro)and never is seen to wear anything but cut-offs along with black shirts and gold chains. Generally speaking, one's first impression of Chuck is a tragically hip, two-dimensional, rich guy struggling to retain his youth. If travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of a frivolous one, we wonder which he intends his travels to be.
Copyright 2010 G. Leo Maselli
Monday, June 21, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Hesitant Hedonism (3 of 10)
A recent study has found that just six months after winning a large lottery prize, even millions of dollars, people reported being not much happier than they were before winning. Shocking, don't you think? Plus, social scientists find that happy people tend to do what they love for a living or a hobby. Bottom line, it seems to me that the happiest among us are people feeling in control of their lives. There is a Brazilian poem that admonishes us not to, "... be like most people who instead of searching for happiness, rather, they live avoiding the risk of unhappiness. Don't allow the fear of pain to be stronger then the delight of love you feel."
To illustrate, I introduce Carla Pinetti and Lilli Bowen. These two gals were both lowly freshmen at Oroville High when Jesse and Chuck were popular upper classmen. There was some elemental social interaction between the four of them from time to time back then in the form of dragging the main, beer bingeing, and brief moments of under-the-ol'-angora petting. Then both guys went off to college and went out of touch. A few years later the girls left town to what turned out to be unbearable lives and careers in big cities: Carla to Chicago as the creative director for a strategic marketing and branding firm and Lilli to Miami as the head of sustainability strategy for a software company. Ultimately both sought and found the freedom of life without a dominating husband or a fool for a boss, back in their hometown.
Jesse's love interest in elementary school was Carla who tried desperately to kiss him in the first grade and finally succeeded in doing so by the third grade. Today Carla has developed a popular line of olive oil based cosmetics being successfully sold under the label "OLIVE U." Regionally it has already become a popular line of erotic love oils, body lotions and hair products that seems poised to take off nationally. The goal is to sell it for $5 million. Today she lives modestly, but is not wanting due to the entrepreneurial instincts she inherited from her father.
Lilli is a food presenter at the Olive Festival's Artisan Market when Chuck reconnects with her. Currently she is a successful, local television cooking show host, cook book author, and touring food presenter, delighted to be back in California's charming, old world environment of the olive country. She often describes the production of perfect olive oil as a metaphor for finding balance in life. There's probably a book in there somewhere.
Next week the gang of four gets back together at last. They will learn that everyday life is a slippery existence indeed, where nothing is certain and what can happen when life throws them an unexpected, extra-virgin curve ball.
Copyright 2010 G. Leo Maselli
To illustrate, I introduce Carla Pinetti and Lilli Bowen. These two gals were both lowly freshmen at Oroville High when Jesse and Chuck were popular upper classmen. There was some elemental social interaction between the four of them from time to time back then in the form of dragging the main, beer bingeing, and brief moments of under-the-ol'-angora petting. Then both guys went off to college and went out of touch. A few years later the girls left town to what turned out to be unbearable lives and careers in big cities: Carla to Chicago as the creative director for a strategic marketing and branding firm and Lilli to Miami as the head of sustainability strategy for a software company. Ultimately both sought and found the freedom of life without a dominating husband or a fool for a boss, back in their hometown.
Jesse's love interest in elementary school was Carla who tried desperately to kiss him in the first grade and finally succeeded in doing so by the third grade. Today Carla has developed a popular line of olive oil based cosmetics being successfully sold under the label "OLIVE U." Regionally it has already become a popular line of erotic love oils, body lotions and hair products that seems poised to take off nationally. The goal is to sell it for $5 million. Today she lives modestly, but is not wanting due to the entrepreneurial instincts she inherited from her father.
Lilli is a food presenter at the Olive Festival's Artisan Market when Chuck reconnects with her. Currently she is a successful, local television cooking show host, cook book author, and touring food presenter, delighted to be back in California's charming, old world environment of the olive country. She often describes the production of perfect olive oil as a metaphor for finding balance in life. There's probably a book in there somewhere.
Next week the gang of four gets back together at last. They will learn that everyday life is a slippery existence indeed, where nothing is certain and what can happen when life throws them an unexpected, extra-virgin curve ball.
Copyright 2010 G. Leo Maselli
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Hesitant Hedonism (2 of 10)
For countless Americans the concept of work has evolved simultaneously to that which gives meaning to our daily lives and then strips its meaning away with the same all-encompassing gesture. The economic downturn has offered many of us an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reevaluate our relationship to work. We needed a pause and we got one. We've started to ask ourselves what the hell we're working so hard for. Could there be something out there, some lost key to the kingdom of happiness that is being over-looked? You bet your ass there is. It's called pleasure.
Case in point, Chuck Risconi, aka Castello Eros Risconi, age 43. Chuck graduated from Oroville High School back in the eighties where he established an ongoing friendship with his buddy, Jesse James Hart. Chuck is the only child of Lena, a beautiful Dutch woman, and Vic, an Italian olive grower and processor. When Vic died, without a moment of doubt or hesitation, Lena picked up the reins of the business and from that time forward it began to grow at a faster pace than ever before. When she needed assistance, Chuck quit college and went home to work with his mother running the front office as best he could. But they quickly determined that the long hours required were just not for him. And so Chuck moved from Oroville and created a new life for himself in Atlanta, Georgia as a new age entrepreneur. He opened the Oroville Olive Company's first brick & mortar retail operation and lives upstairs over the store. Unfortunately, in his view, the boutique business took off immediately in Atlanta's sea of upscale yuppies and then snowballed throughout the South with the onset of the Internet. He's been forced to open additional retail stores in Charlotte, Savannah and Nashville. Business is good but requires a 60-hour work week. Not what he was hoping to achieve.
Meanwhile, his mother remains robust enough to endure her own 60-hour work week rigorously managing both the ranch and the adjacent processing plant. But her doctor suggests she needs a change of pace. Feeling the urge to travel to, and perhaps even to retire to the Italian Alps, she's just closed the sale of the processing plant to Del Monte Foods. Now she wants Chuck to come home and take-over or sell the olive groves.
As the story begins, Chuck agrees to fly out to the coast for a "man-to-man" about the future of the family business. On orders from his mother he will be fitted for a new tuxedo upon arrival. It seems he will be escorting her to the many events taking place during the annual Oroville Olive Festival for which she has been chosen the event's honorary Grand Marshall.
Copyright 2010 G. Leo Maselli
Case in point, Chuck Risconi, aka Castello Eros Risconi, age 43. Chuck graduated from Oroville High School back in the eighties where he established an ongoing friendship with his buddy, Jesse James Hart. Chuck is the only child of Lena, a beautiful Dutch woman, and Vic, an Italian olive grower and processor. When Vic died, without a moment of doubt or hesitation, Lena picked up the reins of the business and from that time forward it began to grow at a faster pace than ever before. When she needed assistance, Chuck quit college and went home to work with his mother running the front office as best he could. But they quickly determined that the long hours required were just not for him. And so Chuck moved from Oroville and created a new life for himself in Atlanta, Georgia as a new age entrepreneur. He opened the Oroville Olive Company's first brick & mortar retail operation and lives upstairs over the store. Unfortunately, in his view, the boutique business took off immediately in Atlanta's sea of upscale yuppies and then snowballed throughout the South with the onset of the Internet. He's been forced to open additional retail stores in Charlotte, Savannah and Nashville. Business is good but requires a 60-hour work week. Not what he was hoping to achieve.
Meanwhile, his mother remains robust enough to endure her own 60-hour work week rigorously managing both the ranch and the adjacent processing plant. But her doctor suggests she needs a change of pace. Feeling the urge to travel to, and perhaps even to retire to the Italian Alps, she's just closed the sale of the processing plant to Del Monte Foods. Now she wants Chuck to come home and take-over or sell the olive groves.
As the story begins, Chuck agrees to fly out to the coast for a "man-to-man" about the future of the family business. On orders from his mother he will be fitted for a new tuxedo upon arrival. It seems he will be escorting her to the many events taking place during the annual Oroville Olive Festival for which she has been chosen the event's honorary Grand Marshall.
Copyright 2010 G. Leo Maselli
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