Last week on FB, I took issue with the lyrics of a song and a friend of a friend asked me [ in a non aggressive manner ] if I was bitter. I have been thinking about it ever since, because, of course, nobody has the goal of being bitter, or of being caught being bitter.
The issue was a song of Dolly Parton's, a song from a long time ago, a big hit, "Jolene". When I first heard it in my teens, when I was a very romantic, hopeful girl, I thought it was a whiny song, and missed the point, that if one is in reciprocal love with someone, another female, no matter how alluring can't just swoop in and "take" a person away as though they were an object in a store. As I have later found, it is possible to interfere with an established relationship by promising novelty, romance or just a bit of strange. I have also discovered, at least in my experience, and that of my friends, that the loser in these transactions tends to be the woman. If she's the one who is on the outside, she gets a man who she can never trust. If she's on the inside, she loses most of their shared friends and community experience when he takes off. If it's the man who is left, well, I don't see many of them hanging around single for long.
I don't see myself as bitter, but it is a feeling that is there sometimes.
I want to relate it to food, to the receptors on our tongues, the organ of speech, of pleasure, and being able to distinguish food from poison. Sweet, sour, salt and bitter, but in the U.S. bitter is a flavor we don't seek. Bitter foods are good for digestion, is it too far to leap to bitter experiences being an aid to understanding? Too much of any flavor is distressing after hunger or a craving have been satisfied.
Clinging to a preference or an outcome seems to me not that different from having a narrow diet, preferring to salt everything, to bail in the chocolate, to avoid vegetables.
Having thought of this, it is true that I eat too much sugar, and I avoid the anticipation of pain, I pick radicchio out of my salad and I take to my bed when drained by an unpleasant encounter. So, yes, probably, bitter sometimes, but not embittered.
The issue was a song of Dolly Parton's, a song from a long time ago, a big hit, "Jolene". When I first heard it in my teens, when I was a very romantic, hopeful girl, I thought it was a whiny song, and missed the point, that if one is in reciprocal love with someone, another female, no matter how alluring can't just swoop in and "take" a person away as though they were an object in a store. As I have later found, it is possible to interfere with an established relationship by promising novelty, romance or just a bit of strange. I have also discovered, at least in my experience, and that of my friends, that the loser in these transactions tends to be the woman. If she's the one who is on the outside, she gets a man who she can never trust. If she's on the inside, she loses most of their shared friends and community experience when he takes off. If it's the man who is left, well, I don't see many of them hanging around single for long.
I don't see myself as bitter, but it is a feeling that is there sometimes.
I want to relate it to food, to the receptors on our tongues, the organ of speech, of pleasure, and being able to distinguish food from poison. Sweet, sour, salt and bitter, but in the U.S. bitter is a flavor we don't seek. Bitter foods are good for digestion, is it too far to leap to bitter experiences being an aid to understanding? Too much of any flavor is distressing after hunger or a craving have been satisfied.
Clinging to a preference or an outcome seems to me not that different from having a narrow diet, preferring to salt everything, to bail in the chocolate, to avoid vegetables.
Having thought of this, it is true that I eat too much sugar, and I avoid the anticipation of pain, I pick radicchio out of my salad and I take to my bed when drained by an unpleasant encounter. So, yes, probably, bitter sometimes, but not embittered.
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