Those Less Poetic.

"Just before sleep, I think about why he can't make a proposition like that to his wife. I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself anyway, I don't care. I'm incapable of being insulted. I haven't loved anybody since that first juicy spurt of youth, and I've more or less decided that even that was merely a successful sales campaign conducted by dealers in jukebox records and mouthwash. Nobody can hurt me. I might get tired, or bored, but I can't be hurt the way a wife could. All this is just dirty talk to me, exotic entertainment for the unloved and unloving."

That's the paragraph of Katherine Dunn's The Resident Poet that speaks volumes to me. Self-worth. How much self-worth do you need? Is it a currency used for exchanges with others? Can it be measured? It seems to only be noticed in extremes.

Too much of it and you're in danger of being considered "bombastic." Idioms of swollen body parts, puffed chests and big heads, often accompany the adjective. Making it seem as if self-worth is blown into the body like the air of a ballon. It pools into certain physical areas, visibly expands them, but overblow and you'll explode.

Too little self-worth is obvious too. You'll end up like our little Sally here. In the prime of her fertility with all the physical benefits that includes, presumably intelligent, and yet agreeing to sleep with a married man who's "paunch" is a more important physical characteristic than anything else he possesses. Every woman that has slept with a man over 40, even a reasonably fit one, knows what Dunn is talking about. Oddly, a physically trait that usually only presents itself for the first time in a darkened bedroom with a harsh backlight creeping in from an adjoining room. Was that always there?

Sally's stronghold of emotional numbness cracks at the very last sentence of the story. It's not as impenetrable as she thinks. It never is when you don't think too highly of yourself.

Self-worth has always felt elusive to me, only rearing its head when you've already gone out of the range, which isn't useful. The supercillious comment has already flown from your mouth or the man who treats you poorly has already been fucked.

So how do we start to measure self-worth better so that the tank isn't running on empty or turgid with fuel? I haven't the slightest idea.