Dear Reader,
At its core, the excessive is what happens once you’re pretty sure you won’t die, at least for a little while. Fundamentally, it’s that which surpasses the basic human needs of food, water, and sleep. Yet, in spite of its benign logic, the word “excessive” has been burdened with notions of vanity, selfishness, greed, shame. Somewhere in its history, the word “excessive” became critical, when it might not really be so bad.
Our lives don’t solely consist of the perfunctory, emotionally sterile process of pumping blood, keeping death at bay. And thank God they don’t. There are 24 hours in a day, and the routine tasks of staying alive don’t usually take up all of them.
The rest? It’s excessive. And that’s not always a bad thing. A totally unexcessive, purely biological existence might be likened to the watery nothingness of a plain, uncooked block of tofu: non-poisonous, somewhat nourishing, not particularly appetizing, and not very interesting. It seems like we might actually need excess, if only to buffer us from boredom and distressing existential questions about the meaning of life or the point of it all, whatever “it all” may be. If checking the box on basic needs constitutes survival, excess constitutes living.
For all its virtues, “excessive” gets a bad rap. We usually don’t hide having that which we don’t need. Except at CC, of course, where hiding wealth is the norm for the disproportionate number of students from the one percent. But at some level, the descriptor is usually applied to some kind of material surplus, like a needlessly full closet of clothes, or the use of one’s time and energy on something completely frivolous, like the Hailey Bieber-Selena Gomez rivalry or the Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston interaction at the SAG Awards.
In reality, the excessive can propel life at its best, can elevate the hours in a day and make it all worth it. Excess is a line we all walk between indulgence and glorious fulfillment, and the perils of too much and too far. Embellishment on the human condition is something we all do, but at the same time it gives us our individuality. In this issue, we pay tribute to the excess that captivates us. D. Verda’s story “The Six”, now in its third installment, grapples with excess and obsession as one character confronts her harmful dependence on video games. In “The Way of St. James,” Miriam Brown recounts her summer trip to El Camino de Santiago and contends with the paradoxical relationship between excessive commitment to the past and indulgence in modern amenities. And Ella Hartshorn’s “On Potatoes and Higher Education” exposes the author’s own covert agricultural campus protest and her tenuous relationship with a complicated institution and its excessive practices.
There’s no way around it: we’re all excessive. In fact, when it comes down to it, many of us spend the majority of our time pursuing things we don’t truly need. The excessive runs in all directions, but I bet we’d even take the bad over nothing at all.
Take the amoeba: amoebas are never excessive (except by existing, because they are pointless), and no one is jealous of them. They lead sad, boring lives, and the worst part is that they don’t even know that they are sad and boring. They are the only completely unexcessive creature that comes to mind, and they are the worst.
For the humans reading: sleep, eat, live excessively, repeat.
Thank you for using your excessive time and literacy to read this issue,
Georgia and the rest of the Cipher staff
Excessive Issue | January 2020