MN: Beer Blessing in Latin
By Michael Novak
Tuesday, August 1, 2006, 3:46 PM
Beer Blessing
From the Rituale Romanum (no 58)
Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi: et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti, ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corporis, et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen
Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, that Thou hast been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain: that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Translation by Fr. Ephraem Chifley, O.P.)
(Access contributors’ biographies by clicking here.)
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added 28 January 2012, full entry
V. Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.
R. Qui fecit caelum et terram.
V. Dominus vobiscum.
R. Et cum spiritu tuo.
Oremus.
Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisiae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi, et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti; ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corpus et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
Translation from XI.9.5 of Weller’s edition:
P: Our help is in the name of the Lord.
All: Who made heaven and earth.
P: The Lord be with you.
All: May He also be with you.
Let us pray.
Lord, bless + this creature, beer, which by your kindness and power has been produced from kernels of grain, and let it be a healthful drink for mankind. Grant that whoever drinks it with thanksgiving to your holy name may find it a help in body and in soul; through Christ our Lord. All: Amen.
It is sprinkled with holy water.
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Cf. also this BBC article.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Footnotes
I used to have the following as a sig:
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* “If the reader does not understand this word, it is too bad.”
Best Footnote Ever, from p. 59 of Rats, Lice and History
(and brought to my attention by SWMBO)
http://steliz.blogspot.com/2005/12/rats-lice-and-history.html
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I suppose I should qualify that epithet to “Best Academic Footnote Ever,” since the footnote to which I most often refer people is not only in a different book altogether, it is in a different sort of book altogether.
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett is the funniest novel about the coming of the Antichrist that you will ever read. The premise is that the Spawn of Satan was, through bureaucratically designed accident, switched with a normal child. The effect is that those responsible for seeing to the Dark Child’s preparation and training are wasting their efforts with a thoroughly unsuited pupil, while the child with Hell’s powers is being reared in a bland British suburban setting. The book is populated with comic characters both mortal and immortal and peppered with a most entertaining set of footnotes. My favorite of those is informative and dry with just the right amount of snark; it comes upon the revelation that a particular member of the Witchfinder Army, name of Newt, is paid one old shilling per annum (p. 178 in my edition):
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* “If the reader does not understand this word, it is too bad.”
Best Footnote Ever, from p. 59 of Rats, Lice and History
(and brought to my attention by SWMBO)
http://steliz.blogspot.com/2005/12/rats-lice-and-history.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I suppose I should qualify that epithet to “Best Academic Footnote Ever,” since the footnote to which I most often refer people is not only in a different book altogether, it is in a different sort of book altogether.
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett is the funniest novel about the coming of the Antichrist that you will ever read. The premise is that the Spawn of Satan was, through bureaucratically designed accident, switched with a normal child. The effect is that those responsible for seeing to the Dark Child’s preparation and training are wasting their efforts with a thoroughly unsuited pupil, while the child with Hell’s powers is being reared in a bland British suburban setting. The book is populated with comic characters both mortal and immortal and peppered with a most entertaining set of footnotes. My favorite of those is informative and dry with just the right amount of snark; it comes upon the revelation that a particular member of the Witchfinder Army, name of Newt, is paid one old shilling per annum (p. 178 in my edition):
NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:So there it is. I think Chesterton would happily accept the book’s dedication to himself. Read the reviews & descriptions at Amazon (linked in the title of this post) and then waste a few hours wiping tears from your eyes. It beats doing actual work.
Two farthings = One Ha’penny. Two ha’pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.
The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
New Appliance for the Heat
Long abouts Derby Day, we tend to make some mint juleps and have a little Derby Pie (Lizzy less of the pie in these diabetic days). The time-consuming part of making a decent julep has been the powdered ice. Using the mallet tired the arm and ruins a tea towel. So I've had half an eye out for a decent ice shaver. Most of the machines make crushed ice, and the smallest chips seem to be what you'd find in a snow cone. But then, while poking around at Amazon, I found a complaint that read in part:
So we've had it for a little while now and I have to say that this looks to be our julep machine. I'll have to hand-pack the shavings a little harder next time, because they really do want to melt away when a beverage is poured on top. They are that light and fluffy.
We've also played around with freezing other things to shave. Best so far: coffee. It comes out much softer than granita, and goes a treat with Bailey's. Shave some coffee, add some Irish cream. Yum!
Although it will have limited use, it could turn out to be our best kitchen appliance since the convection toaster oven, which is even now about to be loaded with some cookies.
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BTW: click the title of this blog to arrive at the Amazon page. It's the Hamilton Beach Snowman Ice Shaver.
I have tried shaving just plain ice first and then adding liquids, but because this machine generates snow, the snow tends to melt before you get a chance to enjoy it."...generates snow..." That sounded like my machine, and at $20, what's to lose?
So we've had it for a little while now and I have to say that this looks to be our julep machine. I'll have to hand-pack the shavings a little harder next time, because they really do want to melt away when a beverage is poured on top. They are that light and fluffy.
We've also played around with freezing other things to shave. Best so far: coffee. It comes out much softer than granita, and goes a treat with Bailey's. Shave some coffee, add some Irish cream. Yum!
Although it will have limited use, it could turn out to be our best kitchen appliance since the convection toaster oven, which is even now about to be loaded with some cookies.
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BTW: click the title of this blog to arrive at the Amazon page. It's the Hamilton Beach Snowman Ice Shaver.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Pronoun / Antecedent
One morning a fifth-grader saw me hand an empty egg carton over to another student. He asked why, and I told him that the other student’s family was going to fill the carton with a dozen freshly laid brown eggs.
His reply was, “we get brown eggs from our neighbors. They raise chickens. They’re rednecks.”
“Nicholas,” I said, “you do realize that that’s a derogatory term, don’t you? That it’s not a nice thing to call someone?”
In a completely guileless voice he said, “I don’t think they mind.”
“But you should mind, ” I told him. “They’re your friends. They give you eggs.”
He looked at me, his favorite teacher, as if I were an idiot and said, “they’re just chickens.”
I paused, tiny little cogitative wheels spinning furiously.
“Do you mean Rhode Island Reds?”
“Yeah!” he said brightly, “That’s it! Rhode Island Reds!”
“Ah... Well... I’ll see you in class, then.”
His reply was, “we get brown eggs from our neighbors. They raise chickens. They’re rednecks.”
“Nicholas,” I said, “you do realize that that’s a derogatory term, don’t you? That it’s not a nice thing to call someone?”
In a completely guileless voice he said, “I don’t think they mind.”
“But you should mind, ” I told him. “They’re your friends. They give you eggs.”
He looked at me, his favorite teacher, as if I were an idiot and said, “they’re just chickens.”
I paused, tiny little cogitative wheels spinning furiously.
“Do you mean Rhode Island Reds?”
“Yeah!” he said brightly, “That’s it! Rhode Island Reds!”
“Ah... Well... I’ll see you in class, then.”
It’s all in the synopsis
Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.
Rick Polito, summarizing The Wizard of Oz
for the Marin (CA) Independent-Journal’s television highlights column.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Unintentional? Papal Snark
This on p. 52 of the first American edition (Doubleday 2007), in a quick review of just what "the Kingdom of Heaven / God" has meant and what it should mean:
cf. Lodge’s MLA scene.
Here, obviously, theory predominated over listening to the text.
cf. Lodge’s MLA scene.
Jesus of Nazareth
I'm reading the Pope's newest book, and am very much enjoying it. I've mentioned to a few people already that the forward should be published separately as a tract on how to do Biblical hermeneutics now that we've reached the limits of and seen the problems with the historical/critical method.
After I've finished it, I'm going to have to let it sit for a month or so and then go through it again. But for now I'll say: after so many years of fighting over the "historical Jesus," it's refreshing to read such a competent (and learned) search for the Lord Jesus in the gospels.
But for now, just one quotation, appearing above this post.
After I've finished it, I'm going to have to let it sit for a month or so and then go through it again. But for now I'll say: after so many years of fighting over the "historical Jesus," it's refreshing to read such a competent (and learned) search for the Lord Jesus in the gospels.
But for now, just one quotation, appearing above this post.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Unfortunate Collocation
Out on the web tonight, I catch out of the corner of my eye a line of icons for social networks. They were, in order, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. Unfortunately, the icons all ran together into something I think I may have shouted at TV sets that were going dead in past decades.
I've clipped a screenshot. See for yourself.
I've clipped a screenshot. See for yourself.
Cicero on Blogging
...mandare quemquam litteris cogitationes suas, qui eas nec disponere nec inlustrare possit nec delectatione aliqua allicere lectorem, hominis est intemperanter abutentis et otio et litteris.
...for someone to entrust their thoughts to writing, someone who can neither order nor clarify their thoughts nor win over a reader with some kind of pleasure, this is the mark of a person who flagrantly abuses both leisure and writing.
Tusculanae Disputationes 1 III 6
...for someone to entrust their thoughts to writing, someone who can neither order nor clarify their thoughts nor win over a reader with some kind of pleasure, this is the mark of a person who flagrantly abuses both leisure and writing.
Tusculanae Disputationes 1 III 6
Classics and Anthropology
The journal Arion might better be entitled Phoenix. It has risen from the ashes twice. But the name Phoenix is already taken by a different journal of classics. So now Arion carries on more than a decade into its third incarnation under the name of a poet who miraculously evaded death, rather than under a name of resurrection. So be it.
Arion’s first piece of Advice to Prospective Contributors includes the lines, “If you propose submitting a paper that has been rejected by one of the professional journals, we urge you to rewrite it. The fact that it wasn’t quite dull enough to be accepted there doesn’t mean that it is lively enough for Arion.” If you’re interested in Classical Antiquities and prefer a livelier read, Arion might be the journal for you.
Back when it had arisen the second time and just started the Third Series, there was a very nice article by James Redfield. No, not the therapist-turned-novelist James Redfield, but the Professor James M. Redfield who does ancient Greek studies at Chicago. Redfield’s article is a brief of what anthropologists and classicists can and should learn from each other. It also includes a good bit of compare/contrast of the disciplines, including their initiation rituals. It’s a delightful read to nearly anyone who has spent time with the linguists and archaeologists, the literary theorists and the crypto-psychiatrists who inhabit the world of Ancient Studies.
Here, I give you only the second paragraph of the article. Feel free to go dig up the rest. It’s well worth it.
Redfield, James, “Classics and Anthropology,” Arion, Third Series, vol. 1, no. 2, Spring / May 1991, pp. 5-6.
Arion’s first piece of Advice to Prospective Contributors includes the lines, “If you propose submitting a paper that has been rejected by one of the professional journals, we urge you to rewrite it. The fact that it wasn’t quite dull enough to be accepted there doesn’t mean that it is lively enough for Arion.” If you’re interested in Classical Antiquities and prefer a livelier read, Arion might be the journal for you.
Back when it had arisen the second time and just started the Third Series, there was a very nice article by James Redfield. No, not the therapist-turned-novelist James Redfield, but the Professor James M. Redfield who does ancient Greek studies at Chicago. Redfield’s article is a brief of what anthropologists and classicists can and should learn from each other. It also includes a good bit of compare/contrast of the disciplines, including their initiation rituals. It’s a delightful read to nearly anyone who has spent time with the linguists and archaeologists, the literary theorists and the crypto-psychiatrists who inhabit the world of Ancient Studies.
Here, I give you only the second paragraph of the article. Feel free to go dig up the rest. It’s well worth it.
Redfield, James, “Classics and Anthropology,” Arion, Third Series, vol. 1, no. 2, Spring / May 1991, pp. 5-6.
I have spent most of my academic career hanging about the edges of departments, particularly (at Chicago) the departments of Anthropology and of Classics. It often seems to me that these two are structural opposites. Take, for example, the question of the consumption of alcohol. Both professions include heavy drinkers—indeed the profession of Classics seems to me to have more than its share of helpless drunks (not at Chicago, needless to say). But Classicists tend to be solitary drinkers; when they meet together socially it tends to be in the afternoon, over tea. The anthropologists, on the other hand, gather at midnight, and drink grain alcohol and grapefruit juice out of plastic waste baskets. To this difference correspond others—for example, on the rhetorical level. Anthropologists like to conduct their controversies in open meetings, where they ride and make flamboyant, unforgivable speeches. Classicists are almost always polite—with the result that it is frequently impossible to find out what they think. Anthropologists seem to enjoy conflict, whereas classicists prefer to pretend that it does not exist. Anthropologists tend toward exuberance, classicists toward irony. To give them the most gross kind of physical characterization: the classicist is typically dusty, the anthropologist, sweaty.
Cicero on Political Flip-Flopping
Some AP-related poking around in Cicero has intersected with overblown political rhetoric about “primary conversions” (candidates whose views seem to change as soon as they enter the season of primary elections) and “flip-floppers.” While one hopes that a change of heart and mind is not cynically intended to garner more votes, I see nothing wrong with politicians changing their minds. In fact, I think it’s a very good thing for a politician to be able to be swayed by good argument or new evidence. Apparently, I’m not alone.
Of course, Cicero ended up with his head and hands mounted on the Rostra, so caveat lector.
...numquam enim in praestantibus in re publica gubernanda viris laudata est in una sententia perpetua permansio....and
...for persistence in a single permanent opinion among men [sic] active in the governance of the republic has never been praised....
ad Familiares 1.9.21
nemo doctus umquam ... mutationem consili inconstantiam dixit esse.
No educated person has ever said that a change of mind was inconsistency.
ad Atticum 16.7.3
Of course, Cicero ended up with his head and hands mounted on the Rostra, so caveat lector.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Serious Sin
What is it in us that wants to rank sin? Any sin of any degree separates us from God, be it lust, murder, or pride—even pride that my sins aren’t nearly as bad as yours (Lk. 18.9ff.). Usually when I’m thinking about what a horrible sinner someone else is, it’s a way of distracting myself from my own sin—not to mention an example of active sin in my own life. And I’m not saying that there aren’t degrees of sin, only that our rankings are not usually those of God.
One of the things that let me know that my theology of the Lord’s Supper / Communion / the Eucharist needed some work was when I realized that the God of the New Testament is still a “smiting” God, and seeing what he smote people over. I think that most people remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira (not the same disciple Ananias from chapter 9). I’ll let you refresh your memory on that one and say no more about it here.
But it was the example from 1 Cor. 11 that caught my attention. With all the junque going on at Corinth, including possible incest (cf. 5.1), why is it that some are dying? Because they take Communion in an unworthy manner (vv. 29-30). All the immorality and strife in Corinth, and this is why God smites some of them. Hmmm... Sounds like God takes the Eucharist a whole lot more seriously that I did back in my Fightin’ Fundy days. (And I suppose that some day I might have to post a rumination on John 6, but not tonight.)
But what provokes me into posting my own thoughts for once instead of just quoting someone else is a statement in the inventory I posted below this one. When I took the “quiz” the statement showed up at #24; revisiting now it’s at #53. So the order apparently changes when you visit quizfarm. Be that as it may, this was the prompt:
Way back in the day, my co-religionists typically referred to homosexuality as “Sodomy,” named obviously for that horrid city of wickedness that had fire and brimstone rained down upon it for its sins. And like my co-religionists, I assumed that the sin that broke the camel’s back was the attempted homosexual rape of God’s messengers. But then God told me otherwise.
Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t hear His voice in my ear while meditating with recreational chemicals. No, I just read the prophets. And among them, I read Ezekiel. Ezekiel 16 in particular, where God is sternly warning His people about what they deserve. Verses 48-50 run like this:
So next time you find your knickers in a twist over something as boring and unoriginal as sexual sins and “perversions” born of simple attraction and loneliness, take that energy and turn it positive. Go to a hospital, a prison, a shut-in. Take a homeless person to lunch. God apparently takes our own lack of active compassion much more seriously than he takes acts of homosexuality.
One of the things that let me know that my theology of the Lord’s Supper / Communion / the Eucharist needed some work was when I realized that the God of the New Testament is still a “smiting” God, and seeing what he smote people over. I think that most people remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira (not the same disciple Ananias from chapter 9). I’ll let you refresh your memory on that one and say no more about it here.
But it was the example from 1 Cor. 11 that caught my attention. With all the junque going on at Corinth, including possible incest (cf. 5.1), why is it that some are dying? Because they take Communion in an unworthy manner (vv. 29-30). All the immorality and strife in Corinth, and this is why God smites some of them. Hmmm... Sounds like God takes the Eucharist a whole lot more seriously that I did back in my Fightin’ Fundy days. (And I suppose that some day I might have to post a rumination on John 6, but not tonight.)
But what provokes me into posting my own thoughts for once instead of just quoting someone else is a statement in the inventory I posted below this one. When I took the “quiz” the statement showed up at #24; revisiting now it’s at #53. So the order apparently changes when you visit quizfarm. Be that as it may, this was the prompt:
Homosexuality is one of the worst sinsEven as a Bible-thumping Reagan Republican (I was precinct party chairman at age 18), I knew that this was simply not true. Stick with me for a moment, and I’ll show you how I know that there are far worse sins.
Way back in the day, my co-religionists typically referred to homosexuality as “Sodomy,” named obviously for that horrid city of wickedness that had fire and brimstone rained down upon it for its sins. And like my co-religionists, I assumed that the sin that broke the camel’s back was the attempted homosexual rape of God’s messengers. But then God told me otherwise.
Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t hear His voice in my ear while meditating with recreational chemicals. No, I just read the prophets. And among them, I read Ezekiel. Ezekiel 16 in particular, where God is sternly warning His people about what they deserve. Verses 48-50 run like this:
As I live, says the Lord GOD, I swear that your sister Sodom, with her daughters, has not done as you and your daughters have done! And look at the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were proud, sated with food, complacent in their prosperity, and they gave no help to the poor and needy. Rather, they became haughty and committed abominable crimes in my presence; then, as you have seen, I removed them.So what sins were most important in the mind of God? Which did He feel the need to specify? Sins very similar to those by which He separates the sheep from the goats (Mt. 25.31ff.).
So next time you find your knickers in a twist over something as boring and unoriginal as sexual sins and “perversions” born of simple attraction and loneliness, take that energy and turn it positive. Go to a hospital, a prison, a shut-in. Take a homeless person to lunch. God apparently takes our own lack of active compassion much more seriously than he takes acts of homosexuality.
Theological Worldview
I’m putting this up mainly because question 24/63 is prompting a post I’ve been thinking about for a while (see above). But notice that the creator of this quiz would probably say that, based on my worldview, swimming the Tiber almost four years ago was the right decision for me. Does this make it any more official?
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 | You scored as Roman Catholic, You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you.
What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com |
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Conferences
The pastiche and commentary below opens one of the funniest novels about life in the academy that you’ll ever read. It is a must-read for anyone living their life on campus. For those who are giving thought to leaping from the ivory tower to the safety of less rarified air below, I would recommend a different comic novel, Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim. But for those entrenched, especially in the Liberal Arts, this is the one. David Lodge’s Small World.
OK, I’ll get to the quotation in a moment, but not before I tell you about the scene that made me love this novel. It had already given my enough belly laughs and quiet smirks that I was in love with it, but what changed the crush into a lasting affair is a subversive scene set at an annual conference of the MLA. At this conference, the big names in competing schools of literary criticism all participate in a panel discussion. Our hero stands up during the Q&A and asks them to suppose that everyone agreed with them. Then what? If everyone stopped fighting about how to interpret a text, the question implies, would we discover that no one actually reads anymore? Would we discover that the study of literature is no longer about the literature itself? In a room full of academics whose lives and livelihoods depend on talking about how you talk about literature, Persse asks what they would all do if everyone agreed with them (Part V, Chapter I, p. 319 in my old Penguin mass-market edition). And then the denouement is like a scene out of Plautus. I was and am smitten.
But that’s not what I wanted to quote here. Instead, I give you my favorite description of conferences: David Lodge, Small World, beginning of the Prologue. Enjoy.
OK, I’ll get to the quotation in a moment, but not before I tell you about the scene that made me love this novel. It had already given my enough belly laughs and quiet smirks that I was in love with it, but what changed the crush into a lasting affair is a subversive scene set at an annual conference of the MLA. At this conference, the big names in competing schools of literary criticism all participate in a panel discussion. Our hero stands up during the Q&A and asks them to suppose that everyone agreed with them. Then what? If everyone stopped fighting about how to interpret a text, the question implies, would we discover that no one actually reads anymore? Would we discover that the study of literature is no longer about the literature itself? In a room full of academics whose lives and livelihoods depend on talking about how you talk about literature, Persse asks what they would all do if everyone agreed with them (Part V, Chapter I, p. 319 in my old Penguin mass-market edition). And then the denouement is like a scene out of Plautus. I was and am smitten.
But that’s not what I wanted to quote here. Instead, I give you my favorite description of conferences: David Lodge, Small World, beginning of the Prologue. Enjoy.
When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root, and bathed every vein of earth with that liquid by whose powers the flowers are engendered; when the zephyr, too, with its dulcet breath, has breathed life into the tender new shoots in every copse and on every heath, and the young sun has run half his course in the sign of the Ram, ... then, as the poet Geoffrey Chaucer observed many years ago, folk long to go on pilgrimages. Only, these days, professional people call them conferences.
The modern conference resembles the pilgrimage of medieval Christendom in that it allows the participants to indulge themselves in all the pleasures and diversions of travel while appearing to be austerely bent on self-improvement. To be sure, there are certain penitential exercises to be performed—the presentation of a paper, perhaps, and certainly listening to the papers of others. But with this excuse you journey to new and interesting places, meet new and interesting people, and form new and interesting relationships with them; exchange gossip and confidences (for your well-worn stories are fresh to them, and vice versa); eat, drink and make merry in their company every evening; and yet, at the end of it all, return home with an enhanced reputation for seriousness of mind.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
On being an Ex-Suicide
1983 was a good year. It saw the release of both Mark Heard’s Eye of the Storm and the Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues. It was the year that the O’Cayce household (House of Chez Casa) was established, with an exchange of vows at the Pilot Grove Church in Old City Park, Dallas. And it was the year that Walker Percy published a piece of non-fiction entitled Lost in the Cosmos. (Be sure to read the customer reviews.)
The first edition hardback of LitC runs to 262 pages. Its full title is Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. The opening pages are a preliminary multiple-choice quiz about the Self, designed to see whether or not you need to read the rest of the book, thereby ensuring that the rest of the book will not be skipped. The rest of the book comprises a 40 page excursus on the semiotics of the Self (which the Author all but advises the Reader to skip, thereby ensuring that it will not be skipped) in the middle of just over 200 pages of a:
It is an odd and oddly delightful format. Quite a bit of the book is extremely funny, although the section I am going to quote is not.
Question 11 is about:
Suicidal depression is something about which Percy knew a thing or two. Both his father and his paternal grandfather had used shotguns to end their own lives. Percy’s mother died when, a couple of years after her husband’s suicide, her car went off a bridge and into a bayou, which death Percy also took took to be a suicide. Percy managed to avoid carrying on the family tradition, and the Thought Experiment at the end of Question 11 is what taught me how to be not a non-suicide, but rather a former-suicide, an ex-suicide.
It worked for me, and it was necessary despite the fact that during the 80s I was still a Fundamentalist Christian and, according to Percy, should have been one of those blessed elect who are never depressed. I was certainly surrounded by Fundamentalist Christians who never seemed depressed. And let me tell you, being given to periods of depression while surrounded by those who are nearly clinically chipper and who consider happiness a divine sign of right living, that will only make one’s hole deeper and darker.
Perhaps you are not given to bouts of depression, have never heard the black wings beating about your head. Perhaps your own depression is of a different etiology and requires a different treatment. Perhaps, like me, you have at some point gotten so deep into the self-talk, thought-driven sort of depression that you needed chemical help to find your way far enough back to even be able to retrain your thought life. All I can say is, this has worked for me most of the time. I am still an ex-suicide.
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Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
by Walker Percy
pp. 75-9 (1983 HB edition by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)
Thought Experiment: A new cure for depression.
The only cure for depression is suicide.
This is not meant as a bad joke but as the serious proposal of suicide as a valid option. Unless the option is entertained seriously, its therapeutic value is lost. No threat is credible unless the threatener means it.
The treatment of depression requires a reversal of the usual therapeutic rationale. The therapeutic rationale, which has never been questioned, is that depression is a symptom. A symptom implies an illness; there is something wrong with you. An illness should be treated.
Suppose you are depressed. You may be mildly or seriously depressed, clinically depressed, or suicidal. What do you usually do? Or what does one do with you? Do nothing or something. If something, what is done is always based on the premise that something is wrong with you and therefore it should be remedied. You are treated. You apply to friend, counselor, physician, minister, group. You take a trip, take anti-depressant drugs, change jobs, change wife or husband or “sexual partner.”
Now, call into question the unspoken assumption: something is wrong with you. Like Copernicus and Einstein, turn the universe upside down and begin with a new assumption.
Assume that you are quite right. You are depressed because you have every reason to be depressed. No member of the other two million species which inhabit the earth—and who are luckily exempt from depression—would fail to be depressed if it lived the life you lead. You live in a deranged age—more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.
Begin with the reverse hypothesis, like Copernicus and Einstein. You are depressed because you should be. You are entitled to your depression. In fact, you’d be deranged if you were not depressed. Consider the only adults who are never depressed: chuckleheads, California surfers, and fundamentalist Christians who believe they have had a personal encounter with Jesus and are saved for once and all. Would you trade your depression to become any of these?
Now consider, not the usual therapeutic approach, but a more ancient and honorable alternative, the Roman option. I do not care for life in this deranged world, it is not an honorable way to live; therefore, like Cato, I take my leave. Or, as Ivan said to God in The Brothers Karamazov: If you exist, I respectfully return my ticket.
Now notice that as soon as suicide is taken as a serious alternative, a curious thing happens. To be or not to be becomes a true choice, where before you were stuck with to be. Your only choice was how to be less painfully, either by counseling, narcotizing, boozing, groupizing, womanizing, man-hopping, or changing your sexual preference.
If you are serious about the choice, certain consequences follow. Consider the alternatives. Suppose you elect suicide. Very well. You exit. Then what? What happens after you exit? Nothing much. Very little, indeed. After a ripple or two, the water closes over your head as if you had never existed. You are not indispensable, after all. You are not even a black hole in the Cosmos. All that stress and anxiety was for nothing. Your fellow townsmen will have something to talk about for a few days. Your neighbors will profess shock and enjoy it. One or two might miss you, perhaps your family, who will also resent the disgrace. Your creditors will resent the inconvenience. Your lawyers will be pleased. Your psychiatrist will be displeased. The priest or minister or rabbi will say a few words over you and down you go on the green tapes and that’s the end of you. In a surprisingly short time, everyone is back in the rut of his own self as if you had never existed.
Now, in the light of this alternative, consider the other alternative. You can elect suicide, but you decide not to. What happens? All at once, you are dispensed. Why not live, instead of dying? You are free to do so. You are like a prisoner released from the cell of his life. You notice that the cell door is ajar and that the sun is shining outside. Why not take a walk down the street? Where you might have been dead, you are alive. The sun is shining.
Suddenly you feel like a castaway on an island. You can’t believe your good fortune. You feel for broken bones. You are in one piece, sole survivor of a foundered ship whose captain and crew had worried themselves into a fatal funk. And here you are, cast up on a beach and taken in by islanders who, it turns out, are themselves worried sick—over what? Over status, saving face, self-esteem, national rivalries, boredom, anxiety, depression from which they seek relief mainly in wars and the natural catastrophes which regularly overtake their neighbors.
And you, an ex-suicide, lying on the beach? In what way have you been freed by the serious entertainment of your hypothetical suicide? Are you not free for the first time in your life to consider the folly of man, the most absurd of all the species, and to contemplate the cosmic mystery of your own existence? And even to consider which is the more absurd state of affairs, the manifest absurdity of your predicament: lost in the Cosmos and no news of how you got into such a fix or how to get out—or the even more preposterous eventuality that news did come from the God of the Cosmos, who took pity on your ridiculous plight and entered the space and time of your insignificant planet to tell you something.
The consequences of entertaining suicide? Lying on the beach, you are free for the first time to pick up a coquina and look at it. You are even free to go home and, like the man from Chicago, dance with your wife.
The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o’clock on an ordinary morning:
The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.
The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn’t have to.
The first edition hardback of LitC runs to 262 pages. Its full title is Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. The opening pages are a preliminary multiple-choice quiz about the Self, designed to see whether or not you need to read the rest of the book, thereby ensuring that the rest of the book will not be skipped. The rest of the book comprises a 40 page excursus on the semiotics of the Self (which the Author all but advises the Reader to skip, thereby ensuring that it will not be skipped) in the middle of just over 200 pages of a:
Twenty-Question Multiple-Choice Self-Help Quiz
to test your knowledge of the peculiar status of the self, your self and other selves, in the Cosmos, and your knowledge of what to do with your self in these, the last years of the twentieth century.
It is an odd and oddly delightful format. Quite a bit of the book is extremely funny, although the section I am going to quote is not.
Question 11 is about:
THE DEPRESSED SELF: Whether the Self is Depressed because there is something wrong with it or whether Depression is a Normal Response to a Deranged World.
Suicidal depression is something about which Percy knew a thing or two. Both his father and his paternal grandfather had used shotguns to end their own lives. Percy’s mother died when, a couple of years after her husband’s suicide, her car went off a bridge and into a bayou, which death Percy also took took to be a suicide. Percy managed to avoid carrying on the family tradition, and the Thought Experiment at the end of Question 11 is what taught me how to be not a non-suicide, but rather a former-suicide, an ex-suicide.
It worked for me, and it was necessary despite the fact that during the 80s I was still a Fundamentalist Christian and, according to Percy, should have been one of those blessed elect who are never depressed. I was certainly surrounded by Fundamentalist Christians who never seemed depressed. And let me tell you, being given to periods of depression while surrounded by those who are nearly clinically chipper and who consider happiness a divine sign of right living, that will only make one’s hole deeper and darker.
Perhaps you are not given to bouts of depression, have never heard the black wings beating about your head. Perhaps your own depression is of a different etiology and requires a different treatment. Perhaps, like me, you have at some point gotten so deep into the self-talk, thought-driven sort of depression that you needed chemical help to find your way far enough back to even be able to retrain your thought life. All I can say is, this has worked for me most of the time. I am still an ex-suicide.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
by Walker Percy
pp. 75-9 (1983 HB edition by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)
Thought Experiment: A new cure for depression.
The only cure for depression is suicide.
This is not meant as a bad joke but as the serious proposal of suicide as a valid option. Unless the option is entertained seriously, its therapeutic value is lost. No threat is credible unless the threatener means it.
The treatment of depression requires a reversal of the usual therapeutic rationale. The therapeutic rationale, which has never been questioned, is that depression is a symptom. A symptom implies an illness; there is something wrong with you. An illness should be treated.
Suppose you are depressed. You may be mildly or seriously depressed, clinically depressed, or suicidal. What do you usually do? Or what does one do with you? Do nothing or something. If something, what is done is always based on the premise that something is wrong with you and therefore it should be remedied. You are treated. You apply to friend, counselor, physician, minister, group. You take a trip, take anti-depressant drugs, change jobs, change wife or husband or “sexual partner.”
Now, call into question the unspoken assumption: something is wrong with you. Like Copernicus and Einstein, turn the universe upside down and begin with a new assumption.
Assume that you are quite right. You are depressed because you have every reason to be depressed. No member of the other two million species which inhabit the earth—and who are luckily exempt from depression—would fail to be depressed if it lived the life you lead. You live in a deranged age—more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.
Begin with the reverse hypothesis, like Copernicus and Einstein. You are depressed because you should be. You are entitled to your depression. In fact, you’d be deranged if you were not depressed. Consider the only adults who are never depressed: chuckleheads, California surfers, and fundamentalist Christians who believe they have had a personal encounter with Jesus and are saved for once and all. Would you trade your depression to become any of these?
Now consider, not the usual therapeutic approach, but a more ancient and honorable alternative, the Roman option. I do not care for life in this deranged world, it is not an honorable way to live; therefore, like Cato, I take my leave. Or, as Ivan said to God in The Brothers Karamazov: If you exist, I respectfully return my ticket.
Now notice that as soon as suicide is taken as a serious alternative, a curious thing happens. To be or not to be becomes a true choice, where before you were stuck with to be. Your only choice was how to be less painfully, either by counseling, narcotizing, boozing, groupizing, womanizing, man-hopping, or changing your sexual preference.
If you are serious about the choice, certain consequences follow. Consider the alternatives. Suppose you elect suicide. Very well. You exit. Then what? What happens after you exit? Nothing much. Very little, indeed. After a ripple or two, the water closes over your head as if you had never existed. You are not indispensable, after all. You are not even a black hole in the Cosmos. All that stress and anxiety was for nothing. Your fellow townsmen will have something to talk about for a few days. Your neighbors will profess shock and enjoy it. One or two might miss you, perhaps your family, who will also resent the disgrace. Your creditors will resent the inconvenience. Your lawyers will be pleased. Your psychiatrist will be displeased. The priest or minister or rabbi will say a few words over you and down you go on the green tapes and that’s the end of you. In a surprisingly short time, everyone is back in the rut of his own self as if you had never existed.
Now, in the light of this alternative, consider the other alternative. You can elect suicide, but you decide not to. What happens? All at once, you are dispensed. Why not live, instead of dying? You are free to do so. You are like a prisoner released from the cell of his life. You notice that the cell door is ajar and that the sun is shining outside. Why not take a walk down the street? Where you might have been dead, you are alive. The sun is shining.
Suddenly you feel like a castaway on an island. You can’t believe your good fortune. You feel for broken bones. You are in one piece, sole survivor of a foundered ship whose captain and crew had worried themselves into a fatal funk. And here you are, cast up on a beach and taken in by islanders who, it turns out, are themselves worried sick—over what? Over status, saving face, self-esteem, national rivalries, boredom, anxiety, depression from which they seek relief mainly in wars and the natural catastrophes which regularly overtake their neighbors.
And you, an ex-suicide, lying on the beach? In what way have you been freed by the serious entertainment of your hypothetical suicide? Are you not free for the first time in your life to consider the folly of man, the most absurd of all the species, and to contemplate the cosmic mystery of your own existence? And even to consider which is the more absurd state of affairs, the manifest absurdity of your predicament: lost in the Cosmos and no news of how you got into such a fix or how to get out—or the even more preposterous eventuality that news did come from the God of the Cosmos, who took pity on your ridiculous plight and entered the space and time of your insignificant planet to tell you something.
The consequences of entertaining suicide? Lying on the beach, you are free for the first time to pick up a coquina and look at it. You are even free to go home and, like the man from Chicago, dance with your wife.
The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o’clock on an ordinary morning:
The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.
The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn’t have to.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
For married friends
I bumped into an old e-mail sig, one I had lifted from Margaret Atwood’s Power Politics. This is the third stanza of a poem entitled Their attitudes differ:
But the better poem from that collection has no title but its first three words, “We are hard.” I’m quoting all four stanzas here. When everyone else was raving about Mary Oliver, this is what grabbed me. Especially the third stanza.
Pax omnibus.
You held out your hand
I took your fingerprints
You asked for love
I gave you only descriptions
Please die I said
so I can write about it
But the better poem from that collection has no title but its first three words, “We are hard.” I’m quoting all four stanzas here. When everyone else was raving about Mary Oliver, this is what grabbed me. Especially the third stanza.
i
We are hard on each other
and call it honesty,
choosing our jagged truths
with care and aiming them across
the neutral table.
The things we say are
true; it is our crooked
aims, our choices
turn them criminal.
ii
Of course your lies
are more amusing:
you make them new each time.
Your truths, painful and boring
repeat themselves over & over
perhaps because you own
so few of them
iii
A truth should exist,
it should not be used
like this. If I love you
is that a fact or a weapon?
iv
Does the body lie
moving like this, are these
touches, hairs, wet
soft marble my tongue runs over
lies you are telling me?
Your body is not a word,
it does not lie or
speak truth either.
It is only
here or not here.
Pax omnibus.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Not the First Tribute
We’ve been waiting for Mira Nair’s The Namesake to come to Cola, and this is the weekend. It has the standard half-week run for an indy flick in this market, so see it now or get the DVD. But that’s not all that happens this weekend. It’s also Mothers’ Day.
Since all the b’s-i-l and s’s-i-l are doing their own Mothers’ Day celebrations in honor of all the mothers in our generation, m-i-l was in danger of being overlooked. But wait! The cat isn’t doing anything for Lizzie, so we can host Bobbie, and do so far from the madding crowd. So we’re taking SWBSWMBO (She Who Bore She Who Must Be Obeyed) to a movie tomorrow afternoon.
If you haven’t heard of The Namesake, scope out the overwhelmingly good reviews at MetaCritic (82% overall, 8.5/10 by viewers), Rotten Tomatoes (85%), or even Google’s movie review search (4.3/5). And if you haven’t heard of Mira Nair (the director), think Mississippi Masala (not bad) and Monsoon Wedding (very good).
The screenplay is based on a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, and this is not the first time that Mira Nair has brought one of Lahiri’s works off the page. Back in April of 2006, This American Life aired an episode entitled “Fake I.D.,” in which half of the program consisted of Nair reading aloud a short story by Nahiri. The story, taken from Nahiri’s Pulizer-winning collection The Interpreter of Maladies, is a touching and lovely snapshot of the early days in the married life of a mis-matchmade marriage between two NRIs -- Sanjiv, a staid, conservative engineer, and Twinkle, an ebullient MFA candidate who is delighted at all the Cheesus (tacky Christian knickknacks) that they keep finding in and around their new house. Hit the link to the episode and listen to the show. The story starts just before 23 minutes into the show and finishes just after 50 minutes in. (Sorry, since TAL changed their coding a while back, you can no longer fast-forward or rewind the free, archived version of the show. But you can pay $0.95; or you can rip the stream for free if you have the software.)
I hope the movie’s as good as I think it will be. Especially since we’re taking SWBSWMBO.
Since all the b’s-i-l and s’s-i-l are doing their own Mothers’ Day celebrations in honor of all the mothers in our generation, m-i-l was in danger of being overlooked. But wait! The cat isn’t doing anything for Lizzie, so we can host Bobbie, and do so far from the madding crowd. So we’re taking SWBSWMBO (She Who Bore She Who Must Be Obeyed) to a movie tomorrow afternoon.
If you haven’t heard of The Namesake, scope out the overwhelmingly good reviews at MetaCritic (82% overall, 8.5/10 by viewers), Rotten Tomatoes (85%), or even Google’s movie review search (4.3/5). And if you haven’t heard of Mira Nair (the director), think Mississippi Masala (not bad) and Monsoon Wedding (very good).
The screenplay is based on a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, and this is not the first time that Mira Nair has brought one of Lahiri’s works off the page. Back in April of 2006, This American Life aired an episode entitled “Fake I.D.,” in which half of the program consisted of Nair reading aloud a short story by Nahiri. The story, taken from Nahiri’s Pulizer-winning collection The Interpreter of Maladies, is a touching and lovely snapshot of the early days in the married life of a mis-matchmade marriage between two NRIs -- Sanjiv, a staid, conservative engineer, and Twinkle, an ebullient MFA candidate who is delighted at all the Cheesus (tacky Christian knickknacks) that they keep finding in and around their new house. Hit the link to the episode and listen to the show. The story starts just before 23 minutes into the show and finishes just after 50 minutes in. (Sorry, since TAL changed their coding a while back, you can no longer fast-forward or rewind the free, archived version of the show. But you can pay $0.95; or you can rip the stream for free if you have the software.)
I hope the movie’s as good as I think it will be. Especially since we’re taking SWBSWMBO.
Blueberry Chutney
My mother-in-law is a big fan of blueberries; she says it’s for the anti-oxidant properties. She also likes salmon. So for Mothers’ Day (is that apostrophe placed properly?) I’m going to try broiled salmon over grits with a blueberry chutney (which will probably destroy whatever anti-oxidants there are; perhaps I should save out some berries for the spinach salad).
Anyway, I guess I’m going to try to make some blueberry chutney this afternoon. I have everything but the blueberries and the ginger root. Here's the recipe I’ll try. I will doubtless have to change this post later:
Blueberry Chutney
Bring to a slow boil over medium heat for 1 minute.
Remove cinnamon stick.
Add 1 medium ginger root, finely grated (added Summer 2010)
Reduce heat & reduce sauce to proper texture.
Remove from heat & refrigerate.
We’ll see how it goes. I think we’ll try some of it on brie tonight before experimenting on our guest of honor tomorrow.
Anyway, I guess I’m going to try to make some blueberry chutney this afternoon. I have everything but the blueberries and the ginger root. Here's the recipe I’ll try. I will doubtless have to change this post later:
Blueberry Chutney
- 1 c. blueberries
- 1/4 c. golden raisins
- 2 Tbsp. chopped onions
- 1/4 c. packed brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp. cider vinegar
- 1 stick cinnamon
- S&P to taste
Bring to a slow boil over medium heat for 1 minute.
Remove cinnamon stick.
Add 1 medium ginger root, finely grated (added Summer 2010)
Reduce heat & reduce sauce to proper texture.
Remove from heat & refrigerate.
We’ll see how it goes. I think we’ll try some of it on brie tonight before experimenting on our guest of honor tomorrow.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Why I Ride
I once wrote a little essay trying to explain why I enjoy riding motorcycles so much. The sad truth is that if you need an explanation, none will suffice. But occasionally, someone does a very nice job of almost capturing the ineffable. Dave Karlotski got pretty close back at the end of the last millenium. I'll paste that essay below, and by all means hit the link in the title of this post to hear him read another version of the same essay.
In fact, this little essay circulates fairly frequently, usually with no author ascribed. And there are several versions out there. I first read an anonymous version of it in an e-mail in 1999. You can find different versions (mostly without authors) by web-searching [motorcyle joy machine] or [motorcycles are joy machines] or [a motorcycle is a joy machine]. But better just to read and enjoy.
To read Karlotski's largest collection of stories, point your browser to The751, but don’t do it during work hours; you won’t get anything done for a while.
MPR’s The Savvy Traveler has several of Karlotski’s essays available for reading and listening, but their internal search engine doesn’t seem to work at all. So here's a partial list:
on the Badlands
on Labrador
on Mammoth Cave
on Lonely Roads
and, of course, Season of the Bike
Enjoy.
Season of the Bike
by Dave Karlotski
There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind’s big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don’t even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that’s just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.
Despite this, it’s hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you’re changed forever. The letters “MC” are stamped on your driver’s license right next to your sex and height as if “motorcycle” was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.
But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.
On a motorcycle I know I’m alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.
Sometimes I even hear music. It’s like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind’s roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock ‘n roll, dark orchestras, women’s voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.
At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it’s as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.
A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.
I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I’ve had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn’t trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I’ve done.
Cars lie to us and tell us we’re safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, “Sleep, sleep.” Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that’s no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.
In fact, this little essay circulates fairly frequently, usually with no author ascribed. And there are several versions out there. I first read an anonymous version of it in an e-mail in 1999. You can find different versions (mostly without authors) by web-searching [motorcyle joy machine] or [motorcycles are joy machines] or [a motorcycle is a joy machine]. But better just to read and enjoy.
To read Karlotski's largest collection of stories, point your browser to The751, but don’t do it during work hours; you won’t get anything done for a while.
MPR’s The Savvy Traveler has several of Karlotski’s essays available for reading and listening, but their internal search engine doesn’t seem to work at all. So here's a partial list:
on the Badlands
on Labrador
on Mammoth Cave
on Lonely Roads
and, of course, Season of the Bike
Enjoy.
Season of the Bike
by Dave Karlotski
There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind’s big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don’t even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that’s just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.
Despite this, it’s hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you’re changed forever. The letters “MC” are stamped on your driver’s license right next to your sex and height as if “motorcycle” was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.
But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.
On a motorcycle I know I’m alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.
Sometimes I even hear music. It’s like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind’s roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock ‘n roll, dark orchestras, women’s voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.
At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it’s as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.
A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.
I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I’ve had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn’t trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I’ve done.
Cars lie to us and tell us we’re safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, “Sleep, sleep.” Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that’s no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.
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