Meditations #40

 You cannot hope to be a scholar. But what you can do is to curb arrogance; what you can do is to rise above pleasures and plains; you can be superior to the lure of popularity; you can keep your temper with the foolish and ungrateful, yes, and even care for them.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Eight

Damn, MA, I already feel bad about my lack of scholarly production, way to pile on. 

Actually, I've always loved this passage from the Meditations. As I think about my upcoming talking for the Vermont Public Philosophy Week I suspect that this passage will find it's way into the talk. My point is that, when thinking about the books that made me a better person - or at least gave me the tools to be a better person - I would always include the Qur'an (and I first said this before I ever converted to Islam), the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. I think it is a potentially rich topic because they are, on the surface, three remarkably dissimilar sources. And yet, I think there are definite liminal spaces where the three converge, one of them being a sense of your relationship to a larger world, and the role that you can and should play in it. There are things that we, no matter our station or position in life, can do, and one of the first is to, as MA reminds us, "curb arrogance." Certainly the Qur'an reminds us of that, including the consistent reminder to control our temper. I think Proust says the same thing, although in a roundabout and maybe contradictory fashion; that is, I think it shows us the folly of those actions, as compared to merely lecturing us on them.

Meditations #39

 The daily wearing away of life, with its ever-shrinking reminder, is not the only thing we have to consider. For even if a man's years be prolonged, we must still take into account that it is doubtful whether his mind will continue to retain its capacity for the understanding of business, or for the contemplative effort needed to apprehend things divine and human. The onset of senility may involve no loss of respiratory or alimentary powers, or of sensations, impulses and so forth; nevertheless, the ability to make full use of his faculties, to assess correctly the demands of duty, to coordinate all the diverse problems that arise, to judge if the time has come to end his days on earth, or to make any other of the decisions that require the exercise of a practiced intellect, is already on the wane. We must press on, then, in haste; not simply because every hour brings us nearer to death, but because even before then our powers of perception and comprehension begin to deteriorate.

Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book Three

And since I mentioned my upcoming talk during the Vermont Public Philosophy Week, I guess I should get back into the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, not simply because of the event, but also because it continues to be an essential human activity.  I always come back to this justifiably famous and influential passage from the Meditations. It helps explain why learning Portuguese or giving talks like the upcoming one for Philosophy Week (or my one in the fall on Fernando Pessoa) or finishing the Epics and Ramadan in Winter books are so important to me.  I think it also helps explain why I dropped off of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. We simply don't have that much time, and before we ever end altogether we start to decline mentally. I need to keep living and exploring, even if it's "just" an intellectual quest.

Vermont Public Philosophy Week

 Yes, this is actually a thing - and, strangely enough, I'll be giving a talk during Vermont Public Philosophy Week. As with most things, I came to this fairly innocently. My great friend Erik Esskilsen was asked by the UVM professor who runs the series to talk. EE had, as is his wont, said something fascinating/provocative in a newspaper article so Tyler asked him to speak, and he would have done a great job. However, Erik and his family are going to be out of the country, so he passed along my name instead. As is well-documented, I hate public speaking with the fiery passion of a thousand suns (mainly, it just makes me very nervous). Still, I agreed because I do like to support local efforts, especially those designed to provide a more meaningful and intelligent public dialogue (although having me speak isn't guaranteed to produce either). I asked Tyler if I could give my talk out here in the wilderness, as compared to the big city (at least our big city) of Burlington. He loved the idea and said that one of his goals was to have talks all around the state and not simply in Chittenden county. Then I proposed a talk based on Three Books That (maybe, potentially, hopefully) Made Me A Better Person, which would feature the Qur'an, Marcus Aurelius, and Proust. He also loved that idea. Clearly, Tyler is made of sterner stuff, and my clumsy attempts to get out of the talk were all for naught. So, I guess I have to pull something together. Actually, I think it could be a fun topic and talk, and I don't have to drive more than a couple miles to bore or annoy people (normally I have to drive to campus to do that).

700 Days

 Yes, I recently blew by 700 straight days on Duolingo. I've mainly moved on to Pimsleur, which is both a much better (read: you have to pay for it) site and one that actually features Iberian (as compared to Brazilian) Portuguese. Most language sites automatically default to Brazilian Portuguese mainly because of math (our ancient enemy): there are over 200 million Brazilians and only around 10 million Portuguese. Happily, Pimsleur offers both, so I can focus on the original Iberian version. I don't think that my time on Duolingo has been a total waste, however, because I've learned (according to the site) thousands of words and I've learned a lot about the inherent logic (or illogic) of Portuguese sentence structure. I knew the biggest difference would be pronunciation (although not the only difference, obviously) and, wow, what a difference. I've been reading a couple books on Portugal and one of the authors described Portuguese as windsurfing between consonants (and I would add, hard consonants). All those soft flowing Brazilian consonants are a thing of the past. For example: good morning/day, bom dia: goodbye bom gee-a (almost more of a shee, actually), hello bom Dia. And where , onde: goodbye onjee, hello onDe. It also tends to mush everything together, while cutting off the ends of words quite dramatically. Take good night, boa noise, for example: Brazilian is more boa noiche, where Iberian is boa noiT. So, quite a challenge. And the s's at the end of words are dramatically turned into sh's (hence the wind-surfing). And the pronouns are routinely dropped. Still, I'm enjoying myself, and maybe I'll actually make myself understood in Portugal, but don't bet on it.

Happily, we're heading back to Portugal over spring break, so three weeks from today we'll be back in the convent in Evora.

That Girl and Books

 I think when I suddenly moved into a log cabin in the middle of nowhere with a woman I had only been dating a few months - and then followed it by getting married a week and a half after asking her to marry me - I shocked more than a few people. However, my long-term friends are actually far more surprised when I tell them that she has many more books than I do. Who knew that I[d find a woman who likes going to bookstores more than I do.

For the record, Jen Beagin's Big Swiss is a wonderful book and I highly recommend that you read it.

64

In the past I've often proposed that I can't stand birthdays that end in 3, as in 33 or 43 or 53 or 63 - or, god forbid, 73. My rationale is that when you reached the _3 you have to stop pretending that you're still in the previous decade, and go ahead and accept that fact that you can round up to the next one; so, last year when I turned 63 I was essentially turning 70. I've now made a not so subtle change: I now hate all birthdays. With that in mind, I turned 64 yesterday. The odd thing is that, despite my grumbling, I don't think I've ever been happier and I've certainly never felt so loved and appreciated. I'm very lucky. Janet is down in Boston running her residency so she missed the big day, which she felt terrible about but I told her not to give it a second thought. I had a lovely quiet day. For breakfast I had eggs and my homemade goetta - for lunch I had dirty rice - and for dinner I had Cincinnati chili (my heart may not survive that onslaught but it was awfully good). Beyond that I read and enjoyed a post-apocalytic film festival courtesy of the Criterion Channel; it just seemed like the appropriate theme for a 64th birthday party. We also got a foot of snow so I was trapped in the cabin anyway. The carts kept me company so I couldn't ask for a better day.

I'm a harsh critic of my goetta, but this was is a definite winner.

Impishly Unpredictable Even To Myself

   If it weren't for my continuous dreaming, my perpetual state of alienation, I could very well call myself a realist - someone, that is, for whom the outer world is an independent nation. But I prefer not to give myself a name, to be somewhat mysterious about what I am an to be impishly unpredictable even to myself.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 221

Over the years I've often noted that my internal battle between being a realist and a dreamer - a product of the Enlightenment or a product of Romanticism - takes on the nature and dimension of the battle of Stalingrad. I have always definitely thought of myself as a realist, but maybe that's actually a part of my nature that I dislike. At the same time, I am undeniably a dreamer, which is probably why I've fallen so deeply into The Book of Disquiet and Pessoa's own dreamlike existence (or at least ambition). Or, maybe it would be more honest to admit that this is part of my bigger desire not to be known, "impishly unpredictable" to others, although, as Pessoa proposed, "even to myself." Maybe if you're known by others then you're also owned by others, and being unknown leaves you in control of yourself. 

Side note: I started a series at Champlain entitled  Books That Matter, where people are encouraged to come give an hour talk on a book that they think is important. I presented The Book of Disquiet, and exactly four people showed up for the talk, which is a pretty good example of the general exhaustion that people feel with me. My dear friend Sandy officially retired last week and it hit me pretty hard, and made me think about my own retirement. At this point it's probably the disinterest and disrespect of my colleagues that is inspiring the decision to step away more than my own physical collapse. As I've always joked, when I'm no longer the scariest person in the room I don't want to be in the room anymore; I think I've reached the point where no one even realizes that I'm in the room.