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Journeys in Space: An Excellent Motorcycle Adventure! Day Two!

An Excellent Motorcycle Adventure!  Day 2!

Buffalo NY to Painesville OH

 Today we had to deal with weather.

When you are traveling by motorcycle, you are going to be impacted by weather.  It is a fact of life, not to be avoided, part of the experience… so EMBRACE it, and DEAL with it.  No Complaining.

But seriously, we are already avoiding weather on the second day?

We set the alarm for early Tuesday morning so that we can check early morning televised weather reports and use our Advanced Storm Tracking Technology (ASTT).[1]  There is a stalled warm front extending from roughly St Louis MO (our destination on Wednesday) to Buffalo NY (our current location).  It had, the previous night, produced tornados in Detroit MI and funnel clouds in Indiana.  We are less concerned with seeing a tornado than we are with staying dry.

We after a detailed data analysis, we arrive at a plan of action.  There is a small cell of thunder storms approaching Buffalo which should arrive at about 8:00 AM.  There is an extremely large cell of thunderstorms about two hours behind it, stretching to the southwest.  We will depart Buffalo at 7:30 AM, maneuvering south of the first storm and then race to Columbus OH, skirting to the south of the second storm and arriving in Columbus before a third storm cell arrives.

We are on I-90 again, heading for Pennsylvania and then Ohio.  The bike needs gas again, so we gas up at the rest area just west of Hamburg NY.

The skies are threatening, with low, dark, overhanging clouds.  It is very gloomy and actually a little cold.  I wish I had put my gloves on, but don’t want to stop.  We get hit with a few rain drops and then a few more.  The eastbound traffic in the other lane, sometimes cars have their window wipers on.  We are tense.

But slowly, the skies clear without us getting seriously wet.  We are on our way.

There is not much going on on this section of I-90.  Wea re still in the St Lawrence watershed, so nothing new there.  We see some vineyards.  The odd cow to two.  The most interesting thing in this part of the journey is the“leaving New York State and entering the Seneca Nation” sign.[2]  I had forgotten about the Seneca Nation, although I had driven this road before.  It was a small oasis on the thruway full of billboards, and apparently low cost cigarettes and booze.

Welcome to the Seneca Nation (public domain)

Welcome to the Seneca Nation (public domain)

From the Seneca Nation we pass into Pennsylvania.  There initially is not much to see, but eventually Lake Erie comes into view.  There is a small resort area at Presque Isle, which looks like a beach, a water park and the usual assortment of “Interstate Highway Lodging Options” (IHLOs).[3]

We are making good time as we cross into Ohio, and the skies have cleared to “partly sunny” and the threat of rain has dissipated.  The odometer shows we have traveled 165 miles, which is half the distance to Columbus, so we are comfortable stopping at Painesville, OH for breakfast.

The Waffle House

We pull off the interstate at Painesville OH.  There are many breakfast choices, so I am secretly amused when Ruth suggests The Waffle House.  She knows how much I like it.  I’ve spent a lot of time in the South and the Southwest where… so I don’t either. Waffle Houses are ubiquitous, but we don’t have them in Cambridge.

This one is nearly deserted.  There is an elderly gentleman sitting at the counter having a spirited discussion with the woman manager about taxes.  I can’t quite hear the details.  There are two elderly women sitting over coffee watching the traffic go by.  There is an elderly couple having breakfast.  There is a young mother with two young girls.  I calculate we have reduced the average age of the customers by three years.  We occupy the booth next to the elderly

Our server is a young, bleached blond, woman.  She has a very complicated tattoo on her left forearm.  It is a long text of some sort and I keep trying to read it, but it is upside down and in script so I’m having trouble.  It seems to have about thirty words.  I am fascinated.  We order coffee and tea.

I watch the little girls spill their food all over the floor, but nobody seems to mind.[4]

Ruth and I strategize on the rest of the trip to Columbus, we try to access our ASTT system but we cannot get a signal.  Apparently cell phone and internet access is difficult in rural areas.[5]  The server returns with our coffee and tea and is ready to take our order.  I’m still trying to read her tattoo without being too obvious about it.

Unfortunately for me, when the food arrives, it is the other server that delivers it, so I don’t get to see the mysterious tattoo again.  I order another cup of coffee in the hopes of the 1st server will deliver it, allowing me to see the tattoo again, but I am stymied by the efficiency of the 2nd server as he brings me my coffee.  I eat my breakfast sullenly.

We finish eating and Ruth goes to use the restroom.  She is not gone 10 seconds when I hear a voice from the booth behind me, “That your motorcycle out there?”  It is the gentleman behind me in the adjoining booth.

“Yessir.”  I look behind me, but he doesn’t look at me as he continues talking.

“I used to have a motorcycle onst.”  I wait for him to continue.  “It was one of those ol’ Harleys, you know with the ‘suicide shifter’… the stick shift on the side and the foot clutch”.  He pauses.  I’m thinking this would have been in the late ‘40s or early ‘50s.  He continues wistfully, “I shure wish I had it today… be worth a lot of money…”.

“Yessir,” I tell him, “folks pay a lot of money to restore those old bikes… $40,000 – $50,000 sometimes.”

He nods, “I reckon I paid about $500 for it back then.” Then allows, “But I’m too old for motorcycles now.”  He almost turns around to look at me.  Then looks at his wife,   “I’d have to ride alone now.”

His wife joins the conversation, “I’d like to have killed him onst… I rolled him over on a snowmobile”  I take this to mean that she shifted her weight the wrong way once and caused the snowmobile to go out of control.

He confirms the story, “I wouldn’t never let her ride on the back no more.”  Then continues, “She also tried to kill me rolla skatin’ onst… tripped me up and threw me down on the hard wood floor.”

She laughs.  “And I almost run him over with the car…”  She is pleased at the memory.

We all sit in silence for a bit, silently reflecting on the past mayhem… but then he sees Ruth is coming back from the restroom.  He places three dollars on the table for the server’s tip, takes his bill and rises.  “Well… good talkin’ to ya… have a good trip.”  I thank him and they depart.  Ruth sits down and I drink the coffee that I didn’t really want.

I never got his name.

When we leave, there are only the two elderly women left, with their coffees.  As we are paying the bill, we eavesdrop on a discussion between the Waffle House Staff:  the two servers, the cook and the manager.  They are having a spirited, cogent, informed and intelligent discussion on Federal Food and Drug Administration Regulations for food labeling.  The 2nd server is making the case that food kills more people in the United States then guns, “… you got obesity, diabetes, heart disease…”.  That’s all I can catch as we head out the door.

Painesville OH to Medina OH

We get back on the bike and continue on our way, eventually heading on a more southerly route via I-271 and then I-71.

When we get a little south of Medina, there is a big sign on the side of the road, “You Are Now Entering the Ohio River Watershed”.  I am very excited by this. Even Ruth, who doesn’t quite share my fetish for watershed to the same degree, is somewhat excited.[6]

Medina OH to Columbus OH

The skies are really threatening now, and sometimes we see cars in the northbound lanes with window wipers on.  We get a few drops here and there.  We can see rainstorms off in the distance.

The bike needs gas again, so we stop in Ashland OH to fill up.  There is a tourist trap called Grandpa’s Cheese Barn.  I ask Ruth if she needs any cheese for the trip, but she demurs.

Some other riders come in to gas up.  They are three people traveling together, a single man about our age on a Harley Davidson Electra Glide Ultra.  The other two are a couple on one of those new Harley Trikes.  We exchange pleasantries and comment about dodging the rain drops.  They are heading north on I-71, essentially heading east while we are heading west.  They’ve never seen the east coast before, just as we’ve never seen the big mountains and rivers of the west.

After a few more miles we arrive in Columbus.  Columbus seems deserted to us, there is no traffic and no pedestrians. We have a few more false starts trying to find a hotel and drive around a little bit until we find one right on the river.[7]

We have just unloaded the luggage under the protection of the hotel awning when the skies open and the rain pours down.  I estimate it at a rate of four inches per hour.

All in all a good day.

Summary

Date:  June 24, 2014
Departure Location:  391 Washington Street, Buffalo, NY
Arrival Location:  50 S Front St, Columbus, OH
Total Miles:  350
Total travel time: 6:55
Total miles/total travel time: 50.6 mph
Number of States:  3  (New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio)
Number of Watersheds:  2 (St Lawrence River/Lake Erie Division, Mississippi River/Ohio River Division)
Stops:  3 (Hamburg NY (gas), Painesville Ohio (breakfast), Ashland Ohio (gas))
Weather:  Cloudy, Threatening Skies, Clearing, Partly Sunny AM, Cloudy PM, Threatening Skies, Scattered Showers PM
Temperature:  7:00 AM (Buffalo NY) 68 ͦ  F, 12:00 Noon (Medina OH) 85 ͦ  F, 7:00 PM (Columbus OH) 85 ͦ  F
Lodging:  Double Tree Suites by Hilton, Columbus OH.  Restaurants:  Waffle House, Painesville OH; Fin, Columbus OH

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[1] We have these nifty hand-held communications devices and “subscribe” to several weather services where we can directly access US Government National Weather Service Doppler Weather Radar Imagery, keyed right to whatever out current location is.  It is amazing technology, although understanding exactly all the “ins and outs” of how it operates is beyond my understanding except in a most general way.

[2] For an interesting take on the Seneca Nation and their battles with the State of New York, see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/nyregion/thruway-intensifies-dispute-between-seneca-nation-and-new-york-state.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[3] Hampton Inn, Days Inn, Red Roof Inn, La Quinta, etc., etc., etc.

[4] When we discuss this later, Ruth says she couldn’t believe that the staff didn’t clean up the mess.  She already has a low opinion of Waff Houses, so I am worried about what this means for the rest of the trip…

[5] Unsurprisingly, the Waffle House does not offer free WiFi.

[6] A word about my fascination with watersheds.  I try to only count watershed where the river actually ends up in the ocean.  When we enter the Ohio watershed, we are really entering the Mississippi watershed.  This is tremendously exciting.  We will be in the Mississippi watershed for the next ten or eleven days!

[7] The Scioto River is a tributary of the Ohio.

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June 26, 2014 · 8:15 am
June 24, 2014 · 4:43 pm

Journeys in Space: An Excellent Motorcycle Adventure! Day One!

An Excellent Motorcycle Adventure!  Day One!
Date:  June 23, 2014
Departure Location:  34 Magazine Street, Cambridge MA
Arrival Location:  391 Washington Street, Buffalo NY
Total Miles:  469
Total travel time:  10:28
Total miles/total travel time: 44.6 mph
Number of States:  2  (Massachusetts, New York)
Number of Watersheds:  7 (Charles River, Merrimack River, Blackstone River, Connecticut River, Housatonic River, Hudson River, St. Lawrence River)
Stops:  4 (Stockbridge MA (gas), Canastota NY (gas), Scottsville NY (gas), Clarence NY)
Weather:  Sunny AM, Cloudy PM, No Rain
Temperature:  7:00 AM (Cambridge MA) 60 deg F, 12:00 Noon (Herkimer NY) 75 deg F,
7:00 PM (Buffalo NY) 85 deg F
Lodging:  Lafayette Hotel, Buffalo New York

Cambridge to Stockbridge 

…the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston… ten miles behind me and ten thousand miles to go… deep greens and blues are the colors I choose,  won’t you let me go down in my dreams…

James Taylor,  Sweet Baby James

We are late.  The sun is already well up when we pass the tollbooth at Brighton heading west on our grand motorcycle adventure.   The goal today is merely miles.  No sightseeing, no insights, no nothing.  We have miles to go before we sleep, 400 miles to be exact.  We have to make 450 miles today to be in St Louis MO by June 25.  How has this supposedly existential, spontaneous trip turned into a schedule?

I know how, but I will not share it, it is too depressing.

The ride out I-90 in Massachusetts, well… we have done this many times… even on the motorcycle.  There is nothing to do except grind it out.  As always, I am fascinated and haunted by water, so I concentrate on the rivers and the watersheds.  We start in the Charles River watershed, which takes us out through Lincoln MA.  By the time we have crossed into Concord, MA… we have entered the Merrimack River watershed, well represented by the Sudbury River, draining Thoreau’s Walden Pond.   Several miles later, we cross through Winchendon and enter the Blackstone River Watershed.  For those of you not familiar, Winchendon is the “rocking chair capital of the world”… which I am sure is hyperbole… but is seems to fit into the general Fitchburg, Westminster, Gardner environment.

It is a beautiful crisp, cool summer morning.  the sky is deep blue and the recent rains have made the foliage especially green.  At Auburn, MA we cross into the Connecticut River valley;  we start to enter the world of the big rivers.  We cross the highest elevation in Becket, MA at 1734 feet above mean sea level.  This is the boundary of the Housatonic watershed and soon we are approaching Stockbridge, our designated breakfast destination.   Sadly, Alice’s Restaurant has long been closed, but just for nostalgia sake, we go look at it any way.  AHA!  It is now Theresa’s Cafe (formerly Alice’s, on Alice Avenue), still “just around the back… just a half a mile from the railroad track”, but sadly, no breakfast… so we settle on at the Main Street Cafe for some eggs, hash and toast.

The former Alice's Restaurant, now Theresa's restaurant on Alice Avenue. It is still "around the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track."

The former Alice’s Restaurant, now Theresa’s restaurant on Alice Avenue. It is still “around the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track.”

Stockbridge to Rome NY

Stockbridge leads to West Stockbridge which is the border of New York.. We gas up the bike and head into the Hudson River valley, crossing into the Hudson River Valley at Canaan NY.  There is a spectacular trestle bridge that carries I-90 over the Hudson River… just to the south there is a similar railroad bridge.  I would like to stare, with my jaw dropped  and my countenance agape…. but I have to drive the motorcycle.

We continue along I-90 and it is boring, boring, BORING.  But, hey, we have miles to log, no time to waste.  I would like to go to Saratoga Springs, to Cooperstown for the hall of fame, take any Erie Canal Cruise, stop and have a cocktail… but no, we have to keep going.

After Schenectady, I-90 parallels the Mohawk River which is part of the Erie Canal.  The Erie Canal rises 420 in elevation above sea level (in Troy NY) to the highest elevation in Rome NY.  We follow the river for 92 miles to Rome (in a prior incarnation, I used to do a fair amount of work for the USAF in Rome:  The Rome Air Development Center)

The river is interesting to look at, with dams and locks every few miles.  There is not much traffic, so I can sneak some peeks.  Each dam seems to drop about four feet and there are complicated trestles above the dams where they can raise and lower the dams to control the flow.  The locks look to be about 15 or 20 feet wide and about 100 feet long.  No so big, but I guess the barge size was limited by what the horse could drag using the tow paths.  Each lock, at least on this section of the river, are numbered and we can count them out loud (there’s number 13!, there’s number 14!) to each other to help pass the time.

Rome to Buffalo

After Rome, things get a little more boring, but what do you expect when you are trying to MAKE SOME MILES TODAY.   We play hide and seek with the canals and with some rivers, our elevation gets lower and lower and then starts to rise again as we cross from the St Lawrence watershed, Lake Ontario division, to the St Lawrence watershed Lake Eire division.  Lake Erie is 328 feet higher than Lake Ontario, thank you Niagara Falls!

We finally arrive at Buffalo and it has been a long day.   Buffalo looks like a city that has been subjected to a series of disconnected, random, urban renewal projects.  The streets are a tangled jungle and difficult to navigate on our fully loaded motorcycle.  An inmate shouts to us, repeatedly, from his cell at the county jail while we are waiting at a traffic light.  It was amusing and disturbing at the same time.

After a false start or two we settle on the Lafayette Hotel, which bills itself as as being designed by the first professional woman architect in America, Louise Bethune.  The huge building has been redeveloped and is now mixed use (shopping, apartments, offices).  There are only 57 hotel rooms (so now it is a boutique hotel, I guess).  It was originally built in 1901 for the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, which seems to have been kind of a worlds fair).  Apparently Theodore Roosevelt was there, as there are photos of him everywhere.  Everything has a Pan American Exposition theme, the bars, the restaurant, the rooms.

We briefly consider a side trip to Niagara falls, but it is 50 miles round trip.  Cocktails await us.

The Lafayette Hotel, postcard circa 1904 (public domain)

The Lafayette Hotel, postcard circa 1904 (public domain)

 

 

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June 23, 2014 · 6:32 am

Journeys in Space: An Excellent Motorcycle Adventure!

 “I can see from my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning.  The wind, even at sixty miles an hour, is warm and humid.  When it’s this hot and muggy at eight-thirty, I’m wondering what it’s going to be like in the afternoon.

In the wind are pungent odors from the marshes by the road.  We are in an area of the Central Plains filled with thousands of duck hunting sloughs, heading northwest from Minneapolis toward the Dakotas.  The highway is an old concrete two-laner that hasn’t had much traffic since a four-laner went in parallel to it several years ago.  When we pass a marsh the air suddenly becomes cooler.  Then when we are past, it suddenly warms up again.”

Robert Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

William Morrow and Company © 1974

An EXCELLENT Motorcycle Adventure! 

This year is the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Pirsig’s “iconic” novel, originally published in April 1974.  I stumbled upon it my freshman year of college in upstate New York, probably didn’t appreciate it much that year… then was forced through it again my senior year as assigned reading in a modern literature course[1].  I got more out of it the second time, but like most 21 year olds, I didn’t think there was much for me to learn at the University… although I did still believe in books and the books assigned that term were generally excellent[2]… I skimmed as much as read Pirsig.

For some unknown reason I revisited the work the following year… I can’t quite remember the genesis of the revisiting…  I had just purchased my first brand new motorcycle[3]… or perhaps I had been exchanging letters with a friend[4]… or perhaps it just caught my eye on the bookshelf one day.  In any event, to prove the old aphorism true, the third time was indeed the charm.  The book unfolded before my eyes I could see clearly not just Pirsig’s theory of metaphysics but a much deeper message about the interconnections between, well… everything.  For the younger reader, I recognize that this sounds hopelessly new-age, and hippie-ish, and terribly not 21st century. But so be it.

For the last forty years, I have revisited Pirsig many, many times.  Maybe not every year, but twenty or thirty times… cover to cover.  Each time I see things differently[5].  For maybe the first five re-readings I was mainly concerned with the aspects of Pirsig’s metaphysics of classical understanding.  Later, I became more concerned with the aspects of his metaphysics of romantic understanding, then briefly with his metaphysics of Quality… which for him the point of the book.  For me though, I ended up using his own analytical methods against him… once you learn how to use Phaedrus’s analytical knife, to cut the world up in to objects of your own choosing… with your understanding based on the defined interrelationships between them, of necessity also of your own choosing… you begin to understand that our lives are a collaboration between ourselves and the universe.  Book learning becomes not an act of mastering facts and truths but of developing a fluid, changing, understanding based on who you are and what you are becoming, as much as the written text itself.

I had occasion to revisit Pirsig over this last winter, during an illness, and this time I was struck not so much by the metaphysics, or the drama of the journey of self-discovery, as I was of merely the voice of the narrator.  Although the narrator is the main character of Pirsig’s novel, he has no name[6]… although we are led to believe that the narrator is Pirsig himself[7].  The voice is slow, sonorous, soothing… incessant and immense.

Events have conspired over the last year or so to cause me to spend more time in contemplation that I usually do.  At this point of my life… with fewer years ahead than behind… I find it a convenient time to document some things.  I have been writing all my life, it seems, nearly fifty years but very little has been for publication[8].  This blog will be something of a vanity project, I suppose, but following the example of all the previous generations that went on the road… and thought about things and wrote about the things that they thought about and the things that they saw and people that they met… well, somehow it seems finally time for me to do this.

So we are departing, Ruth and I, on An Excellent Motorcycle Adventure.  We won’t be following Pirsig per se (either his physical journey or his metaphysical journey).  And we won’t be exactly following the footsteps of Lewis and Clark… nor the passages of Mark Twain on the Mississippi River… nor the frenzied driving of Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise… although all of these will be much on my mind.  We will be what we are, a couple of middle aged folks on vacation.  We will see mountains and prairies and deserts and a couple of oceans.  And think about a few things as best we can.

And so, I thought I just might write it all down.

An Excellent Motorcycle Adventure! We depart Monday June 23rd at 5:00 AM...

An Excellent Motorcycle Adventure! We depart Monday June 23rd at 5:00 AM…

—————————————————————–

[1] Many thanks to Professor Turrisi for this class.  The course title, Modern Literature, was essentially an exercise in irony since every assigned text work that we read that term contained the famous Protagoras quote:  “Man is the measure of all things:  of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.”  Protagoras died in 420 BCE, so in some sense there is no way that this can be modern, yet for those of us of a certain age… just coming out of the 1960’s and living in the 1970’s… it can be a refreshingly empowering quote when we realize that that “Man” refers to us each as individuals.  Pirsig reinforces this in his beginning note by quoting Plato:  “And what is good Phaedrus, and what is not good, need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”  The whole ethos was very much of an pro-individual anti-establishment bent, which seems atavistic and archaic in these more modern, more conservative (and need I say more politically polarized) times.

[2] E.M. Forrester The Machine Stops, Edward Albee The Sandbox and Pirsig, amongst others.

[3] A 1979 Suzuki GS550E: four cylinders, double overhead cams, about 450 lbs dry weight.  It was a decent enough bike for $2000 back then.  I should have spent the extra money for the GS850, which was the same engine bored out to the higher displacement and mounted on the GS1000 frame… but I was somewhat more cash constrained in those days.

[4] Audrey in Vermont, do you remember?

[5] Edmund Burke wisely tells us, that no one “can read the same book twice”, an echo of the Greek sophist Heraclitus, “No man ever steps in the same river twice.”

[6] Think of the protagonist of Richard Brautigan’s  In Watermelon Sugar as another nameless narrator… are all nameless narrators the same person?

[7] Certainly, the narrator and Pirsig have many autobiographical details in common.

[8] Not counting The Tattler at Nashua High School, and some sports stories for the Nashua Telegraph.   A few technical articles and short fiction all published in fairly obscure conference proceedings and journals

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June 12, 2014 · 8:23 pm

Confessions: My Ignorance of Irish Mythology and Poetry

Cú Chulainn by Scottish artist John Duncan (1866 - 1945)

Cú Chulainn by Scottish artist John Duncan (1866 – 1945)

I confess to not being as conversant with Irish poets and mythology as well as I should be.  It is a staggeringly embarrassing hole in my literary being.  I am ashamed.  I ask forgiveness.  I will do better.

The two books that I am most familiar with, that actually sit here in my study, next to my desk in the “poetry section” of my library (about 250 books, more or less) are:  The Cuchulain of Muirtheme tranlsated by Lady Augusta Gregory in 1902 (with a forward by W.B.Yeats); and The Tain Bo Cuailnge by translated by Thomas Kinsella.

Cú Chulainn is the son of the god Lugh, the equivalent of the Roman god Mercury.  His mother is Dechtire, wife of Sualtim.    Lugh appeared to Dechtire in the form of a mayfly, and well… you know how things go when gods appear to young women in non-human form.

Fortunately, the portents and prophecies were so strong that Sualtim agreed to raise the resulting son as his own, with help from all:  Conchubar contributes a good name, Sencha teaches him words, Fergus bounces him on his knees, Amergin is his tutor.

The judge Morann prophesies:  “This child will be praised by all, by chariot drivers and fighters, by kings and wise men;  he shall be loved by many men;  he will avenge all your wrongs; he will defend your fords, he will fight all your battles”.  I have looked and looked and looked and looked for the orginal Irish language version of this quote to no avail.

Cú Chulainn becomes an Irish hero of mythic proportions… a mighty warrior in pre-Christian Ireland, roughly equivalent to Achilles in The Iliad.  His name means “The Hound of Ulster“.  How he got his name was this way:  as a youth, he killed a ferocious watchdog and then offered to take the dog’s place until a replacement could be found.  You gotta love a kid like that, possessing a truly inherent nobility.

Although we all love Lady Gregory, sadly, The Cuhulain of Muirteme, is not presented as a poem in Lady Gregory’s translation.  The impenetable Irish poetry language has been rendered into prose, similarly to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf  but without the falsity of arranging the prose into artificial stanzas. (Don’t get me wrong: I love Heaney’s Beowulf).

To give an example, if you change Heaney’s translation:

So Grendel waged his lonely war,
inflicting constant cruelties on the people,
atrocious hurt.  He took over Heorot,
haunted the glittering hall after dark,
but the throne itself, the treasure seat,
he was kept from approaching;
he was the Lord’s outcast.

to:

So Grendel waged his lonely war, inflicting constant cruelties and atrocious hurt on the people.  He took over Heorot, haunting the glittering hall after dark, but was kept from approaching the throne itself, the treasure seat.  He was the Lord’s outcast.

you get an idea of Lady Gregory’s translation style.

Of course, the entire The Cuchulain of Muirtheme  is now in the public domain.  You can find it here:  http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/index.htm#ireland.  Or here:  https://archive.org/details/ofmuirtcuchulain00gregrich.

The Tain Bo Cuailnge dates from the ninth century CE, but is ascribed to an oral tradition of the first century.  It was also rendered into prose.  It tells the story of Cú Chulainn’s epic battle and cattle raid against the evil Queen Medb.  It is also in the public domain, again the sacred-texts website has it.  The Kinsella version ((c) 1969 Thomas Kinsella, Oxford University Press ISBN 0-851085-178-2) is based on an eleventh century manuscript.

That’s it, that’s all I know.  I’m sorry it is not more.

A warning for you, my friends:  the sacred-texts.com website is a dangerous place;  you can easily lose whole days there.

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May 24, 2014 · 5:37 pm

Journeys in Space: Desolation in Multitudes

Desolation in Multitudes at St Germain des Pres

Masked Paris Dancer à les Deux Magot. (c) Tim Carey 2011, all rights reserved

Masked Paris Dancer à les Deux Magot. (c) Tim Carey 2011, all rights reserved

 

He had been out all day, getting an early start with a few hours at the Louvre.  Another hour spent wandering the 6th Arrondissement, searching for artwork in the quirky little galleries that line the rue de Seine.  A couple of hours pretending to read the International Herald Tribune at a prominent cafe while secretly watching the most fashionable people in Paris getting drenched in a summer shower.

The Louvre had lived up to expectations.  The formerly controversial pyramid entrance was surprisingly efficient at funneling the thousands of visitors into the three great pavilions:  Richelieu, Sully, and Denton.  Once in the pavilions, though, the crowds were truly crushing.  It was hard to have a few private moments with Aphrodite when surrounded by couple of hundred other people. The camera flashes were a major distraction.  He moved toward the Etruscan and Roman exhibits hoping to avoid the crowds and was suddenly face to face with an impressive marble sculpture of the Emperor Trajan.  A nice experience with only one other patron, even if that patron was brandishing the ubiquitous, obligatory, cell phone camera.  He had a similar good experience viewing Giampietrino’s The Death of Cleopatra, a work apparently not very high on the priority list of the visiting throngs.  He peeked into the gallery that housed the Mona Lisa, after deciding that he couldn’t have visited the Louvre without at least taking a look.  It was impossible to see anything.  The crowds were too dense to allow a close approach.  Her bullet proof enclosure obscured all but the barest outlines of the painting.

The skies were threatening when he departed the Louvre, crossing over the Pont du Carrousel to the left bank.  It was easy to linger at the book sellers stalls that line the river.  He was of a mind to pick a French copy of Voltaire’s Zadig, not that his French was good enough to actually read it.  It would disappear into his library as part of his ever increasing unfinished list of things to do: in this case to become fluent enough in French to read Voltaire in the original.  He slowly wound his way along the river bank and found a copy of Voltaire, although not a very good edition.  Still at E 4.50, it would suffice.

The galleries along the rue de Seine were disappointing, overpriced and trendy.  It was easy to admire the technical artistry and construction techniques, and the bold use of color, especially of the ceramic pieces.  But in the end they seemed to be presented and marketed as mere accessories to owners of fashionable apartments rather than as serious statements by artists looking to connect with serious collectors.  He gave up and hurried to Les Deux Magot, across the street from the church.  The cafe exactly matched his memories of twenty years ago. The first few rain drops were starting to fall as he managed to secure the last available table under the awning.

He ordered a light lunch of salad and pate, and a glass of wine.  He perused the paper, but his attention was really on his fellow patrons.  Next to him were two Islamic girls, in head scarves, he was careful not to make eye contact.  There was a boisterous party of middle-aged men and thirty-something women.  At another table a group of waif thin sixty year old women.  As the rain increased, crowds of shoppers bearing their designer shopping bags headed for the shelter of the awning in increasing numbers.  They were uniformly soaked, clothes and hair plastered to them.  He stole surreptitious glances at the people around him.  They were mostly women, consistent with being in the shopping district.  But there were also families, and tourists, and groups of men.  Dozens.

Eventually, he abandoned even the pretense of reading the paper.  It was striking to realize that he was completely surrounded by people, being jostled every few seconds by someone, being dripped on by someone else’s closing umbrella, being dangerously close to the young girls in the next seats.  He was completely surrounded by people and yet, curiously, he also realized that he was completely and utterly alone, as alone as he would have been on the face of the moon in spite of the pressing crowds.

[I thought and thought and thought about sending her a text message, I had been thinking about it for hours, days.]

He looked out at the plaza and ordered another glass of wine, a surprisingly good Sancerre Blanc.  The Islamic girls had departed; the rain was letting up.  The overflow crowd was resuming their activities, in a few minutes he was alone physically as well as spiritually.  The sun broke through the clouds, a surprise.  A saxophone player arrived, accompanied by a masked dancer.  The music was ethereal, the dancing surreal.  He was captivated, enchanted.  He dropped twenty Euros into the hat, an absurdly high amount.

Suddenly decisive, he quickly finished his wine, paid the check, and departed.  Crossing the street to the taxi stand, he gave the address to his hotel.  This was an extravagance, it would have been only a fifteen minute walk instead of a fifteen Euro taxi ride, but suddenly he wanted nothing more than to get to the hotel, to get away from all of this.  The taxi crossed the Seine at the Pont de Concorde and with a few quick turns and in a few quick moments arrived at his hotel.  He greeted the hotel desk clerk, who rose to return the greeting, ever proper.  He impatiently waited for the slow ancient elevator to arrive, pushing the call button insistently.

[I left the café quickly and caught a cab back to my hotel. The driver was a little upset that the trip was so short and wanted to impose a surcharge.  I paid his extravagant fare and got out of the cab.  I gave a quick hello to the desk clerk and waited forever for the elevator. At that point all I wanted was a nap.]

Once inside his suite, he locked the door and pushed the ne pas déranger button, to keep the housekeeping staff from disturbing him.  He undressed completely and quickly slipped into bed.  The afternoon sun streamed through the curtains.  Suddenly he was restless and couldn’t sleep.  He fiddled with his phone, finally figuring out how to set it to emit an audible signal if she texted.  This didn’t stop him from lying awake checking the phone every few minutes.  Eventually sleep came to him.

[I fell asleep listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.  I have to call her, or text, or something…]

 

 

(c) Combat Press, 2014, all rights reserved

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May 22, 2014 · 5:24 pm

Journeys in Time. Time: Make it Stop

This except adapted  from the Proceedings of the 7th Annual A.J. Liebling Invitational Short Fiction Conference, “Time:  Make it Stop” by Tim Carey,  (c) 2013  A.J. Liebling Invitational Short Fiction Conference, all rights reserved

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“Poo-Tee-Weet”

I have become obsessed with time.

I don’t just mean that I have become obsessed with time management, or spending my time wisely, or using my time well, or making sure that I am using all the minutes… even all the fucking seconds (86,400 of the little bastards everyday[1]) in a socially acceptable way.  I am not interested in spending time that through charitable works benefits the homeless, or convinces people to enact gun control laws, or protects abortion rights[2].   These were all things that I once spent time on, but now I am no longer interested in how I spend my time at all.  My obsession has taken a different tack.

I have become obsessed with time in that I want it stop.

Now.  Really.

I am serious.

“If we can intuit sameness, time is a delusion”

Jorge Luis Borges tells us that[3]:

“The basic elemental moments are… impersonal – physical suffering, and physical pleasure, the approach of sleep, listening to a single piece of music, moments of great intensity or great dejection.  I have reached… the following conclusion:  life is too impoverished not to also be immortal.”

Borges is attacking the problem in the second manner of Zeno’s infinities[4].  In a so-called “fixed” time interval, there are an infinity of individual points.  If we can experience each one, instead of jumping to the end, we can experience an infinity of subjective time without violating the constraining boundary conditions of the larger universe.  In effect, we would be causing our local entropy, and hence our subjective time experience, to deviate from the average entropy (and average time flow) of the universe.

I have, for personal reasons I do not wish to disclose here, had been trying all of this out last summer around Labor Day.  My methodology has closely followed Borges’ lead:  concentrating on moments of physical pleasure, of physical pain, listening to a single piece of music; experiencing moments of great intensity or dejection.  I summarize several attempts below.  I readily admit that the techniques are not perfected yet, they are not ready for “prime time”, yet the modest successes I’ve experienced in slowing down, and in one case even stopping time for several hours show the validity of the concept.  Perhaps other researchers can find ways to make these efforts more practical.

The first example is the least practical.  This is pleasure through sexual orgasm.  There is no doubt that time stands still during a sexual orgasm.  I think we can all agree on this.  Borges would tell us that every orgasm is the same orgasm.  The reason that this is not very practical approach to stopping time is one we are all familiar with:  diminished sexual desire as we age.  I’m 56 years old, my sex life is not what it used to be.  This could be a viable technique for a younger, more virile man.

I’ve had more success with listening to a single piece of music over and over again.  I chose Mott the Hoople’s classic No Wheels to Ride from the 1970 album Mad Shadows[5]  Specifically the guitar solo that comprises the bridge of the song.  This guitar solo, while only lasting a little more than a minute thirty-two seconds[6], I have successfully stretched into nearly 15 minutes of subjective time.  When it comes on, I simply kind of zone out.  The listening has become a single event in my Minkowski space-time continuum, my trajectory revisiting the same space-time coordinates again and again, an almost black hole of thousands of listening, each with its own memories, all remembered simultaneously.[7]  The musical technique for stopping time definitely seems more promising than the orgasm technique for the simple reason that Mott the Hoople is more readily available than quality sex.

The pain techniques I have been experimenting with have been quite successful at stopping time.

Severe abdominal pain can definitely stretch out time.  A few minutes can easily seem to last a half an hour.  Abdominal pain, though, in the end is too varied an experience to be reliable.  Every little abdominal pain is different and they are constantly morphing from one to another location, subdividing into different memories and breaking up into individual events that eventually cause entropy to flow again.

I’ve have much more luck with back pain.  There are two kinds I have been playing around with:  a diffuse lower back pain and a sharp lower back pain.  Both are good for stretching time by an order of magnitude, a minute seems like an hour.

My best results have come from constipation.  No kidding, ten minutes on the toilet trying to squeeze one out can last several hours.  My most successful attempt occurred this August during my family’s annual golf weekend outing[8].  Taking advantage of an episode of constipation accompanied by lower back pain and some dejection, I was able to stop time completely for three hours and fifteen minutes.

Although, as I said, I recognize that these techniques are not ready for wide dissemination (after all who wants to spend eternity sitting on a toilet constipated) the proof of principle has been demonstrated.  I acknowledge that I have failed in prolonging time through moments of great intensity and elation.  Perhaps other researchers are better suited by temperament and physical condition to achieve success with these.

I’m not giving up though.  I’m going to make this work.  I’m now obsessed with time and I will make it stop.

I will become unstuck in time.

“Poo-Tee-Weet”

[1] Thank you to the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians for developing an exceptionally arcane way or reckoning time, seriously… base 60 arithmetic?

[2] Am I the only idiot that was stupid enough to send money to OFA after the last election?  OFA is “Organizing for America” (or is it “Obama for America”?)  I now get about 10 email-twitters-instagrams a day wanting me to organize for various causes.  Even if I believed in time, I would have better things to do with it than sitting around with a bunch of other get-a-lifers with nothing to do until the next 2016 election cycle. (Which I guess has already started…)

[3]  See A New Refutation of Time, Jorge Louis Borges, pages 317-332, from Selected Non-Fictions, ©1999 by Maria Kodama, Viking Penguin Putnam, ISBN 0-670-84947-2

[4]  See the discussion in The Principles of Mathematics.  Page 367.  Bertrand Russell, 1903, 1986, New York, NY: Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-31404-5. OCLC 247299160

[5] Island Records, 1970.

[6] The solo runs from 2:24 to 3:58.  The composer and performer is Mick Ralphs… founding member of Mott the Hoople, founding member of Bad Company, and all around guitar god.

[7] Examples:  1973, doing homework, 1979, Thanksgiving dinner with Jimi Hendrix (not the Jimi Hendrix.  We actually knew someone named Jimi Hendrix and it amused him to spell it the same way), 1982 listening on a cassette tape in a car, yesterday while trying to write this piece).

[8] 108 holes of golf in four days with back pain and constipation…  you can only imagine…

 

 

 

 

 

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