Last night I spent a few hours unpacking at my new apartment. I reassembled my bookshelves and began filling them up with countless tomes of printed goodness. Two shelves were dedicated to the Great Books of the Western World – all fifty-some-odd volumes. There are critics of the set who say that it's more of a showpiece than anything. These people say that most people never read it, they put it on a shelf to impress people. I don't doubt that this is true for most of the purchasers. I inherited these books from my father and I can tell you that he read many of the volumes.
For my part, I've read a handful of them – some Machiavelli, Dewey, Shakespeare, and a couple others. Homer is in the set too and it's always nice to read The Odyssey. It's a strange feeling to know that one of the foundations of Western Literature includes a scene where the protagonist rams a spear into a suitor's groin. Something Quentin Tarantino would be proud of. Now, I would have read this in Volume 4 of The Great Books had it been a translation from sometime in the last millennium. Instead, I ended up reading Robert Fagles' translation. This is the big problem with the series – editor Mortimer Adler made no attempt to use contemporary translations. The one of Dante's Inferno reads like it's from the 1340s while Milton's contribution is the same as it was in 1667, with only the minor change of the esses printed as "s" instead of "f", so it's "Paradise Lost" instead of "Paradife Loft". Adler even wrote somewhere in the bowels of the first three volumes, which are all introductory, that the average middle class person of 1952 (when the set was originally published) should have no problems with near pre-historic English.
About 11 years after The Great Books were published, a companion series debuted – Gateway to the Great Books. It was 10 volumes that collected excerpts from novels and essays which covered the same themes at its parent series. It's much more accessible and I personally have read quite a bit of the Gateway. One of the great essays included is "Of Friendship" by Francis Bacon and it's been a favorite of mine since I first read it at the age of 15 when I was newly moved to Wisconsin and without friends. "A principal fruit of friendship," Bacon tells us, "is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart." I am proud to say that my friends excel in this area. Should my heart be full, I can always discharge it on them. The second fruit of friendship is that it "maketh indeed a fair day in the affections, from storm and tempests; but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness, and confusion of thoughts." If I need faithful counsel, my friends are there for me with their collective wisdom.
Bacon describes the third and final fruit of friendship as being like a pomegranate because it is "full of many kernels". He continues, "I mean aid, and bearing a part, in all actions and occasions." I am going to send the essay to my friends with this part highlighted and in bold because they failed miserably with this third fruit. The proof lies with my back which is killing me. I alerted my "friends" to my move and 7 or 8 people helped my girlfriend get her stuff in and out of a U-Haul truck. But, when it came time to move mine, not a single person lent a hand. Not a single so-called friend gave aid or bore a part in the occasion of my move.
Why? Why did they forsake me? I lent one money lest he find himself out on the street; I helped another move into his house a few years ago; when yet another found that his house needed a new roof, I gladly overcame my fear of heights and got up there and started removing shingles. Oh, I got excuses alright. One claimed to have had a bad back. Even if this were true, did he really have to offer the use of his hand cart after I'd moved 95% of my stuff and was ready to keel over? Another said he'd hurt his knee "fishing". Oh, I'll bet he did. How do you hurt your knee fishing? I suppose dropping a 1.75l of Tanqueray on it would do the trick. If you happened to be out at Cherokee Marsh this past weekend, you'd have seen a couple of my buddies out canoeing and, in general, not helping me move. They're all evil, I tells ya. Luckily someone is going to help me with my bed and dining room table tonight. And he's from Illinois.
The new place still looks like a tornado has gone through – but with a modicum of clean-up having been done. The women who had the apartment before us left it a mess so The Dulcinea has had to clean the refrigerator, kitchen drawers, window sills, etc. It's been a lot of work and there's much more to go. The flat has no air conditioning and trying to unpack with your eyes stinging from sweat gets really old very quickly. Earlier this morning I called my cell phone provider to notify them of my new address…
"Hi, I'm calling to report a change of address."
The gentleman at the other end helpfully asked, "OK. What's your cell phone number?"
"Five one….six…No! Five one three…wait. I don't know what it is."
Man did I sound like a total maroon. I'm still not sure what my cell number is. This is probably for the better as I really want to get rid of my service. I spend $45/month for a phone I barely use. My last bill showed that I made about 30 minutes of calls which means I paid roughly $.1.50 per minute for talk time I could have done with a landline. And then last week I got a notice that the price for text messaging is going up. Luckily I don't text so it's no big deal. However, it reinforces my prejudice against cell phone companies.
If all goes well, my move with be official tonight. I'll misss my roommates, cable TV, and TiVo, but I'll miss the A/C more. I gave some thought yesterday to buying an air conditioner but eventually thought better of it. I decided against doing so as most of my clothes were soaked through with sweat and I'd just be bait for the sharks at Best Buy. "Have I got a deal for you!"
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