For the Record

There is a little game that is going semi-viral on social media as I write this.  It is simply a list of the nine (not ten!) books or films that have made the biggest impact on you, which is not the same, of course, as a list of those that you consider to be the best.

So here goes, in no particular order, but starting with books:

• A Maggot (Fowles)
• Karamazov
• The Aubrey/Maturin Series (O'Brian)
• Passport to Magonia (Vallee)
• American Pastoral (Roth)
• A Stillness at Appomattox
• Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein)
• Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 (Kotkin)
• Cultural Amnesia (James)

• Wings of Desire
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God
• Taxi Driver
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Moment of Contact
• The Dead
• Fargo
• The Seventh Seal
• No Country for Old Men

 

Beggars Can't Be Choosers

As many of you know, aggravated vagrancy has long been a capital crime here in our little principality.  Alejandro, my late cell mate, three times convicted of it, asked in my presence for a sumptuous meal for his last, as is the custom.  He wanted ground lamb with Mediterranean spices, potatoes au gratin, creamed corn, and chocolate pudding with whipped cream.  As it turned out, many of the required ingredients were not to be found in the prison pantry, so he was offered instead a bowl of Grape-Nuts soaked in Fanta.

As they were taking him away the following morning, Alejandro pleaded with me to file a formal protest on his behalf.  I told him that I would do it, but do it I did not.  

Cuius intersit hoc?  And besides, why should I stick my neck out in a land that since 1880 has had the guillotine on its 500 flingan note?

It's a harsh world.

 

Boomerdammerung Under the Lights

When I was young, the carnival would come to my town once a year, usually right around the Fourth of July.  It would camp out for roughly a week in our biggest public park, which was very near to the center of town.

During the day, not much was happening in the encampment, but I would wander through once or twice, hoping to get a glimpse of authentic carny life.  This almost never happened.  What little I did see though was, let's say, a little rough.  I wasn't tempted thereafter to run off and join Ringling Brothers.

After dark, the place came alive with crowds and bright lights, mainly around the amusement rides.  There was a Merry-go-Round with an old-fashioned calliope in the center.  There was a Tilt-a-Whirl for the strong of stomach, little cars and rockets for the small kids, and a good-sized Ferris Wheel that would become a landmark for the week, visible from some distance away.  Also a rather dubious Haunted House.

At colorfully-lit carts you could buy cotton candy or fried dough dusted with powdered sugar.  And around the periphery there were various games of skill/chance.  With luck, you might score a teddy bear for your girlfriend (if you had a girlfriend as I did not).  

Of the games, my favorite was the shooting gallery.  Your weapon there was a relatively powerful BB long rifle.  Your targets were little two-dimensional tin men whose feet were attached to a long rubber conveyor belt that ran from deep in the back in the direction of the shooter.  Your object was to plink the little men down on their backs.  But the points you scored depended on how far away the targets were.  If you hit one that was way in the back, you might score 50 points.  If you could only hit the ones right in front of you, you might score ten.

When I first played this game, I was probably in single digits, age wise.  It was only ten or twelve years later that the grand metaphor hit me.  The journey on the belt from back to foreground was the Journey of Life, and it was the Lord our God who held the gun.  While He was said to be Almighty, in fact He wasn't a perfect shot, and for Him as for us it was easier to plink down the targets when they were near at hand.

And so, when we were young, the chances were excellent that the Lord our God would spare us from catastrophe, but past 50, 60, and especially the allotted three score and ten, God had us in His sights and we had to prepare for the rapid-fire annihilation of both ourselves and our loved ones who were in the same cohort.

The grand metaphor was abstract back in the day.  Alas it is no longer.