Peripatetic Postcards

Where can a dead man go The question with an answer only dead men know . . . Nickel Creek, When in Rome

“Don’t expect any favors out of life, but . . . enjoy the hell out of ‘em if they ever happen to come your way . . . sometimes that is the thing that reminds you what makes life worth living.”

There’s a motto in there, somewhere. A philosophy. A means of surviving—if not thriving. At the very least, a peripatetique‘s creed in the making.

At this point, though, all of you form-freaks out there are busy scratching your heads wondering how that aphorism-in-gestation has anything to do with this entry’s title . . . come on, admit it, you are. Also puzzling through how favors and expectations have anything to do with the shots of the heavens or the lyrics from a Nickel Creek ditty. Well, brace up: it gets even less scrutable than that . . .

‘Cause flying Business Class gratis from LAX to Narita figures in. As does Serena Williams.

Care to find out how? Whether you do or don’t, here’s how it all goes . . .

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In San Francisco. Walking along Van Ness toward the wharf. Came across this nightclub exterior ‘round ‘bout the corner of Broadway . . . give or take a block or so.

It got me to thinking—a propos of nothing more than the title, I guess—about the U.S. presidential election.

“What? What would possibly make you make that connection?” you say . . .  (I know, I know. My mind is a simple thing.)

But . . . sad as it is to say, in this country, for an African American to win a presidential election might actually require a magic spell. At least some might aver. That particular, pessimistic, author calls it the “The Coon Affect” (sic). Well, whatever name it goes by, the fact is that the United States has only had five African Americans campaign for president in its two hundred and thirty-two years—Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, Jesse Jackson (twice), and Al Sharpton—all five trying their hand in the past thirty-six years, and none of them managing to steer their campaign caravans out of the parking lot.

Despite the grave doubt that Americans are ready for an African American president, a recent poll suggests that this particular ride might actually make it all the way down the road and end up parking in that big driveway on Pennsylvania Avenue. Although both democratic candidates currently fare better than John McCain in head-to-head matchups, it is Barack Obama who holds the current edge.

A magical possibility in the offing? Check back in eight months.

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According to G.K. Chesterton:

a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend.

Taking a trip up the California coast, one can gather what the early twentieth century’s “prince of paradox” was getting at. Sure, you can sit in a library and collect four books which might tell you something about life. Its origins, its rhythms, its meanings, its possibilities. But then, . . .

. . . well—now, there’s a thing . . . what four books would you choose? I mean, if you were trying to read the four that would teach you about the point and purpose and girdth and gristle of it all?

Would you go with the boxed set of The Origin of the Species, Frankenstein, Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, and The Catcher in the Rye? Or would you string together: A Tale of Two Cities, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Macbeth, and Das Capital? Of course, you might could go with: The Odyssey, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Les Miserables . . . or perhaps do as all sane mortals might: simply throw your hands up in intellectual resignation, stack everything silently back on the shelf, and concede that four books really wouldn’t get you as far as carrying one of those tomes out the door, climbing into your car, sitting with a friend conversing, as you both take in the grand view passing along your shoulder.

(As for the battle: that I’ve already been through, and let me tell you: two things are certainly true about that: (1) what Nietzche said about “that which doesn’t kill you . . . (etcetera and so forth)” is certainly so; and (2) the little mouthed truism “better to have warred and won than never to have warred at all,” makes most sense—but only if “better to have warred if losing was the only alternative” was, in fact, the only alternative).

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