# 26

Captains Blog, My god they just keep on coming! I swear to you that I don’t know where from. This would be a testimony to the dangers of leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I finally finished reading Umberto Eco’s “Name of the Rose”. Really good. The man is a genius. As many know that this is an amazing tale of the Frier William a monk/sleuth/scholar that is sent to investigate the mysterious death that has taken place in a prominent abbey in northern Italy. The abbey at the time contains the biggest library in medieval Europe.
In the dialogue there are wonderful debates that ensue among the local monks and our heroe. The dialogue is loaded with the intellectual thoughts and arguments that were very probable in cloisters at that time. Much of the debates covered the politics of medieval Europe and what was considered to be heresies such as humor as well as poverty and how it applies to that era’s Christian reality. Was Christ really a popper or a wealthy political leader? I personally was raised in the tradition that Christ was a poor man till death. But one of the things I have noticed while living here in the third world that a political leader of the poor is not always poor even though appearances may lead us to believe otherwise. So it is easy to see that the argument of Christ’s wealth actually does make some sense. Although I may not be convinced, it is still good logic.
At the risk of destroying the story for a future reader I will divulge the end of the book to share a thought. At the conclusion a fire destroys the library as well as the whole abbey. This parallels to how European Christianity at the time was treating its “heretics”. There was no tolerance. As this Christianity was destroying its enemies on the burning pyre so its own knowledge and wisdom was destroyed on a burning pyre. Not only the greatest collection of western and Middle Eastern works were destroyed but also one of the greatest community of intellectuals of the time was put asunder.
And now the time for Umberto’s quotable quotes has come:
1) “Yes. They lied to you. The Devil is not the prince of matter; the Devil is the arrogance of spirit, faith without smile, the truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.”
2) Brother William on the relics of the church. “Yes”, William smiled “the one who went to the convent of the preachers and said that he would not accept food if first they did not give him a piece of Brother Johns tunic to preserve as a relic, and when he was given it he wiped his behind and threw it in the dung heap, and with a stick he rolled it around in the dung shouting ‘Alas, help me, brothers because I dropped the saints relic in the latrine’”. Heh-heh!
3) Then there is the one about “Bother Minorite Frier Paul Millemoshe who one day fell full length on the ice; when his fellow citizens mocked him and one asked him whether he would not like to lay on something better, he said to the man ‘Yes, your wife…’” Hn-hn!
4) “Discuss the philosophical aspects of Irony” Oh wait that’s not Umberto that’s one of Sponge Bobs party conversation cards!
I have often thought why my paths have never led me into the monastic life. I see all this base humor that I could be enjoying if I had only committed my life to solitude, hard work, and contemplation. I have always been proud that I have dedicated so much of my time to elevating base humor to an art. Imagine if I could have more time to do this while in a monastery. But then again I am dangerous enough sitting in a coffee shop with WIFI and a couple of beers. It is then that the fires of hell prevail.
Now it is time for the Weekend Random Movie Review. This is where I take random movies of which I have seen or previews/trailers of movies which I have seen but not the actual movie itself and review them. Since I was in La Paz all weekend I picked up a stack of DVD rentals before I went. Somehow “Jack Ass #2” got mixed into the pile. I am still flabbergasted on how this happened. But the movie did leave me thinking “Of which monastery did this base humor originate?” It was probably one of those un-enlightened middle aged ones with a bunch of rowdy monks. It is probably one of those places where they still live surrounded by their own excrement and body fluids, as well as that of their farm animal’s body fluids and excrement. One of those places where the curative powers of leaches is more of a sport and where the abuse of the body (i.e., fish hooks through the cheek, bludgeoning of the self, etc) is a spiritual journey and search for higher meaning and consciousness.
Also while I was sitting in a restaurant in La Paz they had the TV on and they had it on the “Space” channel. They were showing “Rocky III”, the one where Rocky gets all pretty and looses the “eye of the tiger” and gets dropped by Mr. T in like 5 minutes. Then he goes and gets trained by Apollo Creed and gets the “eye of the tiger” back and goes back to fight Mr. T and wins and gets the heavy weight champion back. What was cool is that they had the volume all the way off and I still did not miss a bit of dialog! Any way my big question is when Rocky went back to fight Mr. T and beats him did Mr. T then, in fact, loose the “eye of the tiger”? Because if they both would have had the “eye of the tiger” the match would have been a draw as logic would, of course, dictates. Maybe somebody would be able to enlighten me on this one.
I also saw “Prairie Home Companion”. Good music and charming. I did not fall asleep on this one. Next came “High School Musical” of which I got through the first five minutes of. It only lasted that long cuz it took me 3 minutes to get the machine to turn off.
I will start reading “Leaving Los Vegas” today. Gym told me that John O’brien, the author, committed suicide shortly after selling the movie rights for the movie. Hey, there’s a shocker for ya! Why do all of us genius’ have to go the hard way? Heh-heh. It is a story of how two disenfranchised souls find each other. Or is about a bunch of disfranchised monks who find solace for their primordial angst by giving each other wedgies with cables and grapple hooks? I’ll let ya all know how it comes out.
FeO2