Ah Summer!

It was only a week's vacation - honest!

OK, on that note ("honest"), it must be said that the days before tend to be hellish and the week (or more, present case a fine example) afterwards is routinely worse. Mea culpa for extended neglect of this blog, recent politics aside. But while you can be in the midst of scenery like this, even semi-persistent amnesia is not out of the realm of the possible.

I'm still feeling a bit of that - enough to lead to improved understanding of those curmudgeons - there always seem to be a few in every workplace - who rarely make time for a decent respite - or at least make noises that they do not.
But regardless of my personal expulsion from the vacation-garden (no apple or snake involved in this case), it's time to take the blog back down off of the stumps and see if she still runs.

Since I have the subject of travel on the screen, I will take opportunity to focus on a couple travel-themed books I recently read. "Round Ireland with a Fridge" (Tony Hawks) is an uplifting little number that is well-captured by the title. [Hey mate, bet you can't circumnavigate the Em Isle hitch-hiking with a food-chilling device at hand!] Hawks is a good sport, plunking for the tiniest fridge in the world (though still a lunker when mounted on dolly). He experiences a revelation regarding the warm, welcoming, underdog-favoring spirit of the locals. He rarely lacks for rides and attention, though there is a brief low point when an over-exuberant new pal comes on too strong in a pub, blaring Tony's mission in no uncertain terms. Stunned silence and a certain frostiness follows:

I remembered someone in HudiBeags announcing this alleged national trait, and I understood it to mean that people would have little time for you if you forced yourself upon them or announced your greatness, instead of allowing them their own time and space to discover it for themselves.

Hear, hear.

Having committed to visit an island not far offshore as part of the bet, Tony learns more than he wants:

Many hundreds of years ago the fishing communities in these areas had settled on the quaint custom of not saving anyone who fell into the water. This wasn't based on an ungenerous 'You fell in, you get yourself out' policy, but on the superstitious belief that any encounter with the sea was preordained, and any act of rescue was an obstruction of fate's natural course which would only bring tragedy upon youself and your family. So, if some unlucky fisherman slipped overboard, instead of rushing to his aid, colleagues would run to the side of the boat shouting 'Chuck us your watch' or 'Can I have your dining table?'

Adherence to these perilous conventions even involved embracing the tenet that swimming itself was meddling with the divine right of the sea to take your life and the majority of the present day fishermen in this locality still couldn't swim. Instead of being fascinated by an intriguing piece of folklore, I took all this to be overwhelming evidence of the unworthiness of these people to be my escorts across a treacherous stretch of water. I wanted sailors who could swim, and hadn't been inculcated with a fanatical hatred of lifebuoys. Mine was a gentle adventure which was to involve at worst, a loss of dignity; the loss of life thing is for climbers and Antarctic explorers who do what they do because they can't mix at parties.

There are a multitude of good bits in this book, but it is really an isle-ode that deserves to be appreciated in toto. However, a final sample:

"How much was the bet for?" said Niamh, who was working behind the bar for the summer.

"A hundred pounds."

"And how much was the fridge?" enquired an interested bystander called John.

"A hundred and thirty pounds."

"Jeez, you're an eejit," added Seamus, the pub manager.

"Niamh, get this man a pint," concluded Geraldine, the boss and wife of the eponymous Matt, plus mother of Niamh.

I was beginning to understand how the Irish mentality worked. The more foolish, illogical or surreal one's actions were perceived to be (and mine surely fell into one of these categories), the wider the arms of hospitality were opened in salutation. I now found myself surrounded by inquisitive customers and staff. Brendan appeared from behind the bar where he had been stacking bottles.

"Has the fridge got a name?"

"Well, no it hasn't."

"Well you've got to give the fridge a name. You can't be travelling around with a nameless fridge."

A chorus of approval greeted Brendan's sentiments.

"What sex is it?" asked Etain.

Things were moving too fast for me.

"I hadn't given it much thought."

"There must be a way of telling."

Amidst much amusement, a series of implausible methods were put forward, the most universally approved of which was proposed by John.

"What you have to do is you have to put it between two donkeys of either sex and see which one of the donkeys makes a move for the fridge."

I was happy to accept this method as incontestible proof of the fridge's sex, but a distinct lack of donkeys restricted further progress down this particular scientific avenue.

I remember being attracted to my second book here by an enthusiastic review I read somewhere - a common hazard for the bookphilic of course. But it's almost certain that the appealing parallelism with Round Ireland was a factor too. "Driving Mr. Albert," by Michael Paterniti is another road-story with an offbeat theme, in this case a mission to reunite Einstein's preserved brain with his granddaughter. As it happens, while this book also has many humorous moments and is also highly recommended, it is notably more weighty, perhaps as befits the status of the trip-shaman. Amusing quotes are not so prevalent. There's plenty of humor, but it is intermingled with intriguing recounting of historical events and deeper explorations of human behavior than most refrigerators could handle. Having nearly lost a bout to an Einstein bio a decade or two back, I was relieved to find that the limited biographical material here was a good deal more approachable. It's fascinating to read of the monomaniacal efforts by the Hebrew Institute to micromanage AE's image, e.g. fighting over the famous image with extended tongue.

But as in "Round," some of the highlights here are personal encounters along the way:

We cruise a Lawrence, Kansas, neighborhood of picket fences and leafless trees, parking before a small red house, a five-room Sears, Roebuck. Out back on the lawn, short grass and long grass, the manicured shape of a huge penis put there by the owner as a landing pad to welcome the coming space aliens. When we ring the bell, we wait for a moment, for some breathing presence within, then a turn of the knob, and a spectral light frames Harvey's former neighbor in the door, the soon-to-be-late novelist William S. Burroughs.

[clip]

"Methadone, Doctor. An amazing morphine substitution. Have you ever tried morphine?"

NO, NO, I HAVEN'T," yells Harvey earnestly.

"Unbelievable. In Tangier, there was a most magnificent, most significant drug . . . went there just to have the last of it. Last there ever was. Tell me about your addictions, Doctor."

"WAY-ELL, HEH-HEH . . . ." But then Harvey says nothing more.

Burroughs lights a joint and offers it to Harvey, who demurs, smoke swirling around his head like a wreath of steam from a Turkish bath.

"DID YOU BECOME ADDICTED BECAUSE YOU FELT PAIN?"

"I wish I could say that, Doctor, but no," says Burroughs. "I became addicted because I wanted more." He considers for a moment lost behind a white skein. "Now it just gives me something to look forward to."

Which is to say that the intoxication here covers a broader field than malted beverages, and the humor and material in general can be a bit more cerebral, if no less entertaining:

In Japan, Einstein lectured to packed houses, in one instance speaking through a translator before two thousand people, pontificating for almost six hours on relativity. One theory about Einstein's popularity lay in a bit of confusion: the Japanese characters for "relativity principle" were quite similar to those for "love" and "sex," and so apparently some felt that a shaggy Tantric guru had landed in their midst. Upon meeting him, one Japanese man, assuming Einstein was not a scientist at all but a holy visionary, was awed by how the schlumpy German, someone who looked quite the opposite of an angel, could so accurately see into God's heaven. "He has a quiet way of walking," wrote a Japanese cartoonist, Ippei Okamoto, who traveled with the Einsteins, "as if he is afraid of alarming the truth and frightening it away."

My travel was pretty mild compared to these two accounts, but greatly appreciated as a change of pace (and place) nevertheless. Hope you have or will get to see some new sights yourself while the northern summer is upon us. If not, maybe a book is your next best bet.