Reading Gilgamesh at Wendy's

Cuyler recently recommended The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch. I 
sent to Alibris for the book and it has been sitting on top of the TV in 
order to monitor NCIS episodes or Meet the Press. I had a bad day this 
week and so for a change of pace I started reading it. Incredibly 
delightful, some really fine writing. Makes me ashamed to think that I 
would ever be able to write anything. But I will find a way over that. 
Note: Larry McMurtry in recovering from a severe depression following 
after heart surgery wrote a slim book called Walter Benjamin at the 
Dairy Queen.

Somewhere along in the text of the The Discovery of Heaven the narrator 
mentions Gilgamesh. It is the oldest story around, predates Homer, 
predates the Bible, composed as a spoken (oral) presentation like 3,000 
BC from a geographic place that is today called Iraq. My son has told me 
about Gilgamesh but other than some rather literal and stiff 
translations from the cuneiform of the Akkadian clay tablets I have 
never been able quite to get into it.

I needed to clear my head, it has been full up with all sorts of crap 
and mostly stuff that makes me feel like life is drowning me. So on 
Saturday after leaving a worksite and finding the lumber yard closed I 
happened to be near a Borders and decided to take a walk about. A 
bookstore, like a library, has a whole lot of ideas in it and when I 
visit I get ideas that are outside of myself. I feel refreshed 
afterwards. So I picked up a copy of Gilgamesh. I also picked up a book 
co-edited by Dana Gioia, whom I met and talked with in the mid 80's when 
we were both nonentities. He had given a poetry reading that hardly 
anyone attended. I spoke with him and we corresponded for a brief time 
afterwards. I believe he is currently chairman of the National Endowment 
of the Arts. I went off to fix old buildings. Regardless, his book was 
thicker than the one for Gilgamesh.

I was hungry. This happens.

I like the chili at Wendy's and with my head full of kidney beans I 
decided to go there for a late lunch. In a fast-food establishment it is 
more convenient to carry a smaller book than a larger one. In with me 
went Gilgamesh. I figured we would have a quick dip into the waters then 
move on with the day. It being Saturday the place was crowded up with 
old men, mothers and gaggles of children running about, jumping around. 
So I ate my lunch.

Then I read Gilgamesh.

It is about Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu. Gilgamesh is human-god and 
Enkidu is human-animal. Gilgamesh sends out a prostitute to seduce 
Enkidu who then becomes civilized and moves into the town where 
Gilgamesh is the king. The two of them get in a fight. Then laugh at 
each other when they see each other as themselves. They become friends. 
Gilgamesh gets a bug up his ass from some god that tells him to go kill 
a guy who has a bunch of cedar trees. So Gilgamesh and Enkidu go off to 
the cedar woods on a killing spree. The guy with the trees is killed and 
that pisses off some girl god so she goes to her Daddy god and asks if 
she can mess with Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The Daddy god is kind of like, 
"Why do you bother me with this little stuff, girl?" So she sends off 
this uber BULL that she has to gouge out G & E with it's giant horns. 
Enkidu kills the bull and cuts off a leg and throws it at the girl god 
and says nasty things to her. She goes back to the Daddy god and 
complains that Enkidu said nasty things about her and messed up her pet 
bull something terrible. Daddy god says, "Hey, everyone been sayin' that 
stuff about you for a long time." But it is not right that the special 
bull got killed, not too many of them to go around, so the gods go about 
and decide to kill Enkidu. Partly they are bored themselves and need 
something to do with their time. They cannot kill Gilgamesh because he 
is half god. This gets Gilgamesh - who it seems has no idea what death 
is about - upset because he does not like to be lonely. Oh, I forget, 
the story starts out that Gilgamesh gets to have sex with all of the 
virgins before they get married. You would think that would be enough 
for any man, but remember he is half god and I suppose after a while one 
virgin is like another. I do not believe that 'virgins' here is a 
mistranslation of 'raisens' as it is with the Koran. Enkidu and 
Gilgamesh first meet when Enkidu blocks Gilgamesh from entering the 
bedroom of one more virgin. But now with no restraining partner to mess 
with him Gilga also does not like to be bored. So he goes about trying 
to figure out how to get his dead friend back from death. He goes and 
talks to death about this, along with a bunch of other characters 
including an old man who at one time had a boat that was shaped like a 
box. There is this really neat scene in which Gilgamesh has to cross the 
river of death by poling his rental boat along -- a different boat that 
he may or may not have had to build with the help fo the river watch. 
Death rots away the poles and they get shorter and shorter and he has to 
keep using a new one. Reminds me of quarters in a pool table. He is 
lucky that somebody gave him instructions on how many poles to make. 
Technology counts for something. When he runs out of poles and has only 
one left he makes a mast with a sail, don't ask me where he got the sail 
cloth, and he is freely sailing on the river of death. He meets this old 
guy and his wife who live on the other side of the river of death. The 
old guy wants Gilgamesh, whom he considers to be a brash young snotface 
full of himself wanting his dead friend back - like get over it already 
you duimb shit - to leave him alone. The wife tells her husband to take 
pity on the poor boy. So the old man tells Gilgamesh that there is a 
pricker bush that grows at the bottom of the river of death that will 
bring his friend Enkidu (I not kid you) back to life. So G ties a few 
rocks on his feet and goes for a walk and gets a branch of the pricker 
that pricks him, he bleeds. Go figure. Unties the rocks and floats up to 
the surface but he is tired, possibly from holding his breath, and falls 
asleep. Oh, yeah, the old man thinks that human-gods who sleep do not 
deserve eternal life 'cause they are too lazy to stay awake long enough 
to fully appreciate how boring it is. So G is along the riverbank of the 
river of death taking a snooze and a smake comes up and steals the 
pricker branch but also sheds skin in return. G wakes up, sees that the 
branch is gone and the skin left behind. He feels badly about the entire 
affair. He goes home. End of story. What can you expect from something 
written with wedges in clay?

I read the whole thing in Wendy's. Then I went home.

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