Ken,

Otto and Max would be proud of both you and your recitation.

I read The Discovery of Heaven at "Denny's".

cp in bc

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gabriel Orgrease" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2006 11:56 PM
Subject: [BP] Reading Gilgamesh at Wendy's


> 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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