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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