[lit-ideas] Sunday Story
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2011 21:39:25 -0800
Knowing the origins of things can sometimes provide a measure of comfort or, if
not joy, at least serenity. I read in the young adult novel--and what an odd
category that is--which is my current reading, that happiness comes from an Old
Norse word "happ," meaning "good luck," the Old English gehaeplic, meaning
"convenient" and the Old Slavonic kobu, meaning, "fate." I like the etymology
so well, I don't want to check it and find out there's an error. We'll
stipulate, as lawyers do, that happiness has elements of all three origins.
But what about "madness"? The OED says the Old English were contributors with
"gemaedan," to render insane, Old Saxon, "gimed," meant "foolish" and there's a
role for the Middle High German "gimeit," "merry, stately and handsome." Old
Norse added "meioa," meaning "to cripple." What to do with puffed up fools?
Cut them off at the knees.
Happiness and madness are this week's issues. Some readers believed I invented
the madness of gardening guy. Not at all. Last week he needed tools from the
house where he usually works. I drove him three streets over and went with him
into the garage, where he pointed out the mint Mercedes he's going to buy when
he has enough money, a sports model.
"Where," I asked, "are the owners?"
"In Hawaii."
Into my head popped, "No, they're not; they're buried under the 'water
feature.'"
He stopped work early on Friday because his secret service work required it.
President Obama was in town, so he had to leave to do his government work. I
checked my phone bill, called the numbers he had called. One was a city
services in Maryland. The guy on the other end at the second number answered,
"Secret Service."
On Saturday he was on about how his soccer pickup game was cancelled by
government agents who don't like men of Scandinavian descent. He's really not
making any money at landscaping so he thinks he'll give it up soon and be a
benchwarmer for a professional soccer team, earning several hundred thousand a
week, but not for Salt Lake, he thinks, where he used to play on the national
team...against Rooney...
The thing is, when he's not telling me about how much African soccer guys
appreciate his football skills, he knows his drains and his hardscape and how
to make a garden "really look tits." He's good, if somewhat crude when it
comes to descriptives. And wasn't this what R. D. Laing wanted, that I should
listen to how he makes paintings chiefly of naked ladies and landscapes,
because he clearly has art in him. His sense of where to place things and
causes me to go back and look.
In his absence today I worked in the garden. I moved great boulders and
reflected as I sweated, evaluating two decades' worth of decisions. You know
what I now think? There is evidence of madness. I made about three good
decisions; the rest was nor happ nor gehaeplic nor even koby. One could be
forgiven for calling it crazy.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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