I am grateful for your extraordinary patience with my anxious questions and my hypochondriacal silliness. As you know only too well, I am not in good health, and my mind is troubled by that fact and a number of other, unfortunate states of affairs. You have not dismissed me as an afflicted crank, despite my embarrassing hysterics. Many in your position would have done so, and the fact that you managed to hang in there means a great deal. If nothing else, someone I respect takes some of my concerns seriously.
You have also done me the courtesy of showing that you understand that love can manifest itself in various ways. When a strange old man wants to talk to you, it is sometimes the case--rarely, sure, but sometimes--that he isn’t after anything else.
Admittedly, it is wise to be cautious. Some human beings are in thrall to their genitals. Sure, there is pleasure to be had, but if that is all you are ever really thinking about, you are not very interesting. It is also possible to love the immaterial parts of another human being, and leave it at that. Telling someone you admire their mind or character or way of using language while touching their knee is a sham. The matter of knees ought to stay closed if you are convinced that another human is especially adept at being human in their own, peculiar idiom.
When you love another human in this way, well--words like agape capture this, but it’s sort of pedantic to digress about old words, when what you are trying to say is: thank you for not mistaking me for a sick old crank who wants to get into your pants. See the foregoing remarks about what most people would have done in your place.
Ah, now I think I've got this sorted! What I have been expressing gratitude for herein is this: you are the sort of person who ought to be immortal, in my view. Some people stick around for too long, playing the same old character to increasingly embarrassing reviews. A few are beloved precisely because they keep on being themselves regardless of the reviews. I suppose I understand the impulse to show respect to persistence and confidence, but come on. Do we really need four more years, or forty more, of certain people? Shouldn’t they have the grace and wisdom quietly to get off stage?
You, on the other hand, are the sort of person who ought to be a character in the story of our species for as long as it goes on. Now, I have no idea what happens after death, if anything, but I know death happens to every human. Even the mythological and religious figures who return from the dead return, or at the very least, spread the word quite skillfully that they have pulled that off. We must all go to that great perhaps, as my old man used to call it. I think that’s Rabelais’ line, but my old man didn’t always complete his citations. But I think you make the strange and often ridiculous story of being human better by remaining in it. You are wise and courageous and temperate. You are loyal and honest and generous. You understand what you are doing well enough to teach others to do it well. You’re quite wonderful, though I understand and share your inability to take a compliment. It may be an Irish thing.
You know, I have been teaching N.K. Sander’s translation ofThe Epic of Gilgamesh, as I regularly do, and the matter is dealt with in an intriguing way therein. Gilgamesh, who is an insufferably egomaniacal demigod and a monstrous king until he gets a clue, witnesses the hideous death of his only friend, the "beast man," Enkidu. Panicked, he travels to the outer limits to talk with a fellow named Utnapishtim, a veritable Ancient Mesopotamian Noah (the Mesopotamian version seems to be much older and more original, actually, but who’s counting?) who puts him to the test after filling him in about the deluge and the number of cubits long the boat was and so forth, and Gilgamesh flunks. He doesn’t become immortal.
He even loses a “consolation prize,” a magical plant that restores vitality to the old and the infirm (I could use a bit of that action just now, come to think of it) to a cunning serpent. That’s what etiological narratives can do for your thinking about snakes.
Anyway, it dawns on Gilgamesh that if he can’t secure literal immortality, he can find a sort of ersatz immortality as the putative author and protagonist of the very epic we read in order to meet him in the first place. Neat trick, eh? Shakespeare sounded a similar note in Sonnet 18. You remember, “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee”? And the demonstrative refers to the poem itself. The closest we can come to cheating death, as far as these texts go, is in a text.
So now you are immortalized in this one, as the sort of person who should be. I hope you won’t be disappointed that I cannot think of a better way to thank you, and show you that I love you in a thoroughly Platonic, not at all creepy way. Please don’t croak before I do. I won’t last long with my particular “challenges,” after all. It would be best if you didn’t die at all. Ever. But for pity’s sake, take your time. A genuine friend may be the sort of person who hears that you are still around, and thinks that is good news.
Best,
D.J.
P.S. I hope the bloody links above work properly, and I hope you don’t find them patronizing or insipid. I’m going to make this minute missive public, and one never knows what the unknown reader might find intriguing. As an amusing side note for the “wonders of the information age” file, you can find Patrick Stewart reading Sonnet 18 here, and Patrick Stewart introducing a metaphor mad alien to The Epic of Gilgamesh here. How we can all have instantaneous access to this bounty and carry on acting like idiots, I cannot explain.
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