Second late post in a week. Already appearing like I'm trailing off. When I tell you the reason for the lateness, maybe you'll forgive, or maybe you'll laugh. Both is just jake with me.
I played basketball yesterday. It started harmlessly enough, with me taking shot after shot by my lonesome. Playing basketball in a vacuum seems to be my strong suit. You probably won't believe this, but I'm a pretty good shot - when I don't have to shoot around anyone, or, y'know, play basketball with people. So I'm shooting hoops, and my much fitter, much stronger, much more successful baby brother sees this and says, "Stay there! We'll get a two-on-two game going!"
I can shoot. That is all. I can ride an exercise bike for hours. My aim, and my lowest-possible-impact cardiovascular exercise do NOT make me able to duck and weave, pass and defend, or run around a court for more than 5 minutes without my lungs burning. All I could think about was Demi Moore and Tom Cruise and Kevin Pollack trying to determine whether private Santiago's Lactic Acidosis was sped up by the involvement of others. I remember a LOT from A Few Good Men. Anyway, my throat was so hoarse and ragged from 10 minutes of basketball that I started coughing like I smoked two packs a day since childhood (never smoked - don't even have that for an excuse). After three hours of this, I had coughed myself into the worst headache I've had in months. For twenty-four hours.
My need for improvement is just glaring at times like these. Part of me had almost said, "No, much more successful and still hair-headed little brother, I am saving basketball for a project in the summer, so obviously I can't play it now for fun." But I can't think that way. I had a professor in the nineties who told me a proverb from India (I can't remember from which language, but I'm pretty sure the man spoke at least four languages), and I'm probably paraphrasing, "Let knowledge come to you from all sides." I never forgot it. I wish I had internalized it when I was 20. It's goodthink. I want goodthink.
I don't tell this non-Twain story to say why I didn't work on my project yesterday. I tell it to say why the bjournal wasn't posted until tonight. I laid there with a headache until 2 am, reading Huckleberry Finn. I skipped my workout, because I had done a full extra workout a while back, and treated myself to a feet up night. Still have the headache tonight.
On to Huckleberry Finn. It is good. I don't know if I think it's not as good as Tom Sawyer, or better as yet. I reckon I'll discover my leaning whichways or t'other, by and by (See? See the pretentious affectation?). My real feeling is that this book is a weird (weird like how it was used in the 40s - uncanny and mysterious - BATMAN WEIRD) mirror to the movie Apocalypse Now. Huck and Jim escaping from horror instead of travelling towards it. All the bizzarre side adventures along the river, all the cast of strange characters sauntering in and out of the narrative aim of the protagonist (I keep imagining Robert Duvall as Lt. Col. Kilgore, but standing on the roof like Colonel Sherburn, shaming a mob into demonstrating their cowardice).
I related this to the much smarter book reviewer who lives here, and she said, "Like Heart of Darkness." I would like to have said, "Yeah. Indubitably so." Unfortunately. the three times I was supposed to read it (once in grade twelve, and twice in college) for classes I think I read about three pages in total. Or the first page three times. I can't remember. And I know Apocalypse Now is based on the Conrad story. I have a lot of surface level knowledge and pop-culture references wired in.
But I'm sticking with my comparison. If you like Apocalypse Now for the absurd river adventure vignettes, then you should read Huckleberry Finn.
Stay tuned for the next expediting chapter of Vitruvian Manifesto, coming up after this.
- Mike
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