Appetites

34 Days from my last final exam of the spring and 65 days until my next round of classes I have decided to come out of academic hibernation. After a brief check of my normal scheudle, I found 4 open hours in the afternoon and evening that were not allocated to something essential like eating, sleeping, grooming, commuting, working, 10 minute napping, household maintenance. On the first day of this new schedule I purchased study materials for the GRE, walked 2 miles, studied, began developing a study plan, and read a few sections from Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.

As an aspiring medievalist I am obliged to read this book because (of peer pressure) and because it is a major text that influenced how people dealt with and understood life. Many works and popular game shows use his analogy of Fortune and her wheel, especially when trying to understand life's hardships, the role of Providence, and how we deal with the ups and downs that Fortune puts us through.

While reading I found this quote to be nerdily relevant to a conversation I had with a buddy from work today about consumption, and how new (Apple) electronic components fit into a a new class of devices that tap into a new market--the consumption of information. However, after reading Boethius, it did not relieve my desires to want the "Truly Magical Product".

If Plenty from her well-stocked horn

with generous hand should distribute

as many gifts as grains of sand

the sea churns up when strong winds blow,

or stars that shine on starlit nights,

the human race would still repeat

its querulous complaints.


Though God should gratify their prayers

with open-handed gifts of gold

and furbish greed with pride of rank,

all that God gave would seem as naught.

Rapacious greed soon swallows all

And opens other gaping mouths;

No reins will serve to hold in check

the headlong course of appetite

once such largess has fanned the flames

of lust to have and hold:

No man is rich who shakes and groans

convinced that he needs more.

(Boethius 26)


Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. Victory Watts. Penguin Books: London, 1999. Print.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Systematic Cooking and the evolution of phones

Image
I don't mind eating the same thing repeatedly. Egg sandwiches in the morning. Roast beef sandwiches for lunch. Bagel Bites for dinner. All have been eating phases that I have gone through. Now that we are settling into our surroundings a little more here in Orange County, we felt a little more comfortable to just take it easy on the weekends. So, we cooked. I decided that I wanted to make a lasagna (and Noel made a great chili at the same time), which meant finding the top rated recipe on allrecipes.com. Badda bing badda boom-- 'I got me a whole lot of lasagna'. Thus, I get to have lots of lasagna all week long and and all I have to do to cook is stick it in the microwave. In some respects it is like the widow and her miraculous lamp. And on to the evolution of phones. The iconic figure of Zack Morris using his gigantic mobile phone during class sticks out in my mind as the essence of cool. Swing forward to 2001 and you will find Derek Zoolander, the top male m...
Read more

Busy, busy, busy

Image
Memories and thoughts disappear if not stored, recorded, written, or memorialized somehow. Of course, this immediately makes me think of pre-literate societies and what it must have been like to have only a few recorded memories, thoughts, pictures, or keepsakes not yet even 50 years ago. Now, every moment of every day is recorded, synched, uploaded, stored, and searchable to myself (or others). What then is to be done? Shirk the norms? Embrace the present culture? Moderate between the two? And yet, I have digressed . . . Yesterday's trip down memory lane truly allowed me to see the types of thoughts that were retained and more importantly the frequency. What seemed regular and consistent in 2006 and early in China, understandably diminished once marrying Noël, moving back to the States, further diminishing once beginning at PCA, and almost disappearing in Long Beach, and continuing through early Yakima and teaching, until now. What types of memories were retained? Well, I have ...
Read more

Snake

Image
It will have been fifteen years ago this year that I got my first cell phone. It was a Nokia something that had interchangeable faceplates. The phone-brick called people, received calls, and had games buried deep within the OS. My favorite was a this little gem: snake. The game was occasionally played but never mastered. Well, because you always died. The snake would eat too many apples, get too long, become unwieldy, and then you would run into yourself. My score never topped 200 and it didn't even matter. Scores on games on my phone didn't matter, because it was irrelevant to life. The phone barely mattered because I would rarely use it. I had other things to worry about. About this same time, in high school I start playing console games. I can thank Mike Stork for subsidizing the purchase of my first--a N64. That summer Mike gave me to do work around his property. It kept me busy and allowed me to save, and when I had enough money, I purchased the golden goose egg of the...
Read more