Tag Archives: Marcus Aurelius

Desert Island Books

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The BBC Radio has a longstanding program called “Desert Island Discs.” Each week, the program invites a notable to be cast away on a hypothetical desert island with recordings of eight songs of his choice, plus the Bible, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, and one book pick. The guest also gets one luxury item. The format is an interview with the person about his life and why the songs mean something to him. The program, which is available as a podcast, is quite enjoyable.

Go big or go home

So if I could choose only eight books (single-volume titles only) to accompany me in an exile, what would they be? If we are talking about a banishment of a weekend, then a selection from the current pile of books by my chair would suffice. For a month or two? Well, a slightly different list of criteria might come into play. And what if my time as a castaway was indeterminate, possibly years without contact? Selecting those few books to accompany, to suffice, to hold my attention, becomes a formidable feat indeed. In any given year, I’m likely to pull a hundred books off my shelves, if only to read a page or a chapter. But limit that number to eight in what could extend to a lifetime, my choices would be required to soothe, entertain, or educate, again and again.

Of course, the BBC program makes no reference to the type of island, the “Desert” of the title seems more a stand-in for “deserted” than for an arid wasteland. Most guests interviewed make the assumption that it is a tropical island. For myself, I’m going to take the liberty of claiming a remote rocky isle in the north or south Atlantic, one not far enough in either direction to be barren. A place where in exile I could still raise a garden of greens and root vegetables in the shelter of a stone wall. Maybe tend a small flock of wild sheep, a scraggly bunch of chickens, work outside before retiring at night into a 300-year-old stone cottage. (This is my island, get your own.)

When preparing to pack my eight titles, it became clear that most fiction wouldn’t work: A simple murder mystery, much as I love a well-written one, would not make the cut. Once it was read it would be tossed aside, at least for a few years. The books for the solitary exile must contain worlds within worlds that sustain his interest, making him want to pull them off the shelf, day after day, month after month, year after year. Truly, this is an impossible task. And whatever I select today might change tomorrow. But once rowed onto that rocky shore, shoved off the dinghy and left behind … it’d be too late to make a trade-in.

So here’s my list. I tried to put it together on mere instinct. A few of the books are solid choices; the others shifted about as I typed. Many different anthologies sprang to mind only to be discarded on a whim. In the end, some made the list for the simple reason that I ran out of time: The gendarme is knocking at the door. No time to pack. My exile for unnamed crimes commences today.

Eight Books for Exile

Book 1: Icelandic Sagas. The Folio edition edited by Magnus Magnusson. An evening reading of Hrut and his unsatisfied wife, Unn, or the endless tales of bloody vengeance, battles with Skraelings, and other assorted adventures from another island should be the tonic to take my mind off my own isolation. And, if Unn floats over on a raft to say hello, well….

Book 2: Complete Works of Shakespeare. Even if I am not reading each play from start to finish, just dipping a toe in the inspiring waters of the St. Crispin’s Day speech has got to be worth an evening, or two, or perhaps one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-four.

Book 3: Lord of the Rings. By J.R.R. Tolkien, the big single-volume edition. First off, I should state that this is not my favorite book or author and that out of his works I prefer The Hobbit. But I’m in exile, dammit, for God only knows how long. And it is an entertaining story that I have already enjoyed reading once, and it has the added blessing of being pretty darned long. Plus, with my meager memory, I could get to the end and start to wonder how it all began … and start over, there and back again (or, was that the other one?).

Book 4: Webster’s New International Dictionary. My 1910 copy runs close to 3,000 pages. There is enough in this volume alone to fascinate, educate, and pass a lifetime of lonely evenings.

Book 5: Meditations. By Marcus Aurelius, the Hicks translation titled The Emperor’s Handbook. I read a little of Aurelius most mornings. It has helped me make sense of the world for many years. So, while sitting on a promontory pondering my misdeeds, a few paragraphs might serve to calm the spirit.

Book 6: Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. The Modern Library edition. So this slot was reserved for the Library of America volume of Wendell Berry’s fiction. But those stories, of family and community, might just cause me to leap over the cliff some late night in a fit of isolated despair. Instead, this classic collection of things that go bump in the night should be the tonic, with the cold wind outside rattling the cottage, to scare myself silly while sipping on my Scotch or bourbon (more on this later), reading by the peat fire.

Book 7: The Iliad. By Homer, Robert Fagles’s translation. I reread this from start to finish this past year. Now, in these succeeding months, I find myself thinking of those doomed men and women, both the victorious and the vanquished. Sitting alone on a scarp, watching and hoping for the boat to arrive someday and release me, I could while away the days rereading those ancient pages. Particularly of Hector, the family man, the man of honor, brother to the self-centered weakling Paris.

Book 8: The Nordic Cookbook. By Magnus Nilsson. At close to 800 pages, this encyclopedic insight into the cooking traditions of the Nordic world should be just the thing to reference when I need to roast a puffin, cure and smoke a leg of mutton over sheep dung, pickle a seal’s head, or figure out yet one more way of making porridge out of the same four ingredients taste good. That Nilsson is a good writer and this book an amazing read are an added bonus.

I am also allotted one luxury item. Mine is that my island, miraculously, is located near an ocean current that drifts in a case of fine-tasting Scotch or bourbon to my rocky shores at least once a year. It could happen. The SS Politician was no myth.

So, what eight books are you taking when they come for you?

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Reading this morning: lamb cookbooks

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That Nagging Feeling

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“Think of all that might be accomplished in the time that you throw away.”–Marcus Aurelius

My standard workday begins with coffee and often a reading of Marcus Aurelius, the closest thing to the sacred texts that I imbibe, in these the days of my middle period. He seems to suit my aims and goals remarkably well, and he serves as a gentle scold for all my vices and weaknesses. It is not a conceit, for I am aware that I accomplish more than most as I navigate the work world and the farm life. Yet, I am constantly nagged by the fear of not doing enough, of wasting time. Bee hive 012

It is not for me to be one of those grim souls who plow through tasks simply to reach the point where sleep claims them until the next day, or for eternity. I leaven the days with plenty of pleasure: in the company of my partner, friends, and neighbors, with dinners and books and discussions.  For the tasks and the work, no one could accuse me of shirking my duties. Yet the margins of life where time is ill-spent nag me.

My father is a man who, at 88, still gets up early to exercise. Who still serves on the parish levee board as an engineering consultant. Who, as a teen, wrote to his mother from a warship in the Pacific to ask for his trigonometry text. He wanted to bone up on his math skills in preparation for college when he was mustered out of service after the war.

That familial model surely must inform my farm work: Yesterday morning I was weeding the potato patch before 7 a.m., and I had prepped the rooster even earlier for the dinner of coq au vin that evening.

I then let the sheep out into a paddock for a morning feed and headed in for a spot of the same before beginning the real work for the day. An electric fence for the cattle was running on half-charge. So a first task was to spot and correct the areas of power drain. A pair of loppers in hand, I walked the fenceline from the charger to the pasture, pruning back a dozen limbs that were touching the wire and pulling down the charge.

Back to the garden I returned for another hour of weeding and tying tomato vines. Then a round of short tasks–moving a round bale of hay into the barn and spreading it around for bedding, and finishing the morning in a lower pasture pulling downed trees to the edge of a pond.

As the heat and humidity drove the dogs back home and into the shade, I took their sensible lead and returned to the house for lunch. After a short nap and a bit of reading, I was back in the garden. I harvested some Swiss chard, which I drove into town and delivered to some friends. We spent a pleasant hour catching up before I turned the truck for home. There, I spent some time with Cindy getting into the hives, examining the supers for honey flow and the hive bodies for brood and documenting what we saw with my camera.Gertude's bull calf 010

 More chores in the evening, followed by a dinner of coq au vin, fresh pears, cheese and a salad, capped by walking up into the pasture to see a brand new calf.

It was a satisfying and productive day. Yet this account is not meant to brag, for the world is filled with hard-working people and there are many days when I am less productive. The desire and will to work well are both cultural and familial, but they are also influenced by having work that brings satisfaction and accomplishment. And the farm for me brings plenty of both.

But the legacy of our rich heritage, be it Roman emperors or World War II vets, looms large. Which is perhaps why I still have that nagging feeling of underachievement even after a good day.

Maybe I should write home for a trigonometry book?

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Reading this weekend: The Generous Earth, by Philip Oyler. And Much Ado About Mutton, by Bob Kennard

Violence, BBQ, Ponds and Marcus Aurelius

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I do not consider myself a violent man. Overall my temperament is fairly even keeled. Although there is bit of shading or room for interpretation in that statement, I’ll stand by it. Yet there have been moments on the farm where Cindy has restrained me from getting my 30/30 and dropping an errant and dangerous bull. And the toolbox on the truck has a nice dent where I felt that the locks refusal to open required the use of a crowbar to persuade it to submit. But that is all to this confession: just the odd desire to bash or occasionally throw things about.

Usually I go serenely about my chores. The odd irritation brushed off as irrelevant in the big scheme as Mr. Aurelius teaches. So when the damn lamb spends every f-ing moment outside the paddock bleating incessantly, I smile and think, “Spit-roasted BBQ in the autumn?” Yeah, that’ll be nice.

It is a nice trick. Eat those that irritate you. Works well on a farm as anger management. But perhaps you should not try this at home.

Inclinations towards violence aside this has been a good weekend. We got two hundred garlic bulbs cured and trimmed and ready for storage. Cindy has spent a fair amount of time photographing puppies. I’ll leave it to her to describe the challenges of corralling puppies and dealing with the website. But Becky had ten puppies a week ago. You can see pictures on the website. And Caleb and I spent six hours in the sun and heat laying out erosion mats where the pond is no more.

After three years and more money that we would care to admit we had the big pond filled. It simply never held water. Dozens of know-it-all experts and neighbors each had their own opinions and we tried them all.

But when faced with spending $10,000 to line the pond we capitulated and filled it.  After all, the pond was too big for me to throw about in a tantrum. It took 100 dump truck loads to fill.

So we stretched out straw erosion mats yesterday and put down staples and spread grass seed. Now we wait for it to return to its previous state as an attractive pasture. A hard lesson and one we will pay for if I can ever find where I threw our checkbook.

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Reading this week: Restoration Agriculture: real-world permaculture for farmers by Mark Shepherd.