Famous Historical Leisure Figures: HUCK FINN

As December starts to middle there's a noticeable change in people's demeanor: traffic is worse, shoes get dirty and slushy, daylight is overwhelmingly truant, and everywhere a mad rush. This isn't meant to be anti-consumption- consuming is one of the most pleasurable activities in the leisurists itinerary. But right now, going to a mall, or a store, or even anywhere trade is practiced is bad for the humours. At the mall today I became furious at an old couple seeking seniors discounts (extra 15% off at the Bay- I'm totally hitting that up when I'm old) for requesting to try on so many pairs of shoes! I stewed and steamed and snorted- but isn't it Christmas, I can hear you say... Isn't it the holiday for photogenic deprived kids to finally get the toys they want... for goodwill and hearty feelings? The black and white cover of Christmas on 34th Street flashed through my mind and chastised me.

Chastised. My soul is too evil and shrinks like Gollum from such manipulative sentimental tropes. Then I decided that because I try to live as far outside the law and social conventional as I can -while also staying comfortably close enough to arrange my benefit through freeloading- that I needn't 'buy' into the purchasing fever. And because it's becoming super popular to cleverly combine proper nouns with normal nouns I'm adopting a total "HUCK-FINNSMAS" attitude this year. When I realized this, I was flooded with zen.

Huck Finn, also flooded with zen. Surveying the world he has conquered by escaping the rigorous routine and confines of Missouri convention. SOLID COMFORT. Rafting down the Mississippi in a raft big enough to float a tent, a fire, and a whole pile of supplies- check. Corncob pipe- check. Picaresque adventures- check. Intoxicating smirk of satisfaction- check. Lose a fortune, nevermind, Huck knows he'll be fine as long as there's floating down the river, fishing line tied to his big toe.

This Christmas is going to be -and here is another trendy grammar foul- very Huckleberry for me. At the first sign of holiday panic I'm heading out the window to the river banks (out the backdoor to the hot tub). I might get a corncob pipe. If you manage to get that gleam in your eye I guarantee no shopping mall hustle will harsh your Huckleberry vibes. Huck Finn, born a natural leader of leisure, is a perfect example of someone who toed the line between convention and corncob smoking professional child raftsman. A reminder to us all. 

MOTORHOME SEARCH Pt. 1

When we finally found the house nestled between concrete silos and the gravel pit in the middle of the industrial park we didn't think anyone was home. The yard was a parking lot- old motorhomes, a teal Ford Pinto, rusted out flatbeds everywhere. Conspicuous on the hood of the pinto was a half-bottle of whisky. We entered the yard. An overweight pitbull wheezed up to us. We stopped, it stopped. The dog lunged and we jumped the fence.
I called the seller. It didn't seem right away like he knew he was talking on a phone-a after some false starts I said we were outside his house. He came out, between swigs of the whisky he picked up as though he had just set it down there seconds before he warned us not to enter his yard or his dog would surely attack.
The motorhome was on blocks- it was a class A, with ample room to sleep about 8 people. There was a rotting hole in the middle of the floor. Does it run? He said, with a conspicuous leer: no, it's more, like for partying. Get a couple crates of beer and some girls. There's girls in here all the time.
He offered to tow it to my backyard for free- 200 bucks for everything! I declined. The atmosphere grew tense. We left on bad terms.
I got a few calls from him over the next couple weeks. Each time it was like a pocket dial, but right next to his face. I would pick up the phone and listen to the the end of whatever he way saying to someone beside him, then he would say "hello? hello? is there someone there?" The first time he invited us to a party. The next time I cut him off and told him to stop calling me. He was so bloated and addled on alcohol I don't think he had picked up on our social cues, or even society's in general.

Vomiting Again Pt. 2

I was once a camp counselor- to my regret I was, perhaps not surprisingly, occasionally laid back about the whole affair. One might even say a little too leisurely- though perhaps uneven is a better word. I counseled at what could be nominally called a bible camp, but I think this might be putting too generic a tag on one of the best and most unique places I've been.

One night, when I was a lowly counselor-in-training, I was tasked with delivering the evening devotional. I began with the usual talk-about-our-day, prayer-requests, does-anyone-have-any-questions, and then I asked if someone wanted me to read from the bible. One kid said yeah, he'd like me to read Revelations. Relieved that the whole spiel was finally out of my hands, I gladly turned to Revelations and began to read aloud. I read without thinking at first, then when I realized what passage I'd serendipitously turned to, I read with horror. Gnashing of teeth! The unsaved being tortured! Many fires burning eternally! And all in the pitch black of a cabin in the woods, a setting that to any mind, especially an 8-year olds, anything said is immediately imagined, and immediately imagined right outside the door. The King James bible is where the gravity of doom was perfected in our language -phrasing, tone, rhetoric, graphic violence- I defy anyone to disbelieve anything the King James version tells them in a setting like that. I stopped at one point, sure that there were six wet beds in the room. Does anyone mind if I stop? One little kid, I can't even remember his name, said in a quavering voice that he'd like to become a Christian. I was silent- there was sobbing- where was the counselor? He was absent. I cursed under my breath. Surely this was the epitome of scare tactics. And all inadvertently done. Again I cursed. Yes of course, I said. And that is the only time, for better or worse, I've ever guided anyone spiritually. I felt bad about if for weeks- my one conversion, under such morbid conditions.

That was just a super long non sequitur. We had weekly talent shows, where people sang songs, performed skits, played piano etc. A couple of my chums- there were probably 7 or 8 of us- decided that we were going to pee our pants for the talent show. I guess this was supposed to be funny- but the irony was lost on us that this probably shows a dearth of all talent, imagination, and general self-awareness more than anything else. Anyway, we all got together and began drinking water in huge quantities. We drank and drank water until it hurt. You can become intoxicated if you drink enough water in a short enough time. That could account for why the notion that it was a good idea managed to be sustained. At my fourth or fifth 2-litre jug, I began to throw up. I probably threw up ten litres of water. A staggering fire hydrant. The kids cheered. Only one of us managed to pee his pants. It happened before the talent show had even begun. He couldn't make it to the bathroom. Lesson: these sorts of things are impossible to time.

Famous Leisure Figures: Hobbits

I remember reading the Lord of The Rings (L+) and imagining myself as Aragorn or Legolas or another hero-type; never a dwarf or a wizard. Dwarves dig and live underground- they're greedy. Wizards are curmudgeonly. As I've grown older, and now have fewer people telling me my leisure principles are in fact symptoms of sloth, I've come to realize that my disposition is fundamentally hobbit-like. Hobbits wish they were elves, or of the line of Elendil- from the comfort of the Green Dragon (L++), or a hammock (L++), or over the main course of second breakfast (L++). This is all to say I'm looking forward to The Hobbit more than any other Harry Potter movie I've seen. I re-read it not so long ago. The dialogue (typing dialogue makes me squirm- too many literary theory classes (U++)) between Smaug and Bilbo is priceless, as are the narrative asides on burglaring and dwarvish idiosyncrasies. Anyway, I'm of two minds about the hobbit lifestyle. One part of me wishes to live in Gondor, living and eating Spartan-style*, sleeping on cold stone and having high-minded thoughts about duty, death and country. This is also the part of me that thinks it would be a noble thing to learn to work with my hands in a iron smelting plant or something. Another part of me, the part that spends four hours a day reading, shooting local fauna with BB guns at night, and forming hot tub clubs, knows that it would be a sin against my nature to take up the Gondorian symbol of the White Tree and fight for Aragorn son of Arathorn. This part favours the life of the Shire.

*there's a good bit in Patrick Leigh Fermor's book "Words of Mercury" about gluttony and the Renaissance. Essentially, his tongue-in-cheek thesis is that Raphael, or da Vinci, couldn't possible have painted what they did on a diet such as we have today. It's all olives and scarcity; lean physical comfort.

Famous Leisure Figures: OMAR KHAYYAM

This is an illustration and a quatrain from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a medieval Persian philosopher and poet. He was exceptionally prolific in terms of scientific and philosophic output, but it's his Rubaiyat he's best known for now. It's not hard to see why. You could draw a straight line from Diogenes to these leisure savvy chaps, 2000 years between them notwithstanding. In fact I can almost imagine this is Diogenes sulking when he wasn't invited to their "wine and Houri" picnic under the olive trees:

"But Diogenes, you sleep in a barrel, he lives in the sultan's palace..."

Being a stoic doesn't mean you don't have feelings.

Viscount Gort Hotel

In the Winnipeg winter of 06/07 I spent most of my leisure time in the swimming pool and sauna of a place called the Viscount Gort Hotel. The fact that I and several of my compadres were able to regularly break into the pool and also break all the rules of the pool for a period of about five months is evidence of a) the total lack of ambition on the part of the hotel staff and b) our blissful shamelessness.

The Viscount Gort was across the frigid Assiniboine River, from our house maybe a ten minute walk. The bridge we had to cross rose considerably- exposure to the wind was terrible, and the city didn't clear the sidewalk of snow. It was a bit of an ordeal getting to and from, despite the proximity. It probably never got warmer than -30 that winter. That sauna and pool was an oasis. Our house was badly insulated (ice formed on the interior of outside walls), our hot water supply limited, and we relied on our bikes to go everywhere all winter long. There were weeks when I went to the Viscount Gort five or six days out of seven to sit in the sauna. Towards the end of our happy time there we began to go in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays, as the south facing side of the pool complex was a floor to ceiling window and the sun lit up the entire place every morning. We would bring thermoses of coffee and my pal rode down the waterslide while pretending to read the newspaper. We threw the soggy Free Press at each other.

Underneath a bench in the sauna there was a little opening big enough to scoot an empty bottle into. After a few months you could drop a can in and hear it clatter off enough other discards to bring a smile to even the most severe anti-leisure types.

Encounters with the hotel security were recounted gleefully to those not present. I was there for a few of them. You might not know this, but a lot of drinking gets done in hotel pools- usually near the deckchairs, but of course this seems an arbitrary confinement after a few Lucky Lager's consumed in the shadow of a waterslide. The first time I encountered security I thought for sure the game was up. We were sitting on the side drinking some beers when they strolled in. Our innocent Shangrila, about to be taken from us by some red-faced pot-bellied minimum wage security stooges! They pointed to the bottles, and told us we couldn't drink them in here... because of the glass. Cans are okay, we were assured. And then they walked out.

Another time we stayed long after the lights were turned out. The only thing better than sneaking into a pool with some economy brews is riding the waterslide after the lights are outtrying to keep your economy brew balanced while you tumble into the water. Eventually someone came and asked us to leave. He went as far as to escort us to the elevator, probably because we were carrying armfuls of winter wear in addition to our normal clothes. We took it up a few floors, changed in the stairwell and left out a back emergency exit.

Famous Leisure Figures from History: DIOGENES

This is the start of a new series on famous leisure figures from history.

When asked by Alexander the Great (U++) what favor he would have from him, the incomparable Diogenes (L++) allegedly looked up, annoyed at the figure casting a shadow over his contemplation, and said "Yes, stand out of my sunlight!" Look at this picture. It's not a painting of the scene I just referred to but a painting of the barrel Diogenes apparently lived in. Notice the hunched shoulders, the pained squint, and the care he has taken to keep in the shade. That has to be the posture and expression of a man who has forgotten his mantra of moderation and indulged in a few too many Palm Breezies (L++) the night before. Notice the belle Athenians (L++) lining the stairs to call on him, and the parchment crumpled into his hands. A true paragon of leisure.