Literature Majors, A Shout Out

“But, lady, as women, what wisdom may be ours if not the philosophies of the kitchen?”

Sor Juana de La Cruz

Something you can use.  Have mercy, a blog has to give readers something they can use.  Okay.  Rather than rail and damn, I’ll submit.  There is much to be said for utility.  I guess I want to make this blog post a shout out to literature majors.  I can think of few other endeavors that have greater utility than literature and literature majors are the people who’ve managed to snap to this fact.  Here’s a keeper from Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his astounding novel, 100 Years of Solitude.  Ursula Iguaran Buendia , the ancient matriarch of the Buendia family went slowly blind over the years, a fact that she was able to hide from her family.  Ursula was a student of habits.  She knew the habits of everyone in the family as well as the habits of the animals, plants, and even the inanimate objects such as furniture.  One of her great skills was her ability to find the objects people in the family would lose.  She noticed that people lost their attachment to their possessions in the extraordinary moments when something would jar them out of their habits. 

To find the lost object, all Ursula had to do was find out when, where, and under what circumstances, the person who’d lost the object (the key, the ring, the eyeglasses, etc) had departed from his/her habits or usual way of doing things. With this information, Ursula could tell the person where the object was likely to be… and she was never wrong.  One of the hundreds of great take-aways from 100 Years of Solitude (Cien Años de Soledad) was Ursula’s sure-fire way of finding lost objects.   The method has, through the  years, saved me hundreds and hundreds of hours of anxious, fruitless searching (looking again and again where an object SHOULD be, although it is demonstrably NOT there),  turning out closets, examining trash etc. ad nauseum.  And Ursula’s method has probably saved my hundreds of dollars in eyeglasses I did not have to buy, locksmiths I did not have to pay etc.

Since I am not ancient beyond counting years (yet), nor surrounded by a huge family,  nor blind, etc.,I have had to adapt Ursula’s method to my circumstances.   I must first note, that I lose things.  Somehow I am one of those people with slippery fingers and holes in my pockets.  My connection with my possessions is always a bit tenuous.  Probably the objects I most often lose are my keys.  Here is a typical scenario – it’s early evening and I’ve decided to drive to the grocery story for one reason or another.  I go into my office and my keys are not on my desk.  They are supposed to be on my desk, that’s where I keep them, but they are not there.  Now this could be the time for an extended and increasingly frustrated search with the accompanying curses and slamming about that are so characteristic of such moments.  And in fact, this is often the course I take.  Sometimes I am impatient and want the lost object fast and want to avoid the effort and humility that Ursula’s method demands.  At some point, however, my better angels prevail and I get serious about finding my keys.

                What’s involved is thinking back over the course of the day to remember something I did in an unusual way, in an unusual place, or at an unusual time.  I recall, for example, that I took a shower at an odd time, mid-day rather than first thing on arising.  This means, of course, that I had to undress rather than just stepping out of my skivvies to get into the shower.  Since I was dressed when I began the showering project, I was wearing trousers.  Although I did not recall that the keys were in my pants pocket, I was certain that as I took off my pants, I would have had a momentary concern, a thought that I should set everything in my pockets aside, and hang the pants nicely on a hanger in the bathroom so they would be tidy when I dressed after the shower.  I did not recall having done so. I remembered nothing of the shower beyond a moment of annoyance that there was insufficient crème rinse for my needs.  Still, by Ursula’s reckoning, the keys would most likely be in the bathroom.  After indulging in these mental gymnastics, I walk into the bathroom and find the keys along with sixteen cents in coins and a wrapped but soggy stick of gum on a shelf next to the mirror.  An important note here – not only did I find my keys but I did so without having to question my wife and/or daughter as to whether they’d seen or used or moved my keys.
               This method does require a certain amount of discipline.  One has to stop obsessing and quietly reflect, often at some length.  And it does require humility.  You have to accept the fact that you are one with the mass of idiot humanity, going through life mostly unconscious of both your actions and their consequences.  The largest thing I have momentarily lost has been a car.  The most valuable thing I have similarly lost (in terms of liquidity) was about $20,000 dollars in cash that was not my own (and that I would have had to replace).  In both cases, Ursula’s method was central to a happy resolution of the situation.  Again, there is always a cost in bruised pride to finding lost articles.  It’s a price that I have time and again been more than happy to pay.

                So literature has provided me with lessons of immense practical importance.  Walk with pride, literature majors, you are hooked into wisdom and practical know-how that far outstrips the capacities of the fools that would deride your choice and passion.