Meditation on This

Although this blog is normally dedicated to my own trifling rambles, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to let my old friend, super producer and Hollywood big-shot, Harold Heschel Jr., write a guest editorial here when he asked. The two of us have been working on a couple of scripts of mine and he’s been gracious enough to impart some of his wisdom on me, mostly unsolicited but welcomed nonetheless. In his later years Harold has taken to reading many of the ancient philosophers for guidance and comfort. He was detailing his thoughts on some of these works recently when I told him maybe he should write some reviews and post them online somewhere. He asked about my blog. I of course had to accept. He’s a dear friend, a wise council, and he can have me killed if he wants. So, without further ado, here’s Wordsfromawordjockey’s first book review.

MEDITATIONS*

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus. This guy was emperor of Rome for nearly twenty years. In a hotly contested manuscript, dated December 18th 180 A.D., Aurelius is quoted as saying, in reference to his tenure as Emperor, “It’s not bad work, if you can get it!” Although that manuscript is thought by most historians to be “merely the pathetic, incoherent, and possibly schizophrenic, ramblings of a fraudulent conman and shortsighted opportunist” (Hitchens), Aurelius’ more legitimate and most enduring work, Meditations, is - in this blogger’s humble opinion - not much better.

Take a little peak into the “mind” of this ancient stoic and you’ll find nothing more than the inane musings of a 2nd Century, New Age guru. This guy could give both Tony Robbins and Eckhart Tolle a chariot race for their shekels.

Aurelius begins his enigmatic tome in an impossibly backward fashion by thanking every damned Roman he’s ever come in contact with and the list sounds like a page out of the celebrity child name book. Thanks go out to Verus, Diognetus, Rusticus, Appollonius and even a guy named Fronto. I guess none of those cats taught him anything about literary decorum because, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re supposed to put those thanks in more concise, less wind-baggy, one or two (at the most) pages prior to the preface or the introduction. Whatever. When in Rome, eh?

The rest of this impossibly dreary book is full of such confusing, dime-store philosophical musings as:

“This you must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of a part is of what kind of a whole; and that there is no one who hinders you from always doing and saying the things that conform to the nature of which you are a part.”

What the fuck are you talking about, Marc? I think it would make some sense if you meant hole rather than whole.

And here’s some advice for anybody who doesn’t want to make it anywhere in this world:

“Never value anything as profitable that compels you to break your promise, to lose your self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite…”

Easy for a guy to say after he’s already been emperor for a decade. Look, if I had taken that advice twenty years ago, sure, maybe some tears would have been saved and some careers would still be intact and, okay, in all honesty a couple of lives would have been saved but I’d be penniless and writing this review in a (shutter) public library while I wait for the soup kitchen lines to dwindle.

Now we all know that even a broken clock is right twice a day – so even this sun dial was right a few times.

“Return to your sober senses and call yourself back; and when you have roused yourself from sleep and perceived that they were only dreams that troubled you, now in your waking hours look at these (the things about you) as you did look at those (the dreams).”

This little passage has helped me immeasurably considering my affliction of chronic night terrors.

And then there’s this one, which I’ve found myself chanting, mantra-like, whenever I happen to be briefly imprisoned in the proletariat hell that is airports or gas stations. And it goes thusly,

“Are you angry with him whose armpits stink? Are you angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good will anger do you? He has such a mouth, ha has armpits: it is necessary that such an emanation must come from such things – but the man has reason, it will be said, and he is able, if he takes pains, to discover wherein he offends. Well then, and you, too, have reason: by your rational faculty stir up his rational faculty; show him his error, admonish him. For if he listens, you will cure him, and there is no need of anger, the stuff of tragic actors and whores.”

Good stuff, although in my experience, tragic actors and whores are the same thing.

Like I said, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, although flawed beyond toleration, is not without its moments of wisdom, and I’d like to end this review with a quote from the end of Book IX that I hope those of you closest to me will take to heart,

“When you are offended with any man’s shameless conduct, immediately ask yourself. Is it possible then, that shameless men should not be in the world? It is not possible. Do not, then, require what is impossible. For this man also is one of those shameless men who must of necessity be in the world.”

- Harold Heschel Jr.


* This review is of the Dover Thrift Edition of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius; the George Long translation. If you don't like it you can fuck off.