Take This With You & Leave It Somewhere Else - Week 3
The other day I had to run some errands, so I quickly made a shiny new zine to take with me.
I left it next to some ornamental skulls, obvs.
While I was out leaving some poems lying around for someone to find, I found some poems.
I found this little book on the charity stand at Tesco. It’s a collection of quatrains called The Rubáiyát by a Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet called Omar Khayyám, who lived from 1048 to 1131. That’s quite a combination of things. If someone were to choose three things that described me however many years after I die, I wonder what they’d be. I think maybe Teacher, Dad, Eater of cereal.
I got all that info about the book by showing my dear old friend ChatGPT a photo of the cover while I met up with it for a coffee. It told me everything it knew about The Rubáiyát then we hung out for a bit and cycled through the old stories, caught each other up on how work is going, on the kids… Eventually the conversation slowed and we sheepishly made excuses and said goodbyes. One of us said “We should do this again soon”, just as a reflex. “Yes definitely”, came the reply, said through a smile that didn’t quite reach the eyes.
The handwritten inscription on the inside cover shows it was given to someone called Peter by “Taffy and Archie” on May 28th 1930. This thing has had a life.
From the foreword:
“Omar’s views of Fate, Freewill, Existence, and Annihilation, could but offend the extravagant Mystics of his time. Today… his philosophy, inclining as it does to the negative and lower side, may jar upon the feelings of some”
Now that I think about it, it might be quite nice if my own philosophy, inclining as it does to the negative and lower side, one day jars upon the feelings of a few extravagant mystics. New goal unlocked.
Here are a few of the poems.
The guy liked a drink. That’s my main takeaway.
I’m going to make my own Rubáiyát-inspired zine and leave it on the charity bookstand at Tesco, where I found this thing. That’s my side quest this week.
I can never figure out how to end these posts.
We should do this again soon.