"... and literary experiments aren't dead in popular American fiction. ... with strange titles ("Scuttled Kayak Odyssey," "Ben Franklin Airbath"), ..."
I found this bit of profundity as I followed a referrer back ,and frankly, I was stunned that whomever wrote it would find "Ben Franklin Airbath" a strange title for popular American fiction. When Franklin visited London he always took a suite of rooms in the highest building(hotel or inn) he could find, with large windows,and always with a corner room, allowing him a cross-breeze from two, if not three directions,which would allow him to divest himself of his clothing, open all the windows,and lay on a chaise-lounge in the buff, to take an "air bath" unobserved by passers-by or residents in surrounding structures. I do not find this strange behavior. Ben Franklin was a rather portly man, and he knew, somehow, that the human body develops unpleasant odors when rolls and creases develop moisture, when that is trapped between folds of skin for a length of time. Even persons who bathe regularly can be downright rank to be around when one does not free oneself of this trapped moisture,and an airbath is generally accepted as the best way to stay sweet smelling. In his day, this was not a well known fact, nor an accepted remedy for it, since there were no deodorants at that time, all but the most fastidious about their personal hygiene had about them an unpleasant aroma. This was the major reason that flowers were presented to a lady when a man came courting,and perfume and candy were such popular gifts. This odd factoid about Mr. Franklin might have gone to the grave with him, had it not been for an enterprising reporter who bartered and bribed his way into Ben's rooms late one night,and as he entered the room in which Franklin lay, the windows were open,and a wind was whistling through that caused all the drapes and curtains to stand out,and flap in the breeze,and there on the fainting couch was sprawled the August gentleman, in the altogether! Startled for a moment, Mr. Franklin then offered his guest a glass of port,and he explained his state of undress,and even invited him to join him on an adjacent couch. The offer was summarily declined, but the incident stayed in the mind of that man enough to write about it some years later,once all who might have been embarrassed by the publishing of the article had gone. Whether gone just from England, or gone from this life, was never really made clear. Now, to me, this seems thin stuff indeed to base an entire book upon, however, it seems someone has done it, and if that is the case, there must have been more than just the airbaths to talk about! Although, considering the tid-bit again, this may have just been an anthology of short stories and not a novel after all, so I may be reading too much into the amount of information that I received.
As to the"Scuttled Kayak Odyssey", I don't in the least consider that a strange title for an odyssey involving kayaks should have the word, "scuttled" in it. On the contrary, after watching the guy across the alley from us go through his nightly performance of getting his kayaks out of and then back into his garage, the word seems perfectly natural to use. Night after night he would load up and take off with his kayaks on top of his car. That only took him about half an hour, because he was a slight, small man, and even fiberglass kayaks were a struggle for him to wield around, strap down,and secure. But when he came home, after dark, we would sit in the kitchen and watch, (with the lights off,and smothering our faces) as "Kayak man" as we grew to know him, would pull up, turn on the garage lights, open the door and then begin to try to line up the kayaks, and the car. The performance always began the same way. He would take the red Kayak off the top of the car and set in on our grass, in line with the left side of his garage, and then the blue one on the right.Then, he would park the car in his parking space next to the garage,and come and stand in the alley, looking at the space in his garage. then, he would go to the left side of the garage, get down on one knee,and try to visually line up the Kayak. He would stare at the space in the garage for a while, and then turn and look at the Kayak,place his hands on either side of the tiny boat, and hold them that way while he walked the length of the Kayak,pacing off the distance,and then with his arms still holding the width of the Kayak, he would walk into the garage, measure how far out from the wall the Kayak would come,and then pace off the distance of it's length. Then he would stand and look for a while again, and then without moving anything, would repeat the whole thing, with the blue Kayak! He never used a measuring tape,or a piece of chalk to mark the spots. Which I found hysterically funny, so that by the time he was marching back into the garage holding his arms just so, and knelt down to measure the distance from the wall for the second time, I was just in stitches! I would bite my tongue, cover my mouth with my palms and almost burst laughing while trying manfully to not let any sound escape my lips, while tears of mirth would flood my face,but I would beat the table, and shake my head at the same time, wondering why he went through this every night. But at the same time, Yon son and I both felt sorry for him, and took great pains not to let the man know that we were watching him, or that we found his nightly dilemma amusing. Most normal people would have figured out how to place the Kayaks and the car in the garage in a couple of weeks, at the very most, by making some permanent marks on the floor, or installing brackets on the wall to hold them, or something,but he did nothing like that. Finally, I insisted that Yon son close the door, because eventually this man would figure out we were watching him and laughing, and I didn't want him to be embarrassed like that. Instead I suggested that Yon son go out, and try to give the man a little help, make suggestions as to how to manage putting his Kayaks away every night, without spending hours and hours, staring at the garage and scratching his head in bewilderment. It didn't help. He listened to Yon son's ideas, smiled indulgently and then launched into an explanation as to why Yon's ideas wouldn't work. That is when it became clear that this man, even though he was smart enough to get a drivers license,and paddle Kayaks, was not overly bright, and probably had OCD,and so we began to close the door when he drove up at night, and began his entertaining performance.Where I am sure that this man is not representative of the ilk that are Kayaking enthusiasts, still, the experience makes one wonder,and certainly there is no doubt in my mind that there indeed, are Kayaking odysseys that end up being scuttled!
OUI?
Comments