Posted on by markusoreallyus

Beware the Ides of March

Everyone in the English-speaking world has likely heard that phrase – Beware the Ides of March! – but many likely don’t know what it means. The phrase famously comes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Many of our expressions actually originate in Shakespeare, from To be or not to be to What the dickens. When I was in university, one of my professors told a story about taking an old woman, who’d never been to a play or read any Shakespeare, to see Hamlet. Afterward he asked her how she liked it, and she replied that it was good, but what an awful lot of cliches.

Near the beginning of the play (Act 1, Scene 2), as Caesar is walking through the forum, a soothsayer warns him, vaguely, about his pending assassination, which will occur on the Ides of the month. (Ides, for those who don’t know Latin, is the Roman term for the middle of the month. In most months in the Roman calendar, that was the 13th. In March (and May, July – named after Caesar – and October) it fell on the 15th. The date that history/legend has it that Caesar was, in fact, assassinated.) Most of Shakespeare’s audience would have known this, and their knowledge infused the scene with dramatic irony.

In Shakespeare’s play, Caesar disregards the soothsayer’s warning and is assassinated by a group of senators, among them his erstwhile friend Brutus, which causes him to utter some of the most famous dying words in English literature: Et tu, Brute? (“You too, Brutus?” – Brute, by the way, should be pronounced brew-tay.)

When you tell someone to beware the Ides of March, you’re not really suggesting they’ll run into bad luck on March 15, but suggesting they’re not listening to warnings and are heading for a foreseeable fall. If you say, Et tu, Brute! you’re expressing surprise at a betrayal.

Other useless bits of trivia you may or may not know, and likely don’t care about:

March is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. July is named for Julius Caesar, while August is named for his replacement, Octavian, aka Augustus.

Before July and August were added to the Roman calendar, it only had ten months. Hence September (seventh month), October (eighth), November (ninth) and December (tenth).

 

Posted on by markusoreallyus · 1 Comment

Old & new schools

It’s been a January kind of week, even though it’s March. Which is to say, I’ve done things that look back to the past, and something that is more forward looking. Perhaps that is my nature? Born on the cusp of the year, perhaps I am always pulled backwards and forwards at the same time. Maybe that’s why I like buying new music on vinyl.

The backwards part involves shaving.

Many years ago – decades, even – I had the most amazing cartridge razor that I’ve ever known. It wasn’t expensive or fancy. It was a Wilkinson two-blade system. It shaved close without being irritating. But in my early twenties I decided shaving was a bother, so I stopped doing it. And by the time I decided to start again, several years later, the blades were no longer available.

Over the years since, I’ve used other cartridge razors. Gillette, Schick, Bic, and so on. None of them were as good as the Wilkinson. Most were ridiculously expensive, at least when it comes to buying replacement cartridges. I don’t like just throwing things away, so I haven’t used disposables much. When I have, they haven’t done a very good job.

So this week, after much research, I bought a safety razor – or DE (double edge), as the online, self-proclaimed aficionados put it.  I threw some money at Amazon, and the next day I had a nice, shiny (it’s chromed) Merkur in my possession.

If there’s one thing shaving with the Merkur has taught me, it’s that multiple blades do nothing, and the bland, disposable nature of mainstream razors do nothing that a single blade can’t do better. And the DE blades are WAY cheaper. So there’s that.

The forwards part involves driving. Or rather, vehicle ownership. Or rather, non-ownership.

The other day I joined a car sharing group. Not Car2Go or Evo – since their ‘zones’ don’t extend to my corner of suburbia. Not ZipCar, since they don’t have any vehicles handy to where I live, either. I went with Modo.

Most of the time, I am more than happy to ride my motorcycle. Or I can walk. Or take transit. And this year I plan to ride my bicycle more, too. But sometimes – sometimes – four-wheeled transport is just a very  good thing. Picking up a whack of groceries, for example. Or transporting something that won’t fit in my side cases.

I don’t need the car all the time, or even all that often. I don’t want to pay for insurance, maintenance, fuel, and so on, for multiple vehicles that Adele doesn’t drive. Too much expense for too little reward. (You may have noticed a theme at this point.)

Also, I don’t feel the need to own a car, just to use one now and then. Renting them is fine, but I always end up having it for longer than I need or want. Sometimes I only need it for a couple of hours, not a whole weekend. The car share seems like a good way to go.

Unlike the razor, I haven’t had a chance yet to try the car share out. My fob should arrive in the mail next week, and after that I’ll be off to the races. Well, not literally. I would never drive that fast, officer. Honest.

Posted on by markusoreallyus

Impression on a winter morning

 

The morning light reclines
Confident in its own beauty
As the body of a young woman
Dreaming on a chaise
Indifferent to the artist’s gaze
And the sighing
Of charcoal over paper
Shading into a pretense 
Of permanence
His fleeting desire

 Soft slope of shoulder
Curve of spine and hip

And now rising
Shrugs off a dream
Of shadows and
Wrapping itself in a white sheet
Turns without a glance
To leave the room

6 March 2017
Vancouver