'Jell-O Once a Week'

On Thursday I gently slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It wasn’t plagiarism, exactly, and it was paraphrased. It’s a well-known passage from the essay “That to philosophize is to learn to die,” one that always reminds me of Spinoza: 

“It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere. Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom. He who has learned to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint.”

 

That got most of the heavy stuff out of the way. My brother and I have always been able to sing together. For some reason we launched into Sinatra’s Ray Charles-esque “That’s Life,” with that wonderful parade of plosives: “I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet /A pawn and a king . . .” Later numbers included “Chantilly Lace” (“Oh, baby, you know what I like”) and (this is embarrassing) “My Way.” Two nurses and the guy in the hall changing the fluorescent lights applauded.

 

After the songfest and before he got his next hit of Dilaudid my brother said: “I just feel elevated. I feel so goddamned relaxed.” He added, “The Lord let me take His name in vain.” Two other good ones from Ken:

 

“The only thing I don’t like about falling asleep is waking up.”

“I want some conformity in my life -- I never thought I’d say that. Jell-O once a week. Coffee every morning.”

 

[The quotation above is from Donald Frame’s translation of The Complete Essays of Montaigne (1958).]