'I Am Content to Enjoy the World'

I found an email I had sent to my brother shortly before his death in August. After spending a week in Cleveland, visiting him in the hospital, I returned to Houston for a few days, then flew back to stay with him in the hospice. During that first trip, we did a lot of talking, often about books. He was most interested in the volumes of Cleveland history his son had borrowed for him from the library. Not surprisingly, he seemed possessed by memories, personal and otherwise. I photographed him in his hospital bed reading a book titled Cleveland Calamities. I mentioned something Montaigne had written about preparations for death. He had never read the Essays but seemed interested. No lecture, merely conversation. 

Back home, during the interval between the two visits, I browsed in Donald Frame’s translation of the Complete Essays, copied out passages he might find interesting and emailed them to Ken. Now I know he never saw them and remained unconscious for the rest of his days. First comes a rather lengthy passage from “Three Kinds of Association”:

 

“The sick man is not to be pitied who has a cure up his sleeve. In the practice and application of this maxim, which is very true, lies all the fruit I reap from books. Actually I use them scarcely any more than those who do not know them at all. I enjoy them, as misers enjoy treasures, because I know that I can enjoy them when I please; my soul takes its fill of contentment from this right of possession.

 

“I do not travel without books, either in peace or in war. However, many days will pass, and even some months, without my using them. I’ll do it soon, I say, or tomorrow, or when I please. Time flies and is gone, meanwhile, without hurting me. For I cannot tell you what ease and repose I find when I reflect that they are at my side to give me pleasure at my own time, and when I recognize how much assistance they bring to my life. It is the best provision I have found for this human journey, and I am extremely sorry for men of understanding who do not have it. I sooner accept any other kind of amusement, however trivial, because this one cannot fail me.”

 

And this from “Of Vanity”:

 

“I am content to enjoy the world without being all wrapped up in it, to live a merely excusable life, which will merely be no burden to myself and others.”