Mental Trackmarks

When I was growing up I was under the impression that “burning the candle at both ends” was a bad thing. It usually meant that somebody was working too hard and was in danger of “burning out.” Of course, as with many sayings of yore that were meant to act as warnings, there were occasions where one might be accused of burning a little too much candle with an overtone of admiration; look at you doing so much and being so successful and suffering no ill effects from your superhuman efforts–obviously you must be one of the rare few that has unlimited candles and can burn them willy-nilly (any post that uses the word “yore” must be balanced by the use of “willy-nilly” or risk falling into the pit of arrogance and self-reflective cleverness).

I continually (against my best efforts) fall into the trap of assuming that I have an unlimited store of candles that can be burned with the aforementioned willy and nilly abandon. History has shown that I am an idiot in this regard and somehow manage to be (honestly) surprised each time I run into a wall of exhaustion. I was not planning on getting sick as a (very sick) dog after doing more than is my ability–EVEN AFTER RECOGNIZING THAT I WAS DOING MORE THAN I SHOULD. How can a person be so oblivious to such a precedent? I have a rare gift for selective ignorance. If I could bottle it I would be a rich man during election campaigns … wait … that is another rant.

It was somewhat by accident that I started reading the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay and found that she appreciated the value of a well-burned candle. If you were to believe WikiAnswers then her poem was the origin of the candle burning phrase. I would suggest you do not believe this. It is more likely to have existed for quite a while and examples of the phrase being used to describe living at a hectic pace and in relation to extravagance and thriftiness have been around for hundreds of years.

I have had a copy of Edna St. Vincent Millay: Collected Lyrics for a few years without ever venturing into its covers. I heard her work mentioned when I was taking one English course or another and found the book shortly after. It then promptly fell victim to limited time and changing interests. C’est la vie. Having time thrust upon me by virtue of being ill I dug out the book and read bits of it between other books and movies and waiting to get better.

I like it a lot–and not just the bit about burning the candle at both ends. That poem is called “First Fig” and is the first in A Few Figs from Thistles by Millay (1922).

MY CANDLE burns at both ends;
    It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
    It gives a lovely light!

I will resist my temptation to give my version of literary criticism on this poem and those that follow in A Few Figs from Thistles. Read them yourself. Millay wrote in the post-World War I era (and before that as well but I enjoy a lot of Modernist literature so I am lumping her in with that lot). Millay is a writer that has fallen into relative obscurity (in comparison to the high-profile lifestyle of most poets) but earned high praise from her contemporaries and produced work worthy of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. It was a bit of good fortune that I stumbled onto her work while I was suffering from post-double-candle-end-burning malaise. I am still reading bits of her work when time permits but I am now well and truly hooked.

One of the great things about working hard is the feeling of accomplishment. Another is finishing and looking back at a job well done. I have been working rather diligently lately doing some coding for mobile devices (Windows Mobile of all things … how I ended up at that is a long and winding tale beyond what I feel you, the casual reader, can endure at this moment). I was also teaching a programming course for high-school students on Saturday mornings. On top of this I was enjoying helping a vision-impaired cyclist train for a 200km tour ride by being a sighted rider on a tandem with him. Actually, “rider” is not entirely accurate because there was no notion of “being along for the ride” while we were training (yes, damnit, it was training and my legs are still sore).

About ten days ago I finished the programming course. It was quite good but I am sure I could do better if there is a next time. That day (Saturday) I went out biking for the long ride that was to be the big ride before some easier rides that would lead to the tour the following Saturday. Man, what a ride. It was long and hot and … as we were going down a large hill very quickly … terrifying. The second most horrible sound a person wants to hear (and possibly the last sound one might hear) when speeding down a hill on the front of a tandem bicycle (one that tilts the scales at nearly 600lbs with both riders and gear) is the taaannng of a spoke breaking on the front wheel. The most horrifying sound is a second taaannng that follows the first before one has had a chance to decelerate any significant amount while still going down the hill at great speed and squeezing the brakes with increasing force and urgency.

It was a very long, careful, and slow ride back to town.

I also want to plug MacQueen’s bike shop in Charlottetown (particularly Danny) who shook his head and pulled a wheel off of one of his tandems and told us not to worry about it until later so we could finish our ride. I appreciate his desire and ability to keep us riding.

The upshot of all this is what my body did to me on Sunday. The biking, teaching, and working left me tired and (apparently) susceptible to the Martian Death Flu (MDF). Not to be confused with Swine Flu or West Nile Virus, or any of the horrors that will terrify us throughout the summer, the MDF knocked me out of normal life for a week. Of that week I spent 4 days in bed (it might have been 5 but it is hard to judge that last one where I was out of bed for part of it). Did I mention that I was IN BED during this time–and not just moping around the house.

The good news is that I was able to watch movies and (eventually, when my brain would allow it) read some books. I read all five of Dashiel Hammet’s novels and would seriously recommend The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man. The first two, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse are quite intense–think Kill Bill as a novel. I have watched The Maltese Falcon a few times and it is very close to the novel. The Thin Man movie was a much looser interpretation of Dashiel’s book but attention to the characters in the movie brings out much of the charm (yikes, lots of pretence to use the word “charm” when writing about books and movies) of the novel. The characters spawned a total of six Thin Man movies. I like them all (with the last two being my least favourite but still worth watching).

So I read (I also finished my next book in the Cadfael series, Saint Peter’s Fair) and watched (all three of the original Star Wars movies with director’s commentary on–you know you are sick when you can lie through that dribble and be too apathetic to change the audio track). And I am very glad to be back on the mend. Oh, and the BBC adaptations of the Cadfael novels is quite good as well.

Life lesson: do not work so much that you get sick. Burning the candle at both ends leads to a short and soggy candle, even if it were extra bright while it burned. Let’s see if I can remember that for the next time.