Labyrinths 2: Here and There

“Obedience in the womb, chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty all my days.”

I read in an essay as published on Granta’s online edition the following sentence, “But perhaps the truth is that a person only has two permanent residences: the childhood home and the grave.” This was contained in some broader statement on Brodsky but that doesn’t concern me at all. A homily like this, couched so in the declarative language of the analytic essay, stands out, arrests, for better or for worse. We have the completely generalized, de-personalizing “residences;” the generalized, hyper-personalizing “home;” and the finality and universality of “the grave.” These are the three categories, packed to the brim with presumptions in each, into we all must fall were we to accept any forward momentum with the piece in general. It’s a nodding sentence, one that makes you either nod in encouragement with its keen profundity or nod to sleep. I sleep.

The most obvious and, considering the itinerant nature of so many people in my generation, surely the most widely held objection is that there is no one home. I don’t pretend my childhood was anything but one filled with decidedly average experiences (the details are dear, but they are dear only to me), and a remarkable fortune in love and support. Surely the recipe for a poor artist, if you believe in such idiocy. But it was one that has no arresting childhood home.

On one hand, I moved at what Freud might have regarded as a fairly unfortunate period in my developmental life, from Vermont to Maine at age nine. No great abyss, to be sure, but to a boy of nine, an expanse incalculable enough. What still amazes me, however, is how keenly I was old enough, self-conscious enough, to have formed permanent impressions whose memories linger on. I presently remember how I then compared one place to the other with mild but growing disfavor. The first relocation my family made I was far too young to possess then or now any hint of remembrance, so for all that matters that wide lawn on a hill in Vermont was the childhood home made incomplete. Vermont always seemed so much more ancient, lived in, filled with so much more, what I couldn’t have known at the time I’d come to know as character. It was utterly imbued, then, with the magic of a childhood at the mid-point of being experienced.

Needless to say my transition to Maine was a rocky one. Everything about that new home felt tacky and new, though for an outside agent to look at that house as it is now would realize that impression's absurdity. But that, I think, is what distinguishes what is a childhood home from the uncoupled seeking for home that runs a vein through so many of our lives. Every time I say “I’m going home” – from work, or from a bar, or somewhere other than where I spend most of my nights – it feels starkly ingenuine.

Sure enough, my parents’ house when it’s filled with the sounds of my closest family, that has the impression of this mythical home that, while not exactly sought, is often, sorely, missed. I don’t think much of the exercise of trying to discern which environmental factors caused this rift, but at the same time, as this catalog of the home is populated, I find – and I would wager that this is true for many others who feel uncomfortable in delineating exactly what was the “childhood home” – by more and more locales.

The grandfather’s house, with a wide expanding first floor that arched to a point, cozy but immaculate kitchen, close-ceilinged ground floor leading to rocky under-porch patio to the field overlooking Cayuga beyond; the deeply-oaked Great Uncle’s house, as sylvan in its lands as it was in its interior, deceptively nearer than Ithaca but whose journey seemed impossibly longer, housing one of the most tolerant Great Danes to have ever lived; the long lost house in Ocean City, New Jersey, where we always arrived during the night, where it was always midsummer hot, where the faint, almost gone odor of long-dried horseshoe crabs and dust and ancient wood permeated utterly; these places all possessed the imprint of a stark but ghostless antiquity. These are the locations where a lonely boy transplanted to Maine, old enough to know that ghosts exist and knew of their dangers and rewards, could populate with the myths of the timeless spring and unending winters of the original, that unhaunted house in Vermont. For they are not ancient but timeless – never have I entered any of those houses since that final departure; they are all that idyll of home, converging into the one.

I wonder, now, if I was in fact fortunate in this regard as well; fortunate beyond measure. With that seismic break I can point to the geography of my childhood, acknowledge the risen ridge, and hold inviolate the valley that remains innocent forever.

Labyrinths 1: Beer Review -- Natural Daddy

Chilling in my freezer right now sits a can of Natural Daddy, a high gravity offering from the makers of other such American luminaries as Natty Ice and Natty Light. I don't think there's a regular version of Natty -- there is no Natural Lager that I know of or have seen. A shockingly high 69 (hold all applause until the end) rating on Beer Advocate, I procured this beer after my very few single friends backed out of our plans for Valentine's Day, leaving me to repeat a grim annual ritual.

I figure that chilling this concoction to its coldest fluid state is a good move. I hold no expectations for this beer, so if it's in as ideal a state as possible, maybe I can get to a level of intoxication where I won't notice it once it warms up. To further this end, though my roommates are remarking on how cold the apartment is, I am not going to suggest turning the heat on.

So let's throw on some Metallica and tear this place apart.

A note on the presentation of this beer. The can actually says "Natty Daddy" making no pretense on quality. Good, I like a lack of pretension. Oddly, the Annheuser-Busch logo is nowhere to be seen. You can't be telling me that this isn't even good enough for Tony LaRussa? I'll follow by not giving this stuff the dignity of pouring into a glass.

A- peering into the can, lit by my bedroom lamp some eight feet away, it looks like the kind of urine where someone is recovering from a hangover and isn't quite back to hydrated.

S- very sweet, characterless

T- all right, my deep chilling method appears to have paid off! It's definitely on the sweet side. Asphalty in that special way Natty has, but it doesn't seem to have corroded the aluminum in any detectable way. Very bubbly which is good in your mass volume malt beverages and not much of a hint of the 8% ABV. Some dry grass notes makes it downright within shouting distance of refreshing.

M- thin overall, but not water thin which is what I was expecting and the carbonation gives it a pleasant character. Big bubbles, not small ones, from what my tongue can discern.

D- phew, just burped. That was not pleasant. For $1.75, I think you should get at least 8 more ounces of this stuff, but hey, the desperately single on V-Day can't really be that picky.

And now begins the race against time. It is currently 8:17. I reckon I have 8 minutes to drink this before it becomes toxic.

First chug had no major setbacks, though it was a pretty wimpy chug.

8:19 -- ugh, it's already warming up and thinning out. The bubbles did not last long. Only took two big draws because it had so wildly transformed.

8:21 -- o god, this beer is going south in a hurry, chart to follow.

8:22 -- ashen malt flavor becoming apparent, this is truly a race against the clock. The only better music choice than Metallica would have been the soundtrack to 24.

8:23 -- two minutes, my prediction is coming true. I am wondering about the irony of slamming a deeply inexpensive beer while listening to a band talk about how alcohol abuse messed up their lives.

8:24 -- down the hatch, no looking back.

Well I'm still here, feeling the alcohol radiate into my system. It is pretty cold, I'm going to turn the heat on. The taste fell off a cliff then exploded and was eaten by wolves. It was a valuable experience, no doubt, but not one I would overly recommend. If you need to get drunk in a hurry for cheap, just buy a 40, but the Cambridge liquor store I went to was too fancy for any of the finer 40s on the market. SO that wasn't an option.

I have just learned that this is more alcoholic than Mickey's, my preferred get-drunk-quick 40. A list of other popular 40s Natty Daddy has a higher ABV than:

Mickey's
Old English
Hurricane

Thank god, if this was more alcoholic than Camo High-Gravity I would have been very disappointed. It's just barely less alcoholic than Steel Reserve. Truly a drink of kindgs.

A+