On Liars – Essays of Michel de Montaigne – The Complete Essays are among the 100 Greatest Books of All Time – my note on some of some of these exquisite thoughts are at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-essays-book-i-aka-les-essais-livre.html along with hundreds of other reviews - 10 out of 10

 

On Liars – Essays of Michel de Montaigne – The Complete Essays are among the 100 Greatest Books of All Time – my note on some of some of these exquisite thoughts are at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-essays-book-i-aka-les-essais-livre.html along with hundreds of other reviews

 

10 out of 10

 

The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne is not just a chef d’oevre, it is also a companion for many days…long, long days, for it has what, over fourteen hundred pages, and this is not to complain, indeed, I realized this morning that I have something fabulous, astounding to keep me high for days ahead, in the morning

 

I have taken to listening to the audiobook – you can get the magnum opera from the Gutenberg project, or the LibriVox site – as I run in the early hours, and this might be the perfect balance, and more – ‘Happiness Activity No 12: Taking care of Your Body- engaging in physical activity, meditating and smiling and laughing’

The latter is from the glorious The How of Happiness https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html and I venture to say that running and listening to Montaigne or similar would just offer more than one felicitous activity, say number 11, albeit that is focused on transcendence more, a higher level

 

 ‘Happiness Activity No 11: Practicing Religion and Spirituality- becoming more involved in your church, temple or mosque or reading and pondering spiritually themed books’ and we could argue that Michel de Montaigne would touch on all, he talks about Horses, Battles, Cannibals, you name it, and you have the whole spectrum

Ancient customs is one of the subjects of this morning, and again, we have the rituals that are so necessary and many involve levitation, a lifting of the spirits – ‘we are what we regularly do, excellence is not an act, it is a habit’, says Aristotle https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/aristotle-in-ninety-minutes-by-paul.html

 

But we also have some of the more mundane, even terrestrial, some could say vulgar habits, customs – this makes me think of Anais Nin  https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/10/la-cloche-de-verre-by-anais-nin-in.html not because she is coarse, but the stories she writes are something I have not seen before, at that level

Michel de Montaigne mentions the use of sponges to wipe the ass, after using the toilet, and how a slave, destined to die, used such a stick with a sponge to kill himself, probably because the death waiting for him would have been even worse, however much I struggle to see how inserting such a thing in the mouth and trachea, the rest could be better

 

The horses are given a whole essay, and for good reason, I was reading in The Economist, maybe the issue of last week, if not that, then a recent one nonetheless, in the Culture section, a review of a book about horses, how important they have been in our history, the author suggested that they may have ‘bet on humans’

Fashion was modeled by riding them, the first pants come from some of those early horse riders, and they can trace the genes to the region of Central Asia – if I am not making this up, thinking I remember reading it, but then it could have been Something Completely Different https://realini.blogspot.com/2019/05/and-now-for-something-completely.html but it may be where they started that bond

 

Then they speculate on the cause of the Napoleon debacle, the author of the book on horses thought it was the death of so many of these vital animals that brought the calamity for the French, and not the loss of so many men, for millennia, the horse has been a crucial weapon, indeed, they had them even in World War II

All the points that Michel de Montaigne makes are underlined with quotes, many are from Socrates https://realini.blogspot.com/2016/08/gorgias-by-plato-gorgeous-gorgias-in.html one of my favorite thinkers, and…my business partner, his father gave him this divine name, only he chooses to go with another

 

Everyone, well, more or less, calls him Dan, only I prefer Socrates and that is what I use, in a total contrast with my own choice, my name is Ionescu Marian Realini, the latter is very peculiar, there is an actor who has this name, but otherwise, you do not find it, and that is what they all use for me, Realini, not Marian

They do not even know about the other one, when they did, in elementary school, they made jokes, seeing that I like to be different, enjoy that exotic name – alas, it is a sign of weakness, frailty, it would have been better to ‘make a name for myself’, maybe my associate shows assurance, in using a banal calling

 

Socrates was declared at one point the wisest man of ancient times, and that was the Oracle of Delphi, something of an absolute – maybe not absolute – authority and the philosopher wondered why this was happening, and looking around, he saw so many stating that they know about so many things, when they did not

So it had to be that he did not like to say stupid things, ‘he did not claim to know, what he did not know’, and finally, just a few words about the Liars in the title, the epitome, paradigm is Orange Jesus, not the worst liars in the world, but the most dangerous, disgusting, he has a bigger chance than Kamala Harris to become leader of the free world (again, god damn it) and this is like the peak of the Big Lie, a catastrophe, I do not mean that this terrible war will happen, or the other, just that ethics, morals, standards, authenticity appear to die

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”