4,000 Blankets Groaning in My House

There was a funny kind of synergy in the universe this week, as if string theory had just been linked to Squigglevision. I had been in a bookstore of new age and the occult, with many long basins of crystals separating the man at the cash register from the patrons, and asked him about a book called, “The Gift.” I had first heard about this book in the NYT Magazine, in an article titled, “What Is Art For?” In that article, Lewis Hyde, author of “The Gift,” who lives and works in Cambridge, brings the NYT writer out to Walden Pond for a timely discussion on copyright.

At Seven Stars, the new age bookstore, the man at the cash register was eating celery sticks and answering the non-stop questions of a particularly chirpy occult woman, but I managed to interject. In an affirmative response to whether or not they carried, “The Gift,” he indicated that the book was about crop circles. Honestly, who are crop circles a gift for? Not the crops. That’s what I thought when he told me he had, “The Gift,” a book about crop circles, and I walked away.

After that, I went looking for “The Gift” in Rodney’s, another bookstore in Central Square where this time the person behind the counter thought I may be looking for the Danielle Steele novel of the same name. Being labeled a Danielle Steele fan was not my cup of tea but I will take the blame; I did not have the crucial authors name with me at the time. A day after meeting celery stick breath, I found myself in Lorem Ipsum, in Inman Square, with all the correct information about the title of the book and who wrote it; they did not have it.

Dejected but excited to be out of work early and about to pick up a pork sandwich down the street, I scanned the titles on their shelf of vinyl albums. At the restaurant we have a dish called, “Uncle Bud’s Trio Platter,” that contains ribs, pulled pork and brisket; all three of the smoked meats we serve. The name “Uncle Bud” refers to the owner, Chris Schlesinger. Well, what do I see on this shelf of vinyl but the name, “Uncle Bud,” and I got excited thinking the album might be called “Golden Platter,” or something fitting as such.

Well, the title of the album in full is “Uncle Bud’s Hospital Experience,” and its a born again sermon about Bud’s recovery from getting hit by a truck in May, 1919. I bought it, because on the back was written a prayer old Bud said each morning… “O Lord, give me a backbone as big as a sawlog, and ribs like sleepers under the church floor. Put iron shoes on me and galvanized breeches, and hang a wagon- load of determination in the gable end of my soul. And help me to sign the contract to fight the devil as long as I have a vision, and bit him as long as I have a tooth, and then gum him till I die!”

Thats my kind of scene; I bought the album for $1. One oh five with tax. Its nice to have all that wisdom on one record (gum the Devil after you’ve lost all your teeth biting him), which I will probably gift to Chris Schlesinger this holiday, despite its technical imperfections. It says right on the back that “the recording of the sermon, which was recorded on pre-World War II equipment, is not up to present-day standards, but modern methods of filtering out distracting sounds have made the record easily understandable.” Could have been truncated to, “Recorded in Squigglevision.”

The ideas of art being a gift that is given freely, and time or more directly patience being a commodity in the gifting economy, fascinate me and I want to know more. Armed with crucial information, such as the author’s name, I will track down this book, “The Gift.” Thats why our eyes are evolutionarily positioned together in the front of our heads, so that we can identify, stalk, and pounce on prey, like books about gifting. Those books are like crazy-rare gazelles.

In the meantime I did a Google search and found the Wikipedia article about Potlatch,” which seems to be a main topic in “The Gift.” All I can say so far is that I would love to gift my loved ones 4000 blankets, a totem, or even just a new stereo, but that I don’t yet understand why I want to do that so badly. So badly that I already ordered four (not 4000) snuggies from a dangerously spam-riddled website, because snuggies are the new blankets. The NYT beat me to the punch of this blog entry, with an article in Tuesday’s Science section.

Tips from the Potlatch, Where Giving Knows No Slump contains such useful information as the one-upping between chiefs that involved cutting copper worth thousands of dollars, throwing coppers into fires, and the giving of super-valuable coppers to hated rival chiefs. “A 1934 textbook, “Patterns of Culture,” quotes a chief talking about a prized copper named Dandalayu:

“Furthermore such is my pride that I will kill on this fire my copper Dandalayu, which is groaning in my house. You all know how much I paid for it. I bought it for 4,000 blankets. Now I will break it in order to vanquish my rival. I will make my house a fighting place for you, my tribe.” In so many words, the chief seems to be saying that he is going to fight for his people by giving, biting others with generosity til’ the teeth fall out his mouth and then gumming them to death with the softness of thousands of blankets.