The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Sort of; A selection from | The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Sort of. Being Transmogrifications of an Entirely Subjective Cherry-Picking of Book Two from the Great Stoic’s Diary Entries, In Part Plagiarized from Various Translations, Partly Tweaked & Twisted Here and There, and Occasionally Completely Subverted Where Whim or Purpose Dictated
[Vernon, B.C.]: Greenboathouse Press, 2019 [in roman numerals]. Octavo, 22.2 x 15.6 cm. Laced with leather slips into limp covers of Khadi Bhutanese Tsasho paper. The covering paper resembles mottled vellum in look and texture. Title printed in blue to the spine and four ornaments printed in blue to the upper cover. Sun Hemp Indigo endpapers. Unpaginated [pp. 32]. A fine copy. The text was handset in 18pt Hannibal, “designed, cut & cast by the late Jim Rimmer, and here paired, as Jim intended, with Garamont italic and small caps.” Printed on Khadi handmade paper. From an edition of 55 copies, this being number 42. Item #366
“After returning time and again to these not-so-subtle reminders to quit my complaining and get to work, it’s been eating away at me for years to print at least some of them. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations have served for centuries to focus the attention of we fumbling humans as we stumble and slither through the muck of our everyday lives, prompting and urging us to quit wasting time and energy on the inanities and live a life of pure intention and action. While I claim no success at meeting the old emperor’s expectations, his sharp and pithy dictates continue to serve as a stern reminder to make sure my focus has enough focus. The process here involved obsessively reading 3 different translations of the Meditations, then sitting down with the books closed to write them anew. Time constraints and sanity required that I thin the original 12 Books significantly, so I focused on Book 2, being the section I tend to turn to when I need a good kick in the ass. The result is a snarky yet sincere reinterpretation of the original, brought into the 21st century with a playful yet earnest intent, and printed in a typeface and on paper that lends the text, I hope, a firm and earthy ground to stand on.” — Jason Dewinetz
Meditation 17: “This is our life then: short and fallible, our perception dim and our bodies rotting as we speak while the spirit twists and wrenches like barbed-wire, our fortune enigmatic and fame a flaccid gimmick. All in: the body’s a stream and the soul a mist, life a blood-sport, an endless hike, and any hope of legacy is a joke. So what’s left to guide us? Philosophy. But this is the work: to keep the greedy self from violence, freed from pain and pleasure, doing nothing without purpose and trying to be honest, never dependent on another’s doing; always already accepting all that occurs, as though it were a leaf’s inevitable release from the branch and, without hesitation, embracing death in good spirits as the leaf does its drift. All of nature is changing, evolving and wondrous, and us along with it, and nothing in nature is evil.”.
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