Aventure
My students, when I'm teaching medieval literature, tend to respond deeply to the concept of "aventure." I use the old word to distinguish it from "adventure," which doesn't have the right connotations.
We think of an adventure as exciting, certainly, and carrying an unknown outcome, and being worth doing for the sheer experience of it --
But an aventure is special, the chance that will not come again, the thing that makes no sense but must be embarked on anyway, or there's no story.
If you're standing on the shore, I tell my students, and a boat comes by that's steering itself and has nothing in it but a white hart, either you refuse to get in the thing, cause it's clearly not safe, or you get in it, and you see what happens. And a refusal to embark is a statement that can not be taken back. You become the person who refuses the aventure. NOT good. You do NOT want to be that person.
Adventures, as you well know, can be purchased or found. You can go climb Mt. Everest, for instance, that giant graveyard; that's an adventure.
But the aventure is sent from Elsewhere.
Students love that. Look for it, I say, Keep your eyes open. Little ones come along nearly every day. The big ones, well, they come along very very seldom.
Well. Don't you know if you say that sort of thing to impressionable people in their twenties long enough, eventually the universe takes you up on it.
Sam's down at the bank, this very minute, seeing if they'll agree to lend us an exorbitant amount of money, so that we can have the privilege of eating beans for a while (till I can go up for full professor) in a house that we weren't looking for but appeared suddenly on the shore of our little lives, with a white hart at the helm.
It's very funny, trying to figure out how much houses are worth when they aren't Normal. What does one pay for a house built in 1790 and 1840, with a giant kitchen and the ruins of a summer kitchen in the front yard, but no garage? It's sort of quirky as well, being built half out of foot-wide chestnut logs (that'd be the 1790 part), and half out of brick (that'd be the 1840 part). It doesn't fit the neighborhood, either, being the remnant of the 350 acre farm upon which the development down the street was built. Nobody else seems interested in it. (Why? It's being helmed by a white hart! Is everybody else nuts? On board! On board!)
Well. We weren't looking. But this is so clearly Our House that if we can't swing this we're all of us (the child included) going to have to lie down on the living room floor and wail. (Indeed, the day after we first heard about this house, before we even got to see it, I ran into one of my medievalist students at the campus Starbuck's and told her about the house we'd heard of. Aventure, she said. You can't walk away from the aventure. Well, there you are.)
Oh, yeah, this makes sense. Let's go spend A LOT of money on an historic property.
But we shall take the aventure that God will ordain for us.
Even if the end of the aventure is that we lie around on the floor and wail.
Oh, come on, bank! We're a good credit risk! I've got tenure! I can cook beans!
(And don't worry, faithful readers, I know you're concerned, but I DID remember to ask, "whom does the Grail serve?" -- or rather, the equivalent thereof -- while I was on the tour. We're covered.)
We think of an adventure as exciting, certainly, and carrying an unknown outcome, and being worth doing for the sheer experience of it --
But an aventure is special, the chance that will not come again, the thing that makes no sense but must be embarked on anyway, or there's no story.
If you're standing on the shore, I tell my students, and a boat comes by that's steering itself and has nothing in it but a white hart, either you refuse to get in the thing, cause it's clearly not safe, or you get in it, and you see what happens. And a refusal to embark is a statement that can not be taken back. You become the person who refuses the aventure. NOT good. You do NOT want to be that person.
Adventures, as you well know, can be purchased or found. You can go climb Mt. Everest, for instance, that giant graveyard; that's an adventure.
But the aventure is sent from Elsewhere.
Students love that. Look for it, I say, Keep your eyes open. Little ones come along nearly every day. The big ones, well, they come along very very seldom.
Well. Don't you know if you say that sort of thing to impressionable people in their twenties long enough, eventually the universe takes you up on it.
Sam's down at the bank, this very minute, seeing if they'll agree to lend us an exorbitant amount of money, so that we can have the privilege of eating beans for a while (till I can go up for full professor) in a house that we weren't looking for but appeared suddenly on the shore of our little lives, with a white hart at the helm.
It's very funny, trying to figure out how much houses are worth when they aren't Normal. What does one pay for a house built in 1790 and 1840, with a giant kitchen and the ruins of a summer kitchen in the front yard, but no garage? It's sort of quirky as well, being built half out of foot-wide chestnut logs (that'd be the 1790 part), and half out of brick (that'd be the 1840 part). It doesn't fit the neighborhood, either, being the remnant of the 350 acre farm upon which the development down the street was built. Nobody else seems interested in it. (Why? It's being helmed by a white hart! Is everybody else nuts? On board! On board!)
Well. We weren't looking. But this is so clearly Our House that if we can't swing this we're all of us (the child included) going to have to lie down on the living room floor and wail. (Indeed, the day after we first heard about this house, before we even got to see it, I ran into one of my medievalist students at the campus Starbuck's and told her about the house we'd heard of. Aventure, she said. You can't walk away from the aventure. Well, there you are.)
Oh, yeah, this makes sense. Let's go spend A LOT of money on an historic property.
But we shall take the aventure that God will ordain for us.
Even if the end of the aventure is that we lie around on the floor and wail.
Oh, come on, bank! We're a good credit risk! I've got tenure! I can cook beans!
(And don't worry, faithful readers, I know you're concerned, but I DID remember to ask, "whom does the Grail serve?" -- or rather, the equivalent thereof -- while I was on the tour. We're covered.)
<< Home