for its own sake

Lately I've been making a point of trying to read more. There's something wholly satisfying about finishing a book (somehow far more so than watching most TV episodes), and I'm always slightly surprised to close it and realize that the world around me is entirely different from the one I just spent time in. As of late I've been reading the "Squire's Tales," Gerald Morris' retellings of the good old King Arthur legends, which are full of knights and faeries and quests and things like that. And it's completely refreshing to read about Ye Olden Days, when honor and chivalry and life lessons were "in." Back when battles were fought for a reason, and people were expected to be respectful to one another, and only the very obviously arrogant and foolish expressed feelings of entitlement and self-importance.

...my intent, however, is not actually to complain about today's society, although I certainly would have the material to do so if I wanted, because at the moment I'd rather just sit and enjoy the story I finished.

I find it somewhat fascinating that while both The Squire's Tale and The Squire, His Knight, and His Lady have a general forward movement of plot and unraveling story, they are full of episodic battles and adventures that are—in the long run—completely separate from one another. In general my favorite books are those that create entire self-sustaining worlds, where all the pieces are intricately interconnected, whether or not the author chooses to reveal how. But these books are surprisingly episodic, even within each book—they are truly the "tales" of the adventuring knight Gawain and his equally heroic squire Terence. Each battle is fought for its own sake, and the characters rarely realize that these individual adventures are pointing them in the direction of fulfilling their quests.

Gawain's philosophy is something like "might as well do it, otherwise I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened," and that is ... amazing. Obviously this is a perspective that doesn't hold up for the dishonorable (I guess I have to smoke some weed, otherwise I'll never know what it's like ... ) but when it's a person's first instinct to do what's right and to keep pressing on, just to see what's out there ... this is something I can get behind. It's the love of adventure, and the need to seek out something to do—not so he has a story to tell when he gets back, although he will, but because it's his calling. It's in his blood to go out there and do good, and he isn't afraid of whatever is ahead. He isn't worried about the time it will take and he doesn't feel the need to always return home to Camelot, or even to the Other World where his true love resides. He just goes and does and doesn't look back. It's incredible.

Like I said, I could tie all sorts of themes into this post... themes like honor and virtue, existentialism, feminism, good vs evil, etc... but really all I'm doing right now is enjoying the book for what it is: entertaining. Certainly I enjoy it more for its relevance and underlying concepts (and certainly I could write about them at great lengths) but this is also also the kind of book I can spend hours reading without realizing, and that, I think, is just as wonderful.