Is God a Trickster?
Many cultures throughout history have listed one or more gods on their roster whose job it is to shake things up a little. This can be either a god of chaos, a god of death, or simply a god of practical jokes. Personally, I've always been a fan of the tricksters - the coyote gods (like Shakespeare's fairy Puck in A Midsummer's Night Dream [I know, not a god]) who go around keeping us unsteady, making sure that nothing ever gets too boring.
Yesterday I had an experience which brought to mind this quality of gods and the universe, and which basically made me look like an idiot. It went thusly:
I was looking forward to spending some time alone last night, watching a movie, working on an art project, what have you. Dave and I had just purchased expensive living room paint (curiously named 'Kurdistan'), and were walking back towards home when I decided to stop at a store along the way and pick up a bottle of wine. I know nothing about wine, so I was on the lookout not for the finest of bottles, but one with an appealing label and a reasonable skinflint price. After wandering around the store for a few minutes I picked up an $11 bottle and made my way to the register.
"You know your wines," said the proprietor of the establishment, ringing me up. "But you should let this breathe for a long time."
"Oh?" I asked, obliviously happy in the face of an undeserved compliment. "How long?"
"A couple of hours," he said. "It's a '72. So it needs to breathe. But it's a wonderful wine."
Now, a cultured person might already have picked up a couple of cues, which were pointed out to me later, suggesting that this bottle of wine might not be as...economical as I had led myself to believe. For example, does any low-end wine need to breathe for a specified amount of time? Can you purchase a '72 for $11?
Can you guess? The answer is no. However, I walked home happily, telling Dave how ridiculously pleased I was to be mistaken for a connoisseur. This was my second mistake: the sin of vanity. My first and most important mistake, however, was misreading a price tag that said "$110.00" as "$11.00."
When I arrived at home and was about to uncork the bottle, I glanced at the receipt. Here my unbelieving eyes met, for the first time, with reality, which told me that after tax I'd just spent $124 on a bottle of wine I intended to drink alone, paired with Netflix. I ran back to the store where I apologized profusely, and luckily they took the unopened bottle back and provided me with a well-deserved $13 replacement, as well as a $108 credit card adjustment. The man who'd sold me the bottle looked a little abashed and slightly annoyed.
"I thought you knew the bottle," he muttered. Luckily, his son was extremely gracious and told me that it happened all the time, which I did not believe but nonetheless appreciated.
All this leaves me to ponder the theological implications of my actions. Was there a hidden message for me in this experience? At the end of the day I was left completely off balance, and I can't help but suspect that some kind of coyote god trickster heard me crowing and cooing with unearned pleasure after being told I knew my wines, and decided to have a little fun with me. If so, I guess I've learned my lesson (read: look at the price tag, you fool).
Of course, the other possibility is that I was intended to drink that wine and somehow, through my sweaty and unbecoming thriftiness (for indeed I jogged all the way back to the store), I thwarted that beautiful fate. We shall never know.
Yesterday I had an experience which brought to mind this quality of gods and the universe, and which basically made me look like an idiot. It went thusly:
I was looking forward to spending some time alone last night, watching a movie, working on an art project, what have you. Dave and I had just purchased expensive living room paint (curiously named 'Kurdistan'), and were walking back towards home when I decided to stop at a store along the way and pick up a bottle of wine. I know nothing about wine, so I was on the lookout not for the finest of bottles, but one with an appealing label and a reasonable skinflint price. After wandering around the store for a few minutes I picked up an $11 bottle and made my way to the register.
"You know your wines," said the proprietor of the establishment, ringing me up. "But you should let this breathe for a long time."
"Oh?" I asked, obliviously happy in the face of an undeserved compliment. "How long?"
"A couple of hours," he said. "It's a '72. So it needs to breathe. But it's a wonderful wine."
Now, a cultured person might already have picked up a couple of cues, which were pointed out to me later, suggesting that this bottle of wine might not be as...economical as I had led myself to believe. For example, does any low-end wine need to breathe for a specified amount of time? Can you purchase a '72 for $11?
Can you guess? The answer is no. However, I walked home happily, telling Dave how ridiculously pleased I was to be mistaken for a connoisseur. This was my second mistake: the sin of vanity. My first and most important mistake, however, was misreading a price tag that said "$110.00" as "$11.00."
When I arrived at home and was about to uncork the bottle, I glanced at the receipt. Here my unbelieving eyes met, for the first time, with reality, which told me that after tax I'd just spent $124 on a bottle of wine I intended to drink alone, paired with Netflix. I ran back to the store where I apologized profusely, and luckily they took the unopened bottle back and provided me with a well-deserved $13 replacement, as well as a $108 credit card adjustment. The man who'd sold me the bottle looked a little abashed and slightly annoyed.
"I thought you knew the bottle," he muttered. Luckily, his son was extremely gracious and told me that it happened all the time, which I did not believe but nonetheless appreciated.
All this leaves me to ponder the theological implications of my actions. Was there a hidden message for me in this experience? At the end of the day I was left completely off balance, and I can't help but suspect that some kind of coyote god trickster heard me crowing and cooing with unearned pleasure after being told I knew my wines, and decided to have a little fun with me. If so, I guess I've learned my lesson (read: look at the price tag, you fool).
Of course, the other possibility is that I was intended to drink that wine and somehow, through my sweaty and unbecoming thriftiness (for indeed I jogged all the way back to the store), I thwarted that beautiful fate. We shall never know.
posted by Adrienne Celt at 9:09 AM
1 Comments:
after living with a rich person from the napa valley for a few years and drinking her very expensive wine, i've found that the best way to enjoy wine is to never, ever allow yourself to know what a '72 tastes like. ignorance is bliss, and it's taken me a good year and a half to forget the wonderous things she poured me. currently, i'm only drinking wine with cartoon animals on the label and am much happier.
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