What would be the opposite of the "Midas
Touch" of Greek mythology?
Given the devolution of modern public
education, it is unlikely the current generation, and probably not the former
generation either, knows about the story. So, a refresher courtesy Encyclopedia
Britannia:
"Midas found the wandering Silenus, the satyr and companion of the god Dionysus. For his kind treatment of Silenus Midas was rewarded by Dionysus with
a wish. The king wished that all he touched might turn to gold, but when his food became gold and he nearly starved to death as a
result, he realized his error. Dionysus then granted him release by having him
bathe in the Pactolus River (near Sardis in modern Turkey), an action to which
the presence of alluvial gold in that stream is attributed."
Well, I've not met a satyr in my past journalistic
wanderings, but I did know a decidedly randy alternative press editor in my
early days . . . but that, and his reputation with the ladies, is another story
-- and on consideration, not mine to share.
Hey, I am not a member of the White House staff, after all,
all primed to spill secrets at the drop of a hat, or bribe, or political
hubris. A confidence is a secret wrapped inside a . . . forget it, you'd never
believe the story, anyway.
I digress. What I'm saying is if Midas' touch turned the
mundane into gold, these past few days I seem to have to developed the ability
to transform the ordinary items and tasks into something decidedly more brown
in color, and disgustingly fetid.
Crap, in other words.
Go to New Year's Eve Vespers service, park the car right out
front, and come out to be greeted by a $38 ticket for what amounted to an hour
parked on an all-but-empty downtown Salt Lake City street. Thirty-eight
bucks? Really?
Bake a loaf of bread, usually an easy task (I mean, we have a
breadmaking machine, after all). Follow the instructions and ingredient measures
to the letter, and when the nifty little automated oven gizmo beeps its
"done" notes, I approach the smell of fresh, hot bread in
anticipation . . . only to find a mound of steaming, mushy wheat flour with a
bubble in its innards.
Oddly enough, that reminds me of Jules Verne's "Journey
to the Center of the Earth."
In other words, there's a whole (hole) world under the
surface of the crust. Well, not really. Just a yeasty cavity. Slicing this
bread was educational, though . . . I suspect I know now how the "Egg in a
hole" breakfast recipe may have been discovered.
But we were out of eggs, so just a sorry looking hunk of
bread. Like I said, the opposite of the Midas Touch.
Ah, well. An apple, then. Is there such a thing as fruit
lividity? You know, like on the TV crime scene people who point out the
bruising on a corpse due to where the blood settled due to gravity?
Whatever. The apple, a glowing red on the top, disintegrates
as my fingers go knuckles deep into its unseen bottom half of grayish pulp.
Perhaps the Fecal Touch, then? Because that seems
apropos to what comes next.
Take a walk outdoors, I say to myself, cold crisp air, get
the blood pumping, that's what I need. Shoes rustling through the wet leaves,
freezing weather but still sunny, a raw sort of beauty to it all . . . then the
right heel slips on a partially covered coil of what had to be Great Dane
spore.
For Midas, the cure was to swim in a river. He lost his
touch, and the river ended up chock full of gold.
But the only river nearby me is the Jordan River. And as we
all know, it is already liberally laced with sewage from the overflow
pipes of water treatment plants downstream.
Sigh.
