A New Era

Since I returned from my galivanting around Europe last fall I have vainly sought an outlet for my various thoughts and musings about the World. I wanted to blog again, but couldn't use my former one, and I found myself repeatedly repulsed in my attempt to find the appropriate title that would give vent to my aspirations. I find the title of a blog is vital to its existence. It is what gives purpose and meaning to everything that comes after. I was unwilling to start this blog until I had found a name for the blog which I felt appropriately caged all of the things I inteneded to write on it. But since I never felt like anything I came up with as a potential idea sufficiently engaged all of the significance I wanted, I felt myself trapped.

Until now.

This morning as I was racking my brain trying anew to come up with something, I remembered the words of the Roman poet "With oak and triple bronze," and I knew then that I'd finally found it.

Horace wrote in a famous ode of his about the first men who were willing to sail out into the unknown of the Mediterranean and beyond.  

"He was girt with oak and triple bronze around his breast, who first entrusted a frail bark to the ferocious sea."

The phrase triple bronze has come to be known as a particular sign of courage and endurance. If you were endowed with triple bronze, it meant you were of the highest quality. Tough, and tested, willing and able to face the harshness of life.

Robert Louis Stevenson understood the significance of triple bronze. He used the Latin translation of triple bronze, Aes Triplex, as the title of one of his most famous essays. In it RLS detailed the importance of living life with gusto, attacking every day with vivacity, and being willing to "make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it in a turn of pitch and toss." [That's Kipling for those of you who never read the Book Of Virtues.]

"It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in the sickroom... even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week."

The phrase "Away with funeral music..." comes from a poem of Stevenson's which says,

"Away with funeral music, set
The pipe to powerful lips.
The cup of life is for him that drinks,
And not for him that sip."

These maxim embodied in all of these works is a principle which I desire to uphold, and seek to emulate in my life. Therefore they serve as a firm foundation for this blog to be established on. Many of the posts to follow will express my great desire to live as one of triple bronze, and consequently our cultures inability to do so. That is the undercurrent of this blog, to be the master of my life, and not to let it master me.

Before I close I must make note of the significant alteration in my life two weeks ago. Fourteen days ago I was joined in marriage to the wonderful and mysterious and beautiful and good cooker and likes red Kaydrie clymernomorenowLagan. Kaydrie clymernomorenowLagan will be my counterpart in writing this blog and you as such you can look forward to being the infrequent recipient of her great and glorious words of wit and wisdom.

So with the blessing of Kaydrie, Kipling, Stevenson, and Horace; it gives me the greatest pleasure to pen this, the  initial post of Aes Triplex.