Aldonza

I’ve always felt that Don Quixote was the patron saint of the mentally ill. The story goes that an older man of upper middle class background loses his mind and thinks he’s a knight in the days of sword and sorcery. He’s actually living in a time when such things have become relics of the past, and not kindly remembered in some quarters.

Famously he attacks a windmill thinking it is a giant. The most interesting bit is when he goes to an inn for the night. He of course thinks it is a castle, and becomes enamored with the lady serving food and drinks. He calls her Dulcinea, but her given name is actually Aldonza. He wants to treat her like a lady, but she thinks of herself as a whore…. powerful imagery. She sings a whole song about it in the play/movie, and one lyric always stuck with me;

“You have shown me the sky,
But what good is the sky
To a creature who’ll never
Do better than crawl?”

I certainly feel that way sometimes…

Anyway, some years ago when I bought my truck, I named her Dulcinea, because even though she looked old and beat up, I saw a subtle beauty in her. Time hasn’t been kind to me, or my truck. Today after two years of not having it working, I have it up and going again. I think she feels more like an Aldonza right now, so I guess Dulcinea is a more aspirational name these days.

Also worth knowing about, if you are a literature nerd like me anyway, is that a movie was made that combined elements of Sherlock Holmes and Don Quixote, and it’s called “They Might Be Giants.” You might recognize that there is a band by that name, and that band took their name from the movie. In that movie a rich old judge decides that he’s Sherlock Holmes, and that his doctor is Watson.

Anyway, I like stuff like that, where perhaps the insane are the wiser ones in the end. Harvey is like that too, but I couldn’t figure out how to tie that in.