The Dude Testament

33. Keep your mind limber.

The Dude returns to his home to find that Jackie Treehorn had it ransacked, looking for the missing million dollars. But at long last, the Dude gets his day in the sun—or moon, rather. Maude is there waiting for him and invites him to engage in a “natural, zesty enterprise.” You mean, coitus? Oh, yes, Mr. Lebowski.

It is in the cozy, hazy, post-coital dog-day afterglow that the Dude finally pieces together the mystery of the whole kidnapping case. The yin and the yang come together to make everything wholey. The Dude’s fluid, alternately aggressive and receptive nature lent him the flexibility to “get down to cases.” It increases the chances of conception. Though he claims that it’s “a strict drug regimen” that keeps his mind limber enough to figure out this “complex case,” we know that the drugs aren’t mere dope or drink. Nope, the Dude is all fucked up on life, and it is the resulting “limberal” thinking that allows him to see the forest for the trees in a way that is impossible for everyone else in the film, addicted to sobriety as they are. (See “Duderinos Unanimous,” at the end of this volume.)