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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| The Natural Order of Things Many years ago I used to smoke. And there came a time when the particular brand of cigarettes that I smoked began to include picture cards with each pack. Each card was one of a series of twenty-five and had a painting of a famous American beauty spot, with some information about the place on the back of the card. The paintings were brightly-colored and clear, nothing special, but quite attractive; a style that we might call "simplified photographic". I quite liked the cards and started to collect them. Because there were so few in the series, I found eventually that I had several sets of them. They served no useful purpose, unless one considered the information they provided educational. But they were too nice to throw away. My little pile of cards grew from a thin stack to become a fat wad that sat beside my computer, constantly asking the question: What are you going to do with me? It was a question I couldn’t answer. Try as I might, I just could not think of a use for those cards; yet they remained too nice to just dump in the garbage. I was trapped in indecision. I toyed with the idea of separating them into sets but that didn’t solve the problem of what to do afterwards. Collecting seems to be a tendency for many people. Sometimes we can give reasons for starting a collection, an investment for the future, imposing order upon chaos, or creating a showcase of beautiful things. But often our collections spring from a deeper urge that is hard to pinpoint. My cigarette card collection fitted the last category, I think. There was no reason for it apart from, umm, it was nice. Thinking about my motivation has led me to the conclusion that it was part of my liking for order. Life is messy. No matter how we plan and prepare and sort, life has a way of confounding our attempts and insists on being rather more untidy than we expect. There are some people who appear to have mastered this tendency; their houses are masterpieces of neatness and precision, everything having a place and remaining in it. Apart from the fact that one hesitates to enter such a home for fear that one might spoil it, the owners have to be admired for their control of objects within spaces. Most of us aren't like that. We try, but things take on a life of their own to thwart our puny attempts at order. Magazines migrate from the rack to spread themselves on to chairs and tables and floors, videos multiply and start appearing in unexpected places, kids' toys wander everywhere through the house, tools never stay where you left them but turn up exactly where they're not needed. Our dreams of neatness are soon defeated by the chaotic tendencies of the world around us. We learn to live with it. Normally I cope quite well with this rebelliousness of material things; I can live with disorder for long periods of time. But deep within me there must be some sort of drive to a better way for, every now and then, I will be overcome by an urge to impose order. The problem then becomes the vastness of the task; the entire environment is too big to be tackled. So I settle on one place where I can make a start and I tidy and clean and arrange until order reigns in that one small corner of the world. At which point, I stop. The creation of an ordered spot within the whole chaotic universe is sufficient for me; it gives me something to focus upon to escape the general disorder, at least for a few days until things have begun to migrate and rearrange themselves. It seems to me that my occasional collections of worthless stuff originate from the same impulse, this desire to have some ordered area in a constantly changing world. Take the cigarette cards, for instance. The moment I saw the first one, I knew that it could not be thrown away. A goal appeared on the horizon: to collect the whole series and thus create something that was neat, complete and ordered. The fact that the series was so small meant that I could not stop after completing one set; I just kept going. And so my need to have a tiny piece of order in the messy universe was fulfilled in that stack of cards. As long as the little pile stayed obediently on one corner of my desk, the rest of the world was safe from my attempts to whip it into line. I was happy and so was all creation. That's the theory, anyway. It is just as possible that I am merely obsessive-compulsive. Word count: 801 |
| Don't Quote Me Quite often on the net, we are given the opportunity to include a favorite quote in the forms that we fill in. On most of mine, you will find the words, "What's done is dung", which is actually a quote from myself. But it's not really my favorite; I much prefer the last words of General John Sedgwick, the highest ranking Union officer to be killed in the Civil War: "Don't be silly. They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..." I love the irony implicit in the statement and its outcome. So why don't I put it down as my favorite quote? The problem stems from the fact that it's not quite what he said; the story has been honed down over the years to make it appear more dramatic. Here's what really happened, according to the Wikipedia entry on General Sedgwick: "Sedgwick fell at the beginning of the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, on May 9, 1864. His corps was probing skirmish lines ahead of the left flank of Confederate defenses and he was directing artillery placements. Confederate sharpshooters were about 1,000 yards away and their shots caused members of his staff and artillerymen to duck for cover. Sedgwick strode around in the open and was quoted (Foote, 1974) as saying, 'What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance.' Although ashamed, his men continued to flinch and he repeated, 'I'm ashamed of you, dodging that way. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance.' Just minutes later, he fell forward with a bullet hole below his left eye. He was the highest ranking Union casualty (the most senior by date of rank of all major generals killed) of the Civil War." Those extra minutes between the statement and the shot completely ruin the irony. No wonder that posterity has seen fit to remove them and truncate the last word. What is surprising is how often famous quotes weren't said at all. We all know that the phrase, "Play it again, Sam", was never spoken in the film Casablanca, in spite of our continued acceptance of it as a catchphrase. The Wikipedia has this to say on the subject: "Ilsa says 'Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake'; in response, Sam tries to lie, saying 'I don't know what you mean, Miss Ilsa'; and she says 'Play it, Sam. Play As Time Goes By.' When Rick hears the song, not realizing yet that Ilsa is there, he rushes up and says 'I thought I told you never to play that.' Later, alone with Sam, he says 'You played it for her and you can play it for me', and then 'If she can stand it, I can! Play it!' In A Night in Casablanca, all this dialogue was parodied using the line 'Play it again, Sam' — a phrase which has incorrectly become associated with the original film." But this is merely the most famous of inaccurate quotes. A little research reveals hordes of them, some the most famous of all. For instance, Lord Horatio Nelson's last words at the Battle of Trafalgar are popularly supposed to be, "Kiss me, Hardy". Not so, it seems. Once again, I have recourse to the Wikipedia entry: "Nelson's final words (as related by Victory's Surgeon William Beatty, based on the accounts of those who were with Nelson when he died) were 'Thank God I have done my duty'. According to Beatty, he repeated these words several times until he became unable to speak. "In his dying hours, Nelson was also attended by his chaplain, Alexander Scott, his steward, Chevalier and Walter Burke, the purser, whose accounts have been available for modern biographers of Nelson. In those accounts, Nelson's last words were 'Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub.' This was a request to alleviate his symptoms of thirst, heat and the pains of his wounds (Pocock, Horatio Nelson, 1987, p.331). "It is a common misconception that Nelson's last words were 'Kiss me, Hardy', spoken to the captain of HMS Victory, Thomas Hardy. Nelson did, in fact, say this to Hardy a short time before his death, but they were not his last words, and Hardy was not present at his death (having been called back on deck). Some have speculated that Nelson actually said 'Kismet, Hardy', but this is impossible, since the word kismet did not enter the English language until much later." Which is all a bit more complicated than we had supposed. What is strange about it, however, is that the most noble candidate, "Thank God I have done my duty", has been ignored for the dated and rather odd, "Kiss me, Hardy". Why that should have happened, I have no idea. Then there are the famous words of Julius Caesar as reported by Shakespeare: "Et tu, Brute". As a line from a play, we should expect that this would be inaccurate but it doesn't miss the mark by much, as the Wikipedia makes clear: "His (Julius Caesar's) last words are, unfortunately, not known with certainty, and are a contested subject among scholars and historians. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Caesar's last words are given as 'Et tu, Brute?' ('And [even] you, Brutus?'). His actual last words are most widely believed to be 'Tu quoque, Brute, fili mi?' ('You also, Brutus, my son?'), or 'Tu quoque, mi fili?' ('You also, my son?'). It is possible, however, that these phrases are translations or adaptations of his last words, which he spoke in Greek, into Latin; Suetonius stated that Caesar said, (a phrase) in Greek, (transliterated as 'kai su, teknon?', or 'even you, my child?')." While Shakespeare's rendering is brief and without the reference to Brutus as his son, it still contains the impact of surprise and betrayal that Caesar felt on realizing that even Brutus had deserted him. Perhaps we should give the Bard more recognition as an historian as well as a playwright. All this indecision and misreporting leaves me with a need for an accurate quote that I can put on those internet forms. A bit of digging has produced the following possibilities: "I'm bored with it all." Winston Churchill, statesman, d. January 24, 1965. Said before slipping into a coma. He died 9 days later. "I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that's the record..." Dylan Thomas, poet, d. 1953. "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do." Oscar Wilde, writer, d. November 30, 1900. Perhaps I'll stick with, "What's done is dung"... Word count: 1,099 |
| Brutus and the Bully In all my previous posts about dogs, I have not mentioned the greatest Staffie of them all. Her name was Josie and she was the first of my own dogs; all of the others I have written about were my father's. One day I will attempt to tell her story but she has a role to play in this particular post as she was the reason I acquired Brutus. Jo was the perfect Staffie, all speed and strength, enthusiasm and temperament, intelligence and heart, but she had a weakness. When it came to doggy males, she was a complete and utter tart. Whilst fully aware in all other areas of her special standing as a Staffie, she had no discernment at all in potential mates; if it was male, she would flirt with it. Her reputation must have spread throughout the neighborhood for we often had large male dogs leaping the fence to visit Jo and she would go tearing around the yard with them in her version of a flirtatious romp. Apart from the fact that it was annoying to have these strange mutts visiting, it was galling to see such a lack of taste in Jo. I decided that she needed a more suitable boyfriend, not necessarily to become the chosen mate, but more to dispose of her other suitors. And so I began to look for a male Staffie. Brutus was the ideal solution, being four years old and very big, easily as large as an English Bull Terrier. He had been passed from owner to owner all his life and had some strange traits as a result but, essentially, he was a true gentleman. I became his latest owner and introduced him (carefully - separating fighting Staffies is a difficult art) to Jo. There was no need to worry, as it turned out. Josie asked just one question: is it male? When the answer turned out to be in the affirmative, she accepted him instantly. And Brutus assessed the situation correctly right from the start. He understood that she was the reigning monarch and he merely her consort, a Prince Albert to her Queen Victoria. His experience of being passed from home to home had given him a low opinion of himself and he was happy enough to accept such a secondary status, if only it meant that he could stay. The strange thing was that Jo never flirted with Brutus. She seemed to think of him as a wise old uncle, acceptable since he was male, but certainly not husband material. And he adopted this role without complaint; it suited his more sober view of life. He did succeed in the task for which I had acquired him, however. At the time, we were living in a house at the top of a hill. A large, black Alsatian-cross lived further down the hill and had been in the habit of jumping over our fence to visit Josie. He was the most immediate factor in my decision to get Brutus; I had become tired of chasing the interloper from our yard. So we awaited the first meeting between him and Brutus with interest. Within a few days of Brutus' arrival, it happened. The black dog jumped the fence and started to look for Jo. Instead, he found Brutus. And Brutus lost no time in letting him know that his presence was not required. There was a short kerfuffle and then the black dog headed for the fence with great speed, leaped over it and headed homeward. Brutus watched him go and then returned to the house, well satisfied with his handiwork. The black dog never again jumped into our yard but he did make one mistake that led to another encounter with Brutus. He seemed to think that our fence was too tall for a smaller dog than himself to get over and we would often see him wandering in the road outside. One day he had the bad judgement to become involved in a fight with another dog just outside the fence. Hearing the commotion, Brutus trotted down to see what was going on. There is one thing about Staffies that has to be seen to be believed; they can jump many times their own height. And Brutus was no exception. Often after this incident I saw him walk right up to the fence, crouch slightly, and then bound upwards like a spring released, sailing clear over the fence (about five feet in height) without touching it. But this was the first time that he showed his unexpected talent. On arrival at the fence, Brutus assessed the situation immediately and decided that it was just too tempting. He bounced over the fence and joined in the fight. The other two dogs quickly forgot their quarrel and united against him but they stood no chance against a Staffie intent upon a bit of fun. In seconds they were running homewards and Brutus was master of the field. He seemed slightly disappointed in the quality of the opposition but gathered himself up and leaped back into our yard. Not once after that did the black dog come as far up the hill as our fence. I was pleased that my plan had worked so well but aware that potential trouble loomed from another quarter. Our neighbors on one side had an English Bull Terrier named Oscar. And he was the largest Bull Terrier I have ever seen. Typical of the breed, he had established a reputation for being a fighter and his owners had done their utmost to prevent his escape from their yard. But Bullies can be very determined and, every so often, Oscar would get out and cause mayhem in the neighborhood. I watched him and Brutus eyeing each other up through the fence and feared for the day one of them decided to pay the other a visit. It was a long time before the event occurred and, when it did, I was inside the house, alerted to it only by the cries of, "Help! Oscar's in our yard!" I locked Jo into a room and ran outside. Oscar was trotting down towards the front fence, looking very pleased with himself, and I followed, intending to corner him at the bottom of the yard. Then I saw Brutus making his way up towards the house. They were on a collision course, the dreaded meeting now inevitable. Too far behind to catch Oscar, I could only look on as events took their course. As they caught sight of each other, both slowed their pace. Their chosen path meant that, unless one turned aside, they must meet. Being who and what they were, pride dictated that they not deviate from their route an inch, and they continued, at walking speed now, to approach each other. The distance closed and, eventually and incredibly, they passed each other only inches apart, both apparently ignoring the presence of the other. Then Brutus continued towards the house while Oscar sauntered down to the fence. It was so clear what had gone through the minds of those two dogs as they saw each other. So often had they assessed each other through the fence that they knew they now faced the strongest challenge they would ever encounter. And, in that instant, both had decided that discretion was the better part of valour. They were prepared to fight if they must but only if the other started it. Honour insisted that they not back down but, if no insult was given, then no battle was required. It was the clearest demonstration of mutual respect I have ever witnessed. I caught up with Oscar by the fence and returned him to his own yard. Never again did he cross into ours and Brutus did not use his fence-jumping skills to explore Oscar's territory. They had drawn a line and accepted that there was too much at stake to risk arguing over it. In a way, the incident gives support to the Mutually Assured Destruction policy of the Cold War; when both parties stand to lose everything, war is unthinkable. On a hot African afternoon, two dogs showed that, when respect is mutual and boundaries accepted, peace must be the only option. I'm just glad that Josie wasn't there to complicate the equation… Word count: 1,388 |
| Futon My wife bought a futon that wasn’t made in Luton it’s not a hugely cute un being coloured like a crouton. |
| Home Many years ago in England, I had occasion to visit my local pub with a friend named Richard. We had just sat down when Richard noticed someone he knew and called him over. They had not been talking long before I realized that they had known each other almost all their lives, from junior (elementary) school, in fact. Their conversation consisted mainly in catching up on the news from people they had known through their schooldays, all of whom still lived within a few miles of their original homes. All of a sudden, I felt rootless, adrift in a strange land and surrounded by strangers. I was in contact with no-one from my schooldays; I had email correspondence with a friend from university but even that was sporadic and subject to years of silence at times. Through Richard, I was seeing life as it is for most people: a community of friends who have grown together through the years, familiar faces in a familiar landscape. The first ten years of my life, I was in Cape Town, South Africa, and, when my family moved to Zimbabwe, all the friends from those years were lost to me. Through high school, I formed other friendships but most of these ended when we all went off to different universities or careers. The few friends that I had remaining were left behind when I moved to England, so that I found myself without a community of friends, alone in a way that is probably not normal to as social an animal as the human being. A feeling of desperate loneliness hit me in that pub as I listened to those two old friends talking. They did not know it, but they had something that was now forever barred to me. Yet the feeling did not last. To some extent at least, it was based upon a very idealistic view of a life that could not be mine. At first sight, it seemed that I was missing out on something comforting and secure but, on reflection, I realized that I had compensating experiences. I may not have known what it is to be part of a lifelong community, but I had friendships of shorter duration that were no less valid. And I had seen a bit more of life in other places, for whatever that is worth. In the end, it comes down to the meaning of "home". Richard may have been able to define the word as a combination of people and places, but I see now that "home" has much more to do with how we feel than with external things. Home is where we feel comfortable and secure, amongst those we love and who love us. The old saying is true: home is where the heart is. And, when we move, we take home with us. Modern life dictates that we move far more often than our parents or grandparents did. If we are to pursue a career, we must be prepared to move from one side of the country to the other. This is especially true in America, where corporations happily move their employees about as and when it suits the aims of the company. So we become people without roots and have to learn how to take home with us, relying increasingly on our family circle for comfort, rather than any wider community. We are complex creatures. It is hard to say whether this change in lifestyle will have good or bad effects on us. Perhaps it is merely a return to the nomadic existence that once was the lot of all humanity. Or it may be that we become something entirely new, a collection of interchangeable parts that can be assembled in any order to create society. It would be easy to take the old line of "Things ain't what they used to be"; that is always true, whether things be better or worse. I think that change is inevitable and we adapt and cope, even as we complain about it. So I am not against the increasing mobility of modern life; no doubt we lose some things through it but we also gain. It's just at times that a wave of homesickness might strike us; that, for a moment, we might be lost in memories of how things once were. Which brings to mind another old saying. You can't go home again. Word count: 734 |
| A Few More Words Be a part of WdC and, sooner or later, you’re going to wonder why we all write. The most common reason seems to be that we write because we like doing it but, thinking about this, I realize that it's not true for me. I hate writing. If it were not for the keyboard, I would never write anything longer than a poem. At the age of sixteen I commandeered my mother's old Imperial typewriter and bashed out half a novel. And I do mean "bash". It was a tank of a machine, weighed a ton, and required real force to work the keys. I did not know it then but it was to affect my typing style ever afterwards; I am still heavy-handed on the keyboard. Twenty years later I was working on a lightweight electronic typewriter and pushed it all over the desk with my pounding. And now I have cause to thank the computer keyboard manufacturers for producing such a robust and reliable product. Which is not to say that I don't break modern keyboards - I do. But it takes a while and, invariably, it's the Enter key that goes, the microswitch underneath finally battered into submission. That's when another brilliant invention of the manufacturers comes into play; there's another Enter key at the bottom right of the board and, with a swift adjustment of my habits, I can type just as fast using the alternative. And that brings up the matter of speed. I never learned to type properly and I use one finger, index on the left (I'm left-handed so this works for me), and my right index finger has responsibility for the Enter and Shift keys. It's called the Hunt and Peck method, I believe. This means that I can never aspire to the typing speed of a true touch typist but I can rattle along at a fair old pace, even so. The "Hunt" part of my method has become more of an instinctive awareness through long years of practice and my typing speed is reasonable as a result. Yet I do not trust my instinct; I still have to watch the keyboard while typing, if only to confirm that my finger is hitting the right keys. I envy those who can watch the screen while typing. But I will never take one of those software typing courses and teach myself to do it properly. Partly, this is because I'm too old a dog to learn new tricks but, more importantly, I have discovered that my typing speed fits perfectly with the rate at which I think. By the time I've completed one sentence, the brain is ready to supply the next. Were I to increase typing speed, I would merely waste the time saved in sitting motionless while the mind catches up. So it is the keyboard that enables me to "write". This is reinforced by the fact that, thanks to another event way back in the mists of time, I switched my handwriting from lower case to capitals and this makes my writing very slow. I have become a creature of the keyboard. As to why I set words on a page, I think that must again be a speed-related matter. Whether we write books, short stories or poems, what we are doing is to set out our thoughts in a logical, understandable manner, with the intention of arriving eventually at a conclusion. Speaking is an unsatisfactory solution to this need for communication, too subject to interruption by others, stray thoughts that lead one into side streets of irrelevance, and omission of important facts through the heat of the moment. Writing gives us the time to organize and sharpen, concentrate and refine, so that the finished product is that much more effective in attaining its goal: to communicate something we feel is important. And, for me, the keyboard is the perfectly-paced tool to enable me to do this. Without it, I doubt I'd even blog. Why is there this need to communicate? Ah, there I think we're getting into what is called "the human condition", something common to us all and yet totally inexplicable. We can say that we are social animals but this does nothing to explain why we feel so compelled to tell each other stories, be they fact or fiction. It's just one of those things… Word count: 728 |
| Opinions As the man with a wooden leg said, it's a matter of opinion. And I've been thinking about opinions. Reading blogs makes one very aware that it's true what they say: everyone has an opinion. What is less often noticed, however, is that some people have more opinions than others. I have known people who have an opinion on everything; you mention a subject, any subject, and they will be able to grace you with their opinion on it. Such people are rich in the currency of opinion and are always very generous in sharing their wealth. Others, however, seem to have been at the end of the line when opinions were handed out; they have few and compound the fact by hoarding those that remain to them. Which brings to mind the parable of the talents, although I am not convinced that it applies in this instance. Both money and talents have a value, after all, whereas opinions are so common that they have become almost worthless. A penny for your thoughts, say you? Hah, a hundred years ago that might have been the going rate; these days you can't give them away. I know there are a few who manage to squeeze a living out of their opinions; newspaper editors and television talking heads, for instance. But these are not really selling their opinions. To a large extent they are preaching to the converted, sharing their opinion amongst those who already have that opinion anyway. There is little real trading that goes on, just mutual bolstering and encouragement. So we tend to collect in groups, sharing our opinions with those of like mind and applauding one another as we do so. If someone from another group intrudes, the immediate result is a fight, with opinions thrown in anger and scorn exchanged in copious quantities. The problem is that we all think our opinions are based on the facts and must be correct, therefore. It does not seem to occur to us that facts are so numerous that we must pick and choose which ones to take and which to leave. Being human, we will accept those facts that we like and ignore those that make us uncomfortable. Then off we go with our chosen collection of facts and we construct our opinions around them. Small wonder that we emerge with so many different opinions. The ideal would be to wait until we have all the facts before forming our opinions. Like most ideals, however, this is impossible, so great is the weight of facts with which we are confronted. Some people, a very few, will reserve judgement, knowing that they do not have all the facts. The great majority of us will shrug and enter the fray with whatever we have managed to glean. It is tempting to see those who are slow to form opinions as the wise amongst us. And, if that is so, surely the man who has no opinion at all is the wisest. Since he is staying silent while he adds to the facts at his command, he must be gaining a far wider view of things than those who go out to battle with only a selection of their favored facts at hand. I wonder whether it is possible to have no opinion on anything. Being a dreamer, I ponder on this and try to imagine how an opinion-less person would function. How would such a person be received in society? A philosopher and thinker of the past, Desiderius Erasmus (1466 - 1536), said this: "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." It seems a good saying until one thinks hard about it. To refute it, H.G. Wells wrote a short story entitled The Country of the Blind, in which he shows that the blind would regard someone with sight as a madman. In point of fact, Mr Wells need not have bothered with his story for we already have a perfect example of what he wanted to say. Jesus Christ had better vision than any of us and remember what we did to Him. Which all leads me to think (yes, it's my opinion) that our hypothetical opinion-less person would receive rough treatment in our world. In fact, I suspect that we have already prepared our ammunition against such a phenomenon. We have all heard the saying that it is better to remain silent and be thought stupid, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt… Word count: 750 |
| Archy and Mehitabel Many moons ago, when the earth was young and blogging even younger, I was a chameleon that posted fairly often in one of those dreaded weblogs. At times I would bemoan my fate but, if truth were known, other creatures struggled through far greater difficulties to communicate through the medium of writing. Which thought always brings to my mind the delightful Archy and Mehitabel. Archy was a free verse poet reborn in the form of a cockroach in the early twentieth century. Mehitabel was a cat of Archy’s acquaintance. They were the creation of Don Marquis, a journalist of genius, and the best way to explain how he met Archy is by repeating his own recording of the occasion: We came into our room earlier than usual in the morning, and discovered a gigantic cockroach jumping about upon the keys. He did not see us and we watched him. He would climb painfully upon the framework of the machine and cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine, one slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion. Congratulating ourself that we had left a sheet of paper in the machine the night before so that all this work had not been in vain, we made an examination, and this is what we found: expression is the need of my soul I was once a vers libre bard but I died and my soul went into the body of a cockroach it has given me a new outlook upon life I see things from the under side now thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket but your paste is getting so stale i cant eat it there is a cat here at night i wish you would have removed she nearly ate me the other night why dont she catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for there is a rat here she should get without delay most of these rats here are just rats but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him he used to be a poet himself night after night i have written poetry for you on your typewriter and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet comes out of his hole when it is done and reads it and sniffs at it he is jealous of my poetry he used to make fun of it when we were both human he was a punk poet himself and after he has read it he sneers and then he eats it i wish you would have that cat kill that rat or get a cat that is onto her job and i will write you a series of poems showing how things look to a cockroach that rats name used to be freddy the next time freddy dies i hope he wont be a rat but something smaller i hope i will be the rat in the next transmigration and freddy the cockroach i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then dont you ever eat any sandwiches in your office i havent had a crumb of bread for i dont know how long or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings and paste leave a piece of paper in your machine every night you can call me archy After that, Archy published many of his poems through the medium of Don’s typewriter and they made the journalist an international celebrity. He is, perhaps, one of the greatest of American writers, yet I find that his fame is slipping away and few indeed are those who remember him now. This little post is made in the hope of stemming that progression at least a little. Here’s one of my favourites of Archy’s poems: Pete the Parrot and Shakespeare i got acquainted with a parrot named pete recently who is an interesting bird pete says he used to belong to the fellow that ran the mermaid tavern in london then i said you must have known shakespeare know him said pete poor mutt i knew him well he called me pete and i called him bill but why do you say poor mutt well said pete bill was a disappointed man and was always boring his friends about what he might have been and done if he only had a fair break two or three pints of sack and sherris and the tears would trickle down into his beard and his beard would get soppy and wilt his collar i remember one night when bill and ben johnson and frankie beaumont were sopping it up here i am ben says bill nothing but a lousy playwright and with anything like luck in the breaks i might have been a fairly decent sonnet writer i might have been a poet if i had kept away from the theatre yes says ben i ve often thought of that bill but one consolation is you are making pretty good money out of the theatre money money says bill what the hell is money what i want is to be a poet not a business man these damned cheap shows i turn out to keep the theatre running break my heart slap stick comedies and blood and thunder tragedies and melodramas say i wonder if that boy heard you order another bottle frankie the only compensation is that i get a chance now and then to stick in a little poetry when nobody is looking but hells bells that isn t what i want to do i want to write sonnets and songs and spenserian stanzas and i might have done it too if i hadn t got into this frightful show game business business business grind grind grind what a life for a man that might have been a poet well says frankie beaumont why don t you cut it bill i can t says bill i need the money i ve got a family to support down in the country well says frankie anyhow you write pretty good plays bill any mutt can write plays for this london public says bill if he puts enough murder in them what they want is kings talking like kings never had sense enough to talk and stabbings and stranglings and fat men making love and clowns basting each other with clubs and cheap puns and off color allusions to all the smut of the day oh i know what the low brows want and i give it to them well says ben johnson don t blubber into the drink brace up like a man and quit the rotten business i can t i can t says bill i ve been at it too long i ve got to the place now where i can t write anything else but this cheap stuff i m ashamed to look an honest young sonneteer in the face i live a hell of a life i do the manager hands me some mouldy old manuscript and says bill here s a plot for you this is the third of the month by the tenth i want a good script out this that we can start rehearsals on not too big a cast and not too much of your damned poetry either you know your old familiar line of hokum they eat up that falstaff stuff of yours ring him in again and give them a good ghost or two and remember we gotta have something dick burbage can get his teeth into and be sure and stick in a speech somewhere the queen will take for a personal compliment and if you get in a line or two somewhere about the honest english yeoman it s always good stuff and it s a pretty good stunt bill to have the heavy villain a moor or a dago or a jew or something like that and say i want another comic welshman in this but i don t need to tell you bill you know this game just some of your ordinary hokum and maybe you could kill a little kid or two a prince or something they like a little pathos along with the dirt now you better see burbage tonight and see what he wants in that part oh says bill to think i am debasing my talents with junk like that oh god what i wanted was to be a poet and write sonnet serials like a gentleman should well says i pete bill s plays are highly esteemed to this day is that so says pete poor mutt little he would care what poor bill wanted was to be a poet archy Absolutely delightful stuff (and a demonstration of how libre vers libre can be). But don’t stop there. Read more of Don’s wonderful invention at his site, http://donmarquis.com/ . Be a part of this great American’s continuing fame. Word count: 1,588 |
| Medicine This is an old one and I may have blogged it before, but I like it and feel that it deserves another outing: A few days ago I dropped one of my tablets and it rolled underneath my desk. A quick look failed to reveal its hiding place so I shrugged and took another from the bottle. The floor is a distant country for me nowadays and I knew the little escaped convict would turn up some other time, leaving us to wonder what it might be. Time heals all slips between cup and lip, they say. Well, this evening an M&M made a similar bid for freedom. The desk must be the most obvious hiding place in the vicinity for it, too, chose to roll under it. M&Ms are not quite as disposable as tablets, so I directed my gaze to the offending area and, to my amazement, spotted the miscreant immediately. The problem of distance was solved eventually by judicious use of the toe to maneuver the freedom-loving treat into a more convenient place - a place that was within my bending range, indeed. Imagine my surprise on discovering that the object was not the M&M at all - the tablet had returned to the fold, it seemed. I admit that my joy at its retrieval was somewhat less than I had prepared for the errant M&M, especially as the tablet has now presented me with a problem. Presuming that its few days outside the medicine bottle would not have had any effect on its efficacy, it remains a fact that it has offended against the five second rule. An M&M would be impervious to such caution, of course, provided with so hard and shiny a coat as it is. A quick brush up and it would be as good as new. But the tablet? Certainly more absorbent and welcoming to the vagaries of life on the floor, I would think. The tablet sits on the corner of my desk while I ponder this conundrum. Word count: 341 |
| Animations These animations on completing the 7-day badges each day are all very nice but I have a question about them. How does one return to the page one was looking at before watching the animation. Hitting the back arrow takes one to the page before starting point and closing the animation page closes the connection to WdC. So how do we get back? Okay, it’s a minor irritation to be brought back to the page before starting but it’s annoying even so. I just wondered if there were a trick to it. Word count: 92 |
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But anyway, this was so well-written. Again, thank you.
