Head-dibs

  “A rabbit has two ears; a rabbit has two eyes, two nostrils. Our two warrens ought to be like that. They ought to be together—not fighting.” (Richard Adams, 'Watership Down'.)

New month just around the corner and all out of journal. Time to start setting up the new one!

  “El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.” (Richard Adams, “Watership Down”)

How do you look at problems ? “Turn it inside out and see what it is like—what it becomes like when old, sick, or prostituting itself. How short-lived the praiser and praised, the one who remembers and the remembered. Remembered in some corner of these parts, and even there not in the same way by all, or even by one. And the whole earth is but a mere speck.” (MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.21)

 And the slithy tove did gyre and gimble on the wabe (Lewis Carroll) An hour with Shakespeare and you begin to feel comfortable with the language. Two hours, and you wonder wherefore all this rabblery assembled make such baleful din in spite and menace ‘gainst your hour of peace. Happy Shakespeare’s Day!

 

  “I shall mention a fact by which you may weigh the worth of a man's character: you will scarcely find anyone who can live with his door wide open. It is our conscience, not our pride, that has put doorkeepers at our doors; we live in such a fashion that being suddenly disclosed to view is equivalent to being caught in the act. What profits it, however, to hide ourselves away, and to avoid the eyes and ears of men? A good conscience welcomes the crowd, but a bad conscience, even in solitude, is disturbed and troubled. If your deeds are honourable, let everybody know them; if base, what matters it that no one knows them, as long as you yourself know them? How wretched you are if you despise such a witness!” (Seneca, Moral Letter 43, “On the Relativity of Fame”

  “Weary, with empty throat, stands Tantalus; above his guilty head hangs food in plenty, than Phineus’ birds more elusive; on either side, with laden boughs, a tree leans over him and, bending and trembling ‘neath its weight of fruit, makes sport with his wide-straining jaws. The prize, though he is eager and impatient of delay, deceived so oft, he tries no more to touch, turns away his eyes, shuts tight his lips, and behind clenched teeth he bars his hunger. But then the whole grove lets its riches down nearer still, and the mellow fruits above his head mock him with drooping boughs and whet again the hunger, which bids him ply his hands in vain. When he has stretched these forth and gladly has been baffled, the whole ripe harvest of the bending woods is snatched far out of reach. Then comes a raging thirst, harder to bear than hunger; when by this his blood has grown hot and glowed as with fiery torches, the poor wretch stands catching at waves that seem to approach his lips; bu...

 

 

 Love that Eddie Vedder Just breathe

“Who from the accursed regions of the dead haleth me forth, snatching at food which ever fleeth from my hungry lips? What god for his undoing showeth again to Tantalus the abodes of the living? Hath something worse been found than parching thirst midst water, worse than ever-gaping hunger? Cometh the slippery stone of Sisyphus to be borne upon my shoulders? or the wheel stretching apart my limbs in its swift round? or Tityus’ pangs, who, stretched in a huge cavern, with torn out vitals feeds the dusky birds and, by night renewing whate’er he lost by day, lies an undiminished banquet for new monsters? To what new suffering am I shifted?”     (The Ghost of Tantalus, from Seneca’s play, “Thyestes”)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  O, TO be in England   Now that April’s there,  And whoever wakes in England  Sees, some morning, unaware,  That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf  Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now!  And after April, when May follows,  And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!  Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge  Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—  That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,  Lest you should think he never could recapture  The first fine careless rapture!  And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,  All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children’s dower  Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

  From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue, Could make me any summer’s story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those. Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away, As with your shadow I with these did play. Shakespeare, Sonnet 98