Life is the peace of contraries,
And Death is the proof of this war.

--Rumi

The age of Comformity

Most Americans want to be cultivated, but only comfortably cultivated. They dabble with the intellectual just enough to avoid being lowbrow and escape being highbrow. Middlebrowism looks like cultivation because it is so clearly superior to vulgarity, but to be satisfied with it is to make the good the enemy of the best. It merely dresses and domisticates the commonplace.

--The age of Comformity, Regnery

disconnected (firstcomet)

I’m all disconnected now
It wasn’t hard, like to know how?

You pull the plug from your gadgets
You leave you calendar unset

Then you put on your anti-noise headset
The rest is assisted by the upcoming sunset

If the music ain't up to your taste then pause it
If that didn’t quite work then just toss it!

I haven’t yet figured out the rest
But, I’ll try to do my best :-)

The Daylily Lullaby (firstcomet):

Sitting in the North-oval, facing towards the Boyd
The bells are ringing, and the sun is drifting away.
I wish everyday was a sunny day,
Every tree was a fruit tree,
Every seed an elixir; panacea of all ailments.

Then I wish I was a Daylily born in a sunny day,
Woken up by the gentle hands of the sun,
Boozed by the most limpid dews before the sun was up!
My day, my only day, is the pollination day;
Dispersing love freely, unknowingly, unceasingly!

But then the bells start to ring again:
Not just once, but twice, thrice, many times
And the nightingales begin to sing their favorite song:
The Daylily Lullaby!

OU--

5/17/2007

A vanished friend ...

Around the corner I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end,

Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone.

And I never see my old friends face,
For life is a swift and terrible race,

He knows I like him just as well,
As in the days when I rang his bell.

And he rang mine but we were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men.

Tired of playing a foolish game,
Tired of trying to make a name.

"Tomorrow" I say! "I will call on Jim
Just to show that I'm thinking of him."

But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
And distance between us grows and grows.

Around the corner, yet miles away,
"Here's a telegram sir," "Jim died today."

And that's what we get and deserve in the end.
Around the corner, a vanished friend.

-anonymous