What Next?

Musee des Beaux Arts By W.H.Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

And Having said that, in the end - let us begin.

I've always loved the concept of Icarus. Of flying close to the sun and trying to touch it... despite being warned not to do so. The proverbial moth attracted to the cliched flame. I guess we all do it at times, and some of us are prone to doing it more often than most. Poor Daedalus, to see Icarus rising higher and higher, knowing he would fall and yet unable to rise up and join him. Fear. It controls us all... Its either fear or laziness....

Saw this on a plastic cover handed out some shop... Odyssey or Landmark or some such shit.. It said "Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix all died at the age of 28". Who says Icarus' story is an ancient legend? Maybe thats why we like rock? The aura of rebellion and self destruction. The options of burning up as opposed to fading out.....

Come to think of it, maintaining a level head maybe more difficult! Its easier to burn out. Its difficult to resist temptation. (Gotta quit smoking... goddammit!) But yeah... who remembers people who fade out....

Finally got canned beer. Drank a couple of cans in the balcony. I could see flights landing at the airport.

" There is a war everywhere. All you can do is choose a side and fight". Gregory David Roberts in Shantaram. Can't get that damn book out of my head. Going to start 'Love in the time of Cholera' by Garcia Marquez. Hmmm... what are the chances that it wont depress me? These latinos write like no ones business.

Who knows whats next...?