It was twenty years ago today...

 "Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by."
--Christina Georgina Rossetti

 One last post. It was 20 years ago today that I made my first blog post, so I thought I'd commemorate it with one final blog post.  

What was that first post about? Don Marquis and his alley cat Mehitabel, who thought she had been Cleopatra in a past life. Her adventures were chronicled by her friend the cockroach poet Archie. He typed her life story in lowercase because he couldn't hold down the shift key and reach a letter key at the same time. He didn't bother with punctuation, either, typing one letter at a time, jumping from key to key on a typewriter in an empty, after-hours newspaper office. Mehitabel's catch phrase was "toujours gai" and I adopted it as my own and tried to live by it in those days, oh, so long ago.

Mehitabel, by the way, is Hebrew for "God makes happy" and Mehitabel, the battered and abused alley cat, was always happy. 

 

The Song of Mehitabel

By Don Marquis


i have had my ups and downs
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell

i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune

under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
but wotthehell wotthehell

do you think that i would change
my present freedom to range
for a castle or moated grange

cage me and i d go frantic
my life is so romantic
capricious and corybantic

i know that i am bound
for a journey down the sound
in the midst of a refuse mound
but wotthehell wotthehell

oh i should worry and fret
death and i will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

i once was an innocent kit
with a ribbon my neck to fit
and bells tied onto it
o wotthehell wotthehell

but a maltese cat came by
with a come hither look in his eye
and a song that soared to the sky
and wotthehell wotthehell

and i followed adown the street
the pad of his rhythmical feet
o permit me again to repeat
wotthehell wotthehell

my youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve got to
and i end with my favorite motto
toujours gai toujours gai

The first quote in the first entry on the first day of writing posts in my first blog:

 "We do not do what we want, and yet
we are responsible for who we are."
--Jean Paul Sartre

 

 

 

What he said from the bottom of his heart remains in my heart and is just for me.

  "The fairest things have fleetest end,
Their scent survives their close:
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To her that loved the rose."
--Francis Thompson 

 "Now therefore keep thy sorrow to thyself, and
bear with good courage that which hath befallen
thee."
--The Apocrypha 10:15

 

 

 

 

 

My last post

 

I'm thinking about wrapping up my blogging era and shutting down this, my last iteration of my first blog.  I began blogging in February of 2006 so next month will mark 20 years of jotting down my random thoughts and interests.  And my profile view count just hit 77,000, a figure that astonishes me: how could so many people have any interest in me?

I never meant to achieve anything by blogging, certainly not make money or become, as they say these days, an "influencer." It was just me writing this and that because I enjoy writing the same way I enjoy cooking or crocheting or playing the piano.

I see I've got over 100 unpublished -- and unfinished -- blog posts sitting in my draft file.  I guess there they will stay. Some I put a lot of work into but felt I needed to do more, other subjects became too depressing and I gave up on them, and a lot of them I got interrupted while writing and when I was able to get back to them I had lost my train of thought. 

Well, I want to thank you guys who have stuck with me all these years.  I know some of you have been here since the very beginning.  We've grown up and grown old together.  How could all this time have passed? Just like snapping your fingers it was all gone.  Some of you  have died.  Remember the Three Musketeers? Robby?  Ishtaria? Amar? Dear, dear Amar.

Yes, I know I quit once before and then came back after a while, and maybe that will happen again.  But I think not this time.  Life has beaten me down.  I've always fought back against fate, but I've finally surrendered, and with surrender comes ... shutting the mind down.  

From now on I will just focus on the days as they come and my children.  There is no one else and nothing else.  

So, I guess this is it.  Maybe I'll see you around.  Have a good one! 

 

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing. 

~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene V

. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good-bye

  “We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand―and melting like a snowflake.”
― Sir Francis Bacon 

 

And when life's sweet fable ends,
Soul and body part like friends;
No quarrels, murmurs, no delay;
A kiss, a sigh, and so away.  
--Richard Crashaw

 

Good-bye M, Good-bye.  It hurts so much.  I miss you so. I should have helped you.  I should have.  I should have. 

 

"Now that I have toiled and strayed so far over the world, am I to sleep, and let the earth cover my head forever? Let my eyes see the sun until they are dazzled with looking. Although I am no better than a dead man, still let me see the light of the sun."
~ Gilgamesh

"All living creatures born of the flesh shall sit at last in the boat of the West, and when it sinks, they are gone."
~ Gilgamesh

Wet in the windy counties of the dawn
The lone crow skirls his draggled passage home:
And God (whose sparrows fall aslant his gaze,
Like grace or confetti) blinks and he is gone.
~ Thomas McGrath

  I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.

I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether--could they choose between--
It would not be to die.
--Emily Dickinson 

  I am the chosen no hand saves
 --Louise Bogan

 Of course I prayed--
and did God care?
He cared as much as if in the air
a bird had cried 'Give me,'
and stamped her foot!
--Emily Dickinson