"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 last 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
