Random thoughts, or It must be the medicine talking

You have no idea how bummed out (for British readers, the expression has absolutely nothing to do with one’s bum being out; it means depressed) I become when a post of mine receives no comments.

On some days, trying to blog is very much like whistling in the dark, spitting into the wind, casting one’s bread upon the waters (a reference to Ecclesiastes 11:1), shouting into the abyss (pick metaphor -- or rather, simile -- of choice).

Our grandparents said, “between Scylla and Charybdis,” our parents said, “between the Devil and the deep blue sea” and we say, “between a rock and a hard place.”

Our grandparents said, “the Sabbath,” our parents said, “Sunday” and we say, “the weekend."

The decline and fall of Western civilization is almost complete.

In this post I have decided to stick with American punctuation and forego the British. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, join the club.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.

When you're down at the sea and an eel bites your knee, that’s a moray.


(Photo used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)

The moon is full tonight.

I am reminded of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”:

“The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

“Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

If anyone knows about naked shingles, it’s me.

According to Wikipedia, William Butler Yeats responds directly to Arnold’s pessimism in his four-line poem, “The Nineteenth Century and After” (1929):

“Though the great song return no more
There’s keen delight in what we have:
The rattle of pebbles on the shore
Under the receding wave.”

I think Yeats has described exactly how I feel when a post of mine receives no comments.

I doubt that I shall be blogging much in the next few days, as I have a funeral to play for this afternoon, and a rehearsal tonight with the women’s ensemble, and a Good Friday service tomorrow, and an Easter Sunrise service, and the regular Sunday morning service to boot. Well, not to boot, but you know what I mean.

So I’ll see ya when I see ya.

If anyone cares.