Fourth entry for the Colonel`s scrapbook
These guys were born on a day like today
1491 Henry VIII of England (1509-47), Don't lose your head over him, although he was much handsomer than Jonathan Rhys Myers
1712 Jean Jacques Rousseau ,France, social contractor (Confessions), but he said that if he did it once he was was experimenting but if he repeated he was a pervert
1867 Luigi Pirandello, Italy, writer (6 Characters-Nobel 1934), imagine winning a Nobel Prize just because the Swedish academy wanted to drop the award in La Bella Italia
But also
1914 Archduke Francis Ferdinand & wife Sofia of Austria assassinated (setting fire to the powderkeg of Europe to begin the War to end all Wars…can you believe that craziness?)World War I began due to a wrong turn and the patriotism of Gavrilo Princip, who anyways was going to die because he had TB or god knows what other dangerous viruses floating in his bloodstream.
The same striptease I perform for myself every night before the keyboard. Off go my jungle boots and my feet breathe at last. Pants off, shirt off, into my Jewish shawl. Hair goes up into a topknot like royal kitten Marie in the Aristocats. Chevalier or Piaf? Vivaldi or Bob Marley? Praetorius or Ravi Shankar? The music wafts out the speakers. Why must there always be two options? Why choose? Why must we only take one of each thing that the tree of opportunity gives us? Which takes me today to a poem I read when I was a preadolescent with the man I least expected to become my favourite teacher. Mr. James Martin introduced me to a poem by American bard Robert Lee Frost.Yes, you are right. The Road not Taken. Could it be anything else? Not to say that he didn`t write more things that are so lovely that they should be declared holy. It was a rainy afternoon and the weather wasn`t as sweltering as some days before. All the class had groaned when the teacher said we were going to the page where the poem was. I was delighted. I should have known,I must have had an omen that this masterpiece of American literature would dictate the course of my life. As if a the black camel of death-as Turks love to say-had passed over my grave, a silent tear rolled down from my poor unperceptibly discoloured right eye and splashed on my book. The teacher saw I was moved and gave me the first smile I remember coming from him. He was so stern, and that would be the first of so many smiles I garnered from this scholarly man. You must remember this from your school days. It was written in 1915,after the uncouth heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne made the big blunder of going to Serbia with the wife that his uncle Franz Josef I hated so much. Surely Francis Ferdinand had taken the wrong turn-as usual- almost a year before Robert Frost had his light bulb on to create this poem.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
These guys were born on a day like today
1491 Henry VIII of England (1509-47), Don't lose your head over him, although he was much handsomer than Jonathan Rhys Myers
1712 Jean Jacques Rousseau ,France, social contractor (Confessions), but he said that if he did it once he was was experimenting but if he repeated he was a pervert
1867 Luigi Pirandello, Italy, writer (6 Characters-Nobel 1934), imagine winning a Nobel Prize just because the Swedish academy wanted to drop the award in La Bella Italia
But also
1914 Archduke Francis Ferdinand & wife Sofia of Austria assassinated (setting fire to the powderkeg of Europe to begin the War to end all Wars…can you believe that craziness?)World War I began due to a wrong turn and the patriotism of Gavrilo Princip, who anyways was going to die because he had TB or god knows what other dangerous viruses floating in his bloodstream.
The same striptease I perform for myself every night before the keyboard. Off go my jungle boots and my feet breathe at last. Pants off, shirt off, into my Jewish shawl. Hair goes up into a topknot like royal kitten Marie in the Aristocats. Chevalier or Piaf? Vivaldi or Bob Marley? Praetorius or Ravi Shankar? The music wafts out the speakers. Why must there always be two options? Why choose? Why must we only take one of each thing that the tree of opportunity gives us? Which takes me today to a poem I read when I was a preadolescent with the man I least expected to become my favourite teacher. Mr. James Martin introduced me to a poem by American bard Robert Lee Frost.Yes, you are right. The Road not Taken. Could it be anything else? Not to say that he didn`t write more things that are so lovely that they should be declared holy. It was a rainy afternoon and the weather wasn`t as sweltering as some days before. All the class had groaned when the teacher said we were going to the page where the poem was. I was delighted. I should have known,I must have had an omen that this masterpiece of American literature would dictate the course of my life. As if a the black camel of death-as Turks love to say-had passed over my grave, a silent tear rolled down from my poor unperceptibly discoloured right eye and splashed on my book. The teacher saw I was moved and gave me the first smile I remember coming from him. He was so stern, and that would be the first of so many smiles I garnered from this scholarly man. You must remember this from your school days. It was written in 1915,after the uncouth heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne made the big blunder of going to Serbia with the wife that his uncle Franz Josef I hated so much. Surely Francis Ferdinand had taken the wrong turn-as usual- almost a year before Robert Frost had his light bulb on to create this poem.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
-I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
You must suppose I learned it by heart, exactly as I was to learn our own Ruben Darìo `s Caupolicàn sonnet or Clancy of the Overflow by the Australian Bush Bard Andrew Barton The Banjo Paterson. I even learned the whole damn Beowulf in order to please James Martin, and to paraphrase Mick Jagger`s song Hard Woman to please in a male version, he was a hard man to please. But getting an A from his hand was like having god kiss away the pain from your tired feet.
What a difference made by a road that I took…! Long after I have become a teacher, when life has given me the best lessons that not even money could buy, I still wonder when I look at the tree of destiny. I teach grammar, but life has taught me to spell words I hate pronouncing except when I am alone. My choice has taken me to war, almost dying in childbirth, not clinging fast enough onto my parents as to have avoided their death in a plane crash on their trip towards death. I decided to go into battle looking for the raw red bleeding caress of a nosferatu, but life chose to let me survive with enough energy and determination so as to never regret having been on the battlefield. The road I took never let me stay with the Eiffel Tower, but it plunged me head-first into the most beautiful river in the world –the San Juan-to become one with him like a perfect marriage.(They do exist, but a man is almost never the other half.) It has been such a love affair that I guess my heart is as clear blue as the San Juan River`s flow.
Choices, choices. Why was it so easy for King Henry VIII Tudor to choose one thing at a time and then behead the lady, well he beheaded only two, repudiated one, and drove to an early death two others. Quite a record. Some men could envy him, especially when they try to conquer and be ladykillers, throwing temper tantrums that no one understands, least of all, tolerates. Nevertheless we choose, because it takes two to tango and have someone as scintillating as my daughter. I have to recognize the fact that I would have never made her alone. Parthnogenesis, no way. Not a choice. And Holy Ghosts are now démodé, in the same category as Silvio Rodrìguez`s Blue Unicorn or Grendel in Beowulf.
I have to choose, as Gavrilo Princip did. It was either go down in history as a patriot so in love with Serbia that he gave his life…or die slowly puking out his lungs like Molière did in times of Louis XIV.I understand him. I am a patriot too, and the chap had style.
Who wouldn`t give his nuts for a nation, a kingdom? Remember Willy Wallace, the real one who was almost 7 feet tall, not Corgiish-looking and bigoted Mel Gibson, screaming FREEEEEEEEDOM while his balls were being severed? Nobody resists a patriot.
That is the most loving yet scary choice.
Choices sometimes are taken by others for you. I remember a song by this Spanish band which already disbanded, Mecano. To resist 15 thousand charms, takes a lot of sensibility.(Resistir quince mil encantos y no sè si sere sensato), in their hit It is So difficult to forget you. It was 1986 or so and I still loved playing god(or I guess I still do but it is too crass to confess I want to make choices for others). I learned the song and sang it when the soldiers couldn`t hear me. How do I say no when someone knocks at the door that shouldn`t exist anymore? Could Luigi Pirandello resist taking the Nobel Prize in his hands even when he knew that it should have been for Gabriele D Ànnunzio? Could Jean Jacques Rousseau have denied himself the joy to write his Social Contract? Come on, people, give me a break. Do you have any choice when someone puts you to speak to the hand? Walk away perhaps and berate yourself for having been so kind to such a knave?
I choose to stay up late writing for you. My bed calls me, the broken back still longs for bed. Even though it be cold, or full of cat`s hair on the pillow. I imagine you opening your mail. Give me a smile when you see my address. I have earned it a bit, don`t you think? It has been a question of choice, but this colonel, unlike Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez`s in his early novel, should have someone who writes to her, or to write to.
You must suppose I learned it by heart, exactly as I was to learn our own Ruben Darìo `s Caupolicàn sonnet or Clancy of the Overflow by the Australian Bush Bard Andrew Barton The Banjo Paterson. I even learned the whole damn Beowulf in order to please James Martin, and to paraphrase Mick Jagger`s song Hard Woman to please in a male version, he was a hard man to please. But getting an A from his hand was like having god kiss away the pain from your tired feet.
What a difference made by a road that I took…! Long after I have become a teacher, when life has given me the best lessons that not even money could buy, I still wonder when I look at the tree of destiny. I teach grammar, but life has taught me to spell words I hate pronouncing except when I am alone. My choice has taken me to war, almost dying in childbirth, not clinging fast enough onto my parents as to have avoided their death in a plane crash on their trip towards death. I decided to go into battle looking for the raw red bleeding caress of a nosferatu, but life chose to let me survive with enough energy and determination so as to never regret having been on the battlefield. The road I took never let me stay with the Eiffel Tower, but it plunged me head-first into the most beautiful river in the world –the San Juan-to become one with him like a perfect marriage.(They do exist, but a man is almost never the other half.) It has been such a love affair that I guess my heart is as clear blue as the San Juan River`s flow.
Choices, choices. Why was it so easy for King Henry VIII Tudor to choose one thing at a time and then behead the lady, well he beheaded only two, repudiated one, and drove to an early death two others. Quite a record. Some men could envy him, especially when they try to conquer and be ladykillers, throwing temper tantrums that no one understands, least of all, tolerates. Nevertheless we choose, because it takes two to tango and have someone as scintillating as my daughter. I have to recognize the fact that I would have never made her alone. Parthnogenesis, no way. Not a choice. And Holy Ghosts are now démodé, in the same category as Silvio Rodrìguez`s Blue Unicorn or Grendel in Beowulf.
I have to choose, as Gavrilo Princip did. It was either go down in history as a patriot so in love with Serbia that he gave his life…or die slowly puking out his lungs like Molière did in times of Louis XIV.I understand him. I am a patriot too, and the chap had style.
Who wouldn`t give his nuts for a nation, a kingdom? Remember Willy Wallace, the real one who was almost 7 feet tall, not Corgiish-looking and bigoted Mel Gibson, screaming FREEEEEEEEDOM while his balls were being severed? Nobody resists a patriot.
That is the most loving yet scary choice.
Choices sometimes are taken by others for you. I remember a song by this Spanish band which already disbanded, Mecano. To resist 15 thousand charms, takes a lot of sensibility.(Resistir quince mil encantos y no sè si sere sensato), in their hit It is So difficult to forget you. It was 1986 or so and I still loved playing god(or I guess I still do but it is too crass to confess I want to make choices for others). I learned the song and sang it when the soldiers couldn`t hear me. How do I say no when someone knocks at the door that shouldn`t exist anymore? Could Luigi Pirandello resist taking the Nobel Prize in his hands even when he knew that it should have been for Gabriele D Ànnunzio? Could Jean Jacques Rousseau have denied himself the joy to write his Social Contract? Come on, people, give me a break. Do you have any choice when someone puts you to speak to the hand? Walk away perhaps and berate yourself for having been so kind to such a knave?
I choose to stay up late writing for you. My bed calls me, the broken back still longs for bed. Even though it be cold, or full of cat`s hair on the pillow. I imagine you opening your mail. Give me a smile when you see my address. I have earned it a bit, don`t you think? It has been a question of choice, but this colonel, unlike Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez`s in his early novel, should have someone who writes to her, or to write to.
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