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old hand
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It's a questionable command from Dylan; to not go gently into the night, is to try to avoid what seems right.
In the most expensive shopping area in Germany a 'clinic' opened recently where anti-aging professionals use the latest in age-reversal technology to try to slow down those nasty free-radicals in the body. This midlife obsession with holding up the hands of time is awful. How can one fear gracefully aging, topped off by a momentous event - being 'untethered'. After all, it's the chance catch more than a glimpse. People spending all their time thinking about how everyone is dying, should just live.
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Carpal Tunnel
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a questionable command from DylanThanks Max for posting this, and for another perspective on a favourite poem, BY. I have tended to parse this as "rage against death, because the possibilities of life are so rich and varied" - in other words, very much along the lines of argument already discussed as to how the limiting function of death sets the premium by which we hold life dear. If chickens laid diamonds we'd all be toothless millionaires 
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old hand
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If chickens laid diamonds we'd all be toothless millionaires
C'mon, Mav... you know full well that if chickens laid diamonds, we'd all covet eggs.
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Carpal Tunnel
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yeahbut. There's hard-boiled and hard-boiled!
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These posts reminded me of a poem that i learned in my AP english class (which remains to this day the only class--and the only teacher--that i believe was worthwhile...), but for the life of me i cannot remember the title, the author, or even a line sufficient to googlize it. perhaps someone can help:
in a nutshell, it was spoken by a lover to his fair maiden, with several stanzas detailing the ways he'd love to spend a thousand years on each part of her body, but the final stanza basically says "but hey, we're short on time, so let's get to the meat and potatoes".
the only thing that came to mind was "time is still a-flying", but it's not Herrick's work that i'm looking for.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
in response to Dylan, isn't it wonderful how for each and every perspective so effortlessly and artfully laid out before us, there's another offering a diametrically opposed point of view? i'll submit this, from one of my favorite poets:
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder high-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It whithers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echos fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
~AE Houseman
OTOH, i've always thought that he had his tongue firmly planted in cheek when he wrote this, so maybe it's not so different from _Do Not Go Gentle_ after all.
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enthusiast
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belligerentyouth>>>
People spending all their time thinking about how everyone is dying, should just live.
Amen, I say, but judging from the proliferation of self-help books on this subject, and the size of the bank accounts of their authors, I assume many find it hard to do so.
which brings to mind Pascal's observation, which I quote here:
"We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.
Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end.
Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so."
Pascal was born in 1623 and died after a long illness in 1662.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thanks for that quote, wordcrazy. It's a new one on me, and very interesting.
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I try not to bring days-old threads back to the top, but I am now starting my real catching-up, and I have to say that I think this is one of the best threads we've ever had. I loved it all, from Dr. Bill's contrived quotations, to peoples' opinions, to the wonderful citations!
To Brandon: of course time exists, if the earth does!
Geez--all you have to do is observe changes all around you, in organic life, and geology, too!
To tsuwm: what would or could time be, if not linear?
(Please Send Private if you're ready for this thread to end.)
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what would or could time be, if not linear?
Spatial.
And I don't care if the OED does say "spatial as opposed to time" ... what do they know, anyway, except what we tell them.
If time isn't spatial then why do authors and scientist talk about the space-time continuum and doors to other times and space portals and E =MC squared and all that stuff?
Huh? Huh?
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>I found a bunch of contrived definitions...
>some of those are not so contrived ...
For another example, "quiddity". Some Gilbert and Sullivan song (can anyone help me recall which one?) rhymes it with avidity and rapidity. I wonder if quiddity was a word in ordinary use in those days, one the then-audience would recognize.
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