04-11-2017 | #91 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Aug 2016
Posts: 941
Quotes: 0
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Re: Getting old...
Ultimately, the chain itself doesn't end, though it requires quilting points of meaning (God, the State, the People, etc.) which create the illusion of stability. It's more or less the standard poststructuralist view of language as a continuous signifying chain in which meaning is forever deferred. I've really derailed this thread. | |||||||||||
"In a less scientific age, he would have been a devil-worshipper, a partaker in the abominations of the Black Mass; or would have given himself to the study and practice of sorcery. His was a religious soul that had failed to find good in the scheme of things; and lacking it, was impelled to make of evil itself an object of secret reverence."
~ Clark Ashton Smith, "The Devotee of Evil" |
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2 Thanks From: | miguel1984 (04-11-2017), ToALonelyPeace (04-12-2017) |
09-04-2017 | #92 | |||||||||||
Chymist
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 297
Quotes: 0
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Re: Getting old...
I'm nearer to Age 70 than Age 45. Old people no longer look old and those in their 20s & 30s have such fresh faces.
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My story NOWHERE TO GO was published by PS PUBLISHING in a book titled POSTSCRIPTS #14 in England in 2008. Let me know if you've read it. I self-published eight short stories on audio-cassette in 1999 titled, fittingly, BARRY WOOD'S SHORT STORIES. And a few other short stories in little obscure publications -- which I forget their titles.
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Thanks From: | miguel1984 (09-04-2017) |
09-04-2017 | #93 | |||||||||||
Chymist
Join Date: Jul 2014
Posts: 284
Quotes: 0
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Re: Getting old...
I will soon hit 67 revolutions around the sun, but aging seems to be mental in general, depending on your genetics.At 64 revolutions I developed hypertension and became a borderline diabetic. I get arthritic pains in my left shoulder at times, but overall I don't feel all those swings around our star. I dig my Heavy Metal CD's and I still carry a 60's radical/hippie attitude to life. In Mexico they say that Death is a woman who is just behind your ear whispering darkness to you. When I pass, I will embrace that darkness, but my ashes will be the soil of a new tree in my garden. Embrace the Darkness!
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5 Thanks From: | Frater_Tsalal (09-04-2017), Freyasfire (09-04-2017), miguel1984 (09-04-2017), mongoose (09-04-2017), ToALonelyPeace (09-05-2017) |
09-05-2017 | #94 | |||||||||||
Chymist
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 326
Quotes: 0
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Re: Getting old...
What else is there to say? I always feel that the human condition can be summed up comprehensively by just three to four poems by Philip Larkin.
The Old Fools (by Philip Larkin) What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools, And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose, They could alter things back to when they danced all night, Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September? Or do they fancy there’s really been no change, And they’ve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight, Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming Watching light move? If they don’t (and they can’t), it’s strange: Why aren’t they screaming? At death, you break up: the bits that were you Start speeding away from each other for ever With no one to see. It’s only oblivion, true: We had it before, but then it was going to end, And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour To bring to bloom the million-petaled flower Of being here. Next time you can’t pretend There’ll be anything else. And these are the first signs: Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they’re for it: Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines – How can they ignore it? Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms Inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can’t quite name; each looms Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning, The blown bush at the window, or the sun’s Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live: Not here and now, but where all happened once. This is why they give An air of baffled absence, trying to be there Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear Of taken breath, and them crouching below Extinction’s alp, the old fools, never perceiving How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet: The peak that stays in view wherever we go For them is rising ground. Can they never tell What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night? Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout The whole hideous, inverted childhood? Well, We shall find out. | |||||||||||
6 Thanks From: | Druidic (09-05-2017), Kevin (09-05-2017), marioneta (09-05-2017), miguel1984 (09-05-2017), Patrick G.P (09-05-2017), ToALonelyPeace (09-05-2017) |
09-05-2017 | #95 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 1,188
Quotes: 0
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Re: Getting old...
Great poem, thanks for posting it @Masonwire
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"Tell me how you want to die, and I'll tell you who you are. In other words, how do you fill out an empty life? With women, books, or worldly ambitions? No matter what you do, the starting point is boredom, and the end self-destruction. The emblem of our fate: the sky teeming with worms. Baudelaire taught me that life is the ecstasy of worms in the sun, and happiness the dance of worms."
---Tears and Saints, E. M. Cioran
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