With Love, From Me to You: January 2010

I love words. Here are some of my favorite ones ever spoken: “There will be an answer. Let it be. – The Beatles……....“I did it my way.” – Frank Sinatra…..…. “Don’t Stop Believin’ – Journey……....“I read, much of the night, and go south for the winter.” – T.S. Eliot…….“Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.” – Woody Allen……….“All good books have one thing in common. They are truer than if they had actually happened.” – Ernest Hemingway……….“Would a journey not be worth taking if at the end of which, in the other world, we were delivered from all the pretend judges here? – Plato, Apology……….“You are my only love. You have me completely in your power. I know and feel that if I am to write anything noble and find in the future I shall do so only by listening at the doors of your heart.” – James Joyce to Nora……….“Basically I’m for whatever gets you through the night. But it prayer, tranquillizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels.” – Frank Sinatra………. “He [Shakespeare] was not of an age, but for all time.” – Ben Janson in To My Beloved Master William Shakespeare………. “We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl. Year after year. Running over the same old ground, what have we found? The same old fears?” – Pink Floyd………. “We live as we dream. Alone.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness……….”Yet now I must confess, that duty done, my thoughts and wishes bend again toward France.” – Shakespeare, Hamlet………. “I’ve always known myself, but he was the first one to recognize me. And the first to love what he saw.” – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre………. “There is only the fight to recover what has been lost. There is only the trying.” – T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets……… “The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth and a truth which is beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the charm of one of Plato’s or Aristotle’s definitions, strictly like that of Antigone of Sophocles?” – Ralph Waldo Emerson…… “The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the face of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.” – Marge Peircy………. “It’s a fierce game I’ve joined because its being played anyway, a game of both skill and chance, played against unseen adversary – the conditions of time—in which the payoffs, which may suddenly arrive in a blast of light at any moment, might as well come to me as anyone else.” – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek………. “If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” – Charlotte Bronte………. “All one has to do to be a writer is write. We’re writers only when we’re writing.” – Alan Shapiro

Friday, January 8, 2010

Happy Birthday Elvis! Some West River Musings.

It’s not too often the stretch between Murdo and Rapid City provokes some profound revelation just begging for a blogger. I can't tell you how many times my family and I have driven west across the great state of South Dakota to visit some people we love, who just happen to live on the wrong side of the river ;) But, the trips get better as the kids get older I think. For the record, I'm the kid.

I'm the newly 24-year-old kid listening to my iPod and looking out the window. I don't know how I knew it was Elvis's birthday. Either Twitter or one of the few scratchy radio channels one can only find in this part of America.

Anyways, there it was, (in the words of Ace of Base) "I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes." Elvis's motorcycle was the in remote town we passed through probably just to get a burger. Could've been Kadkoa. But not that day.

So, this post lacks a real point except, "Here's to Elvis." Not only was he the King of Rock and Roll, but he has made me look forward to seeing the Murdo signs on 1-90.

What's everyone's favorite Elvis song? Here's mine:

"Are you lonesome tonight?
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day,
Wwhen I kissed you and called you sweetheart?
Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you Lonesome tonight?

I wonder if you're lonesome tonight
You know someone said the world's stage
And each must play a part
And fate had me playing in love, you as my sweetheart.
Act one was when we met, I loved you at first glance.
You read your line so cleverly and never missed a cue
Then came act two, you seem to change and you acted strange

And why, I'll never know
Honey you lied when you said you loved me
And I had no cause to doubt you
But I rather go on hearing your lies than go on living without you.
Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there
With emptiness all around
And if you won’t come back to me,
Then make them bring the curtain down.

Is your heart filled with pain?
Shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?"

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