Yesterday morning I was thinking of euthanasia.
It was almost sunrise and a blackbird was singing a predawn song.
It sang with no fine careless rapture; this bird wanted to be anywhere but on a freezing branch on a bitter grey English morning. He was the Leonard Cohen of blackbirds and sang a particularly miserable song, albeit with a certain clever and painful nostalgia in it.
Lying there warm in bed listening to the mournful bird telling me life was a forlorn hope, or worse a 'veloren hoop', I thought it would be no bad time to twist some wolf's bane and drift off to Lethe.
It was too early in the year to glut my sorrow on a morning rose, too far from the sea to see the rainbow of the salt sand-wave and there is no wealth of globèd peonies in my back yard. Oh, and thank God I have no mistress to show' some rich anger'. I have had more than enough of that!
Naturally, in the circumstances, the famous scene from Soylent Green came to mind. And the Browning poem. And a little known piece of science fiction by Anthony Trollope. And, of course, The King in Yellow (No link because reading it leads to madness.)
This final association let my my mind on to consider unfinished things. The King in Yellow is a remarkable book, as I have said before, and would be a much lesser work if it had been completed. One can't be certain but most people agree that part of its power is that it is incomplete.
But what publisher takes unfinished work, even if it is brilliant? Are the bookshops packed with books missing last chapters?
I don't think so. (That phrase is so irritating it is almost a joy to write)
If you are already a famous artist that is a different matter altogether. People want everything you wrote, including fragments, notes and unfinished pieces.
But what if Dickens had started with Edwin Drood, unfinished?
No one would have taken any notice of him, no one would have wanted to read it, and today we would exclaim, 'What the trollope is that all about!'.
I would like to open a shop that sold only unfinished things. The idea seems both Chestertonian and radical. Damn it I would, if only my shop had not been taken over by Anak Laki-laki, yang pertama, and filled with accordions.
I bought him a rickety krar for 50p in a pasar maling and will try a bit of restoration today.
Depleted fish stock drifted into mind, the tragedy of the Baltic, and the fact that Asian cat fish is being passed off as cod. There would be the same outcry as there was about horse meat in burgers if they knew where some of those cat fish were reared.
Finally, just as it was time to get out of bed it was struck by a bolt of brilliant crystalline genius.
Flash Flocking!
More of that later.
That morning I heard my small funding bid for a work related project had been approved,
( I believe that this was because it was incomprehensible. I certainly could not understand what it was about, but did a very good job of sounding as if I did.)
... and I planted my first seeds and flowers of 2013 in my back yard.
It was almost sunrise and a blackbird was singing a predawn song.
It sang with no fine careless rapture; this bird wanted to be anywhere but on a freezing branch on a bitter grey English morning. He was the Leonard Cohen of blackbirds and sang a particularly miserable song, albeit with a certain clever and painful nostalgia in it.
Lying there warm in bed listening to the mournful bird telling me life was a forlorn hope, or worse a 'veloren hoop', I thought it would be no bad time to twist some wolf's bane and drift off to Lethe.
It was too early in the year to glut my sorrow on a morning rose, too far from the sea to see the rainbow of the salt sand-wave and there is no wealth of globèd peonies in my back yard. Oh, and thank God I have no mistress to show' some rich anger'. I have had more than enough of that!
Naturally, in the circumstances, the famous scene from Soylent Green came to mind. And the Browning poem. And a little known piece of science fiction by Anthony Trollope. And, of course, The King in Yellow (No link because reading it leads to madness.)
This final association let my my mind on to consider unfinished things. The King in Yellow is a remarkable book, as I have said before, and would be a much lesser work if it had been completed. One can't be certain but most people agree that part of its power is that it is incomplete.
But what publisher takes unfinished work, even if it is brilliant? Are the bookshops packed with books missing last chapters?
I don't think so. (That phrase is so irritating it is almost a joy to write)
If you are already a famous artist that is a different matter altogether. People want everything you wrote, including fragments, notes and unfinished pieces.
But what if Dickens had started with Edwin Drood, unfinished?
No one would have taken any notice of him, no one would have wanted to read it, and today we would exclaim, 'What the trollope is that all about!'.
I would like to open a shop that sold only unfinished things. The idea seems both Chestertonian and radical. Damn it I would, if only my shop had not been taken over by Anak Laki-laki, yang pertama, and filled with accordions.
I bought him a rickety krar for 50p in a pasar maling and will try a bit of restoration today.
Depleted fish stock drifted into mind, the tragedy of the Baltic, and the fact that Asian cat fish is being passed off as cod. There would be the same outcry as there was about horse meat in burgers if they knew where some of those cat fish were reared.
Finally, just as it was time to get out of bed it was struck by a bolt of brilliant crystalline genius.
Flash Flocking!
More of that later.
That morning I heard my small funding bid for a work related project had been approved,
( I believe that this was because it was incomprehensible. I certainly could not understand what it was about, but did a very good job of sounding as if I did.)
... and I planted my first seeds and flowers of 2013 in my back yard.