Bitter-sweets

When I began writing this blog a year and a half ago, I was afraid that I would not be able to continue writing posts and that my blog would be just one of the thousands of blogs that were abandoned after only one or two posts. I have enjoyed using this blog for the last 18 or nineteen months as a platform to plug my own personal ideas and to procrastinate from many of life's more pressing matters. However, in the past few months as I have become more and more absorbed with my studies here at Trent, I have found it difficult to keep all of the bored procrastinators who read this blog abreast of events in my life. For that reason, this will be my last post on this blog. I may, down the road, when time permits, return again to leisurely writing. But for now, this will be all.

It feels like a strange time to write the last words. I am waiting to see if I will be pursuing doctoral studies next year. Laura is waiting for a full time job in built heritage. Winnie is waiting to see if we will get her a dog door and do away with the bell that she so patiently rings when she needs to pee. It is a time of uncertainty, indeed.

However, I am hopeful and faithful. I have appreciated the opportunity that this blog has provided me for sharing weak humour, poorly founded opinions and unrelated anecdotes. Also, I fear that not all of my posts have helped my poor readers' digestion. However, I will, in light of this fear, end on the words of the most under-rated author that I can think of.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call:
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
Cheers,

DR

Ignis Fatuus or an untitled rambling

From time to time I hear a phrase or a line from a song or poem that seems to capture a feeling that has until then been eerily resistant to being minimized into mere text. This past Christmas I was particularly aware of a poignant feeling lurking in the back of my mind. A realization that life was no longer as simple as I had hoped it would be when I was a child. The complexity is mostly created by a very simple principle. I cannot be in more than one place at a time. This little fact has begun to manifest itself again and again in the past few years. This year I was particularly aware of this as close friends and family were either briefly inserted into a busy schedule or missed altogether.

The other day I heard John Thaw reciting a line from Hilarie Belloc's The South Country. To avoid boring you with all of the poem, I will simply quote the final lines.

If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.

I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.

Hopefully, one day when I am old and grey, I will have the chance to sit on a porch or in a fishing boat with old friends and leisurely tell stories and lies about the old days. Until then, I suppose that I will have to experience some life in order to embellish future stories to an acceptable level of entertainment.