March 17, 2011
-
The Daily News1 So...Nate Dogg walks into a bar...
2 Too young, and too much talent.
3 So sad. And it was a series of strokes that wound up the cause.
4 I swear.
5 Sad.
6 Raise a glass.
7 Sad.
8 Moving on, Part the First: Seems every time I turn around, someone is getting married, or someone is getting buried. Thank goodness I have my Sunday go-to-meetin' clothes ready.
9 Like even today.
10 I had to find a pair of black pants and a fresh shirt because I'm going up to San Francisco tonight for a wake.
11 A friend of mine's mother-in-law passed away earlier this week, only a little bit after his father-in-law passed away.
12 This came after my wonderous Alice-in-Wonderland weekend, in which my entire world turned upside down.
13 So it's around 4 a.m. as I compose, and I'm awake and working 'til three p.m. and then I drive up to the wake, staying there 'til possibly eight, and then returning home. I won't be at school tomorrow because I have the honor of being a pall bearer at the funeral, which is again in San Francisco.
14 Yeesh.
15 You might remember that the last funeral I attended was the day after the San Bruno crisis. I grew around that area, and a whole bunch of us grieved for my friend John's father-in-law. Well, this is his wife. Tough on their entire family, and especially the younger set.
16 I've gotten somewhat used to all of this.
17 Somewhat.
18 It really seems that it all came in the last six years. Lots of sadness, and far too early for most of them.
19 In the midst of life we are in the midst of death; a truer word was never said.
20 That wasn't me. It was Thornton Wilder.
21 That's Thornton, not Thorton.
22 Like the hockey player Joe.
23 As I already stated, yeesh.
24 Moving on, Part the Second: Man, this DN sounds so grim. I'm more concerned with finding a pair of pants that I could wear to both a funeral and a wedding, as well as a reasonably comfortable pair of shoes.
25 You wind up that way, you know?
26 Well, every cloud. Yesterday I was able to get home early and stay completely caught up on school stuff, and today I go in and teach both iambic pentameter AND the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.
27 And yeah, I was supposed to be done with that stuff around three weeks ago, but I want to give my students the essentials, and you can't just blow off Shakespeare in a week or two.
28 So today is one of my premiere lessons, and I need to attend a wake and a funeral afterwards.
29 No rest for the wicked, I find.
30 So I'd probably better crawl back to bed. It's the wee hours of the night on St. Patrick's Day, and I must needs get me some solid sleep.
31 And I'll hoist a glass somewhere to everyone who is going through strange times. And I'll smile with my mischievous smile, and give you all a toast, because this stuff needs a rainbow, and a pot o' gold.
32 Enjoy it all, and stay safe.
Hey, I got nothing to do today but smile.
---Paul Simon
33 And like the Budweiser people say, "Drink responsibly". And what they don't say: "But do drink. That's how we make our coin."
34 Ah, the never-ending hypocrisies.
35 That's life.
36 Live life.
37 Love life.
38 Peace.
~H~
Recent Comments