The Unresolved but Highly Probable

1. This next year I have a feeling I will eat more fish and less red meat. The latter does not excite me so much at the six P.M. of the present as in six P.M.'s of yore.

2. I find I drink slightly more than I used to, and that this is quite the best thing.

3. I have almost left off smoking altogether. Aside from the evening cigar or clove enjoyed with company now and again, the thing mostly bores me.

4. I have been teaching myself French for a week now, and believe I will be fluent in it before the start of summer.

5. I would have thought #4 would affect #3 differently than it has done. Hmm.

6. I imagine I'll write a book and see it published.

7. I think I will learn to be more decisive at critical junctures than I have been heretofore. This is quite likely.

8. I am pretty sure this is not a critical juncture.

9. I am comfortable with the single life, but have concluded, more or less, that matrimony is the more historically validated position. This may seem obvious to some, but let us examine the two sides:

Unmarried:
1)St. Paul
2)Elizabeth I
3)Thomas Aquinas
4)Leonardo Davinci
5)Virgil

Married:
1)Moses
2)Charlemagne
3)Aristotle
4)William Shakespeare
5)Dante

10. I think I would do well to read more devotional and theological literature. I'm woefully under-read in the church fathers.

From the '05 Files

Tenuiter Dilexit
By Thomas Banks

I would not have her, though
Hers was the offering;
It is of her I know
My love a common thing.

It is of her I learned
That even the brightest fire
May rise from refuse burned
Upon a reeking pyre.

I would have shared, I know,
Shores rounding living waters;
Sweet substance, but below?
The leech, and the leech’s daughters.

I would have given much;
Myself my present were.
But in return for such
Had asked twice more of her.

I would not have her now,
For both our sakes; for hers,
And pray she find somehow
What fortune she prefers.

And mine, for I have loved not
My own love’s offering;
The love that grace moved not,
A blind, unblessed thing.

So Apparently. . .

I read online that Spielberg is shooting a motion-capture version of some of the Tintin comics. Which is past sweet.

Rudyard Kipling's Thoughts on WWI

If any ask you why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Something I Had Lying around

I will not try you more; you have said "No."
Hope does no credit to herself where she
Gives lies to shield us from the final blow
Of what must pass, as you have passed from me.

-Thomas Banks, 2005-

The Vampire

A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
(We call her a woman who did not care)
But the fool he called her his lady fair
(Even as you and I!)

Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste
And the work of our head and hand,
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
And did not understand.

A fool there was and his goods he spent
(Even as you and I!)
Honor and faith and a sure intent
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(And it wasn't the least what his lady meant)
(Even as you and I!)

Oh the toil we lost and the spoil we lost
And the excellent things we planned,
Belong to the woman who didn't know why
(And now we know she never knew why)
And did not understand.

The fool we stripped to his foolish hide
(Even as you and I!)
Which she might have seen when she threw him aside-
(But it isn't on record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him died-
(Even as you and I!)

And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame
That stings like a white hot brand;
It's coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing at last she could never know why)
And never could understand.

-Rudyard Kipling-

Horace, Ode 4.7

The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
And altered is the fashion of the earth.

The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
And unapparelled in the woodland play.
The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.

Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
Comes autumn with his apples scattering;
Then back to wintertide, and nothing stirs.

But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,
Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams;
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are
And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.

Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
Feast then thy heart, for what the heart has had
The fingers of no heir will ever hold.

When thou descendest once the shades among,
The stern assize and equal judgment o'er,
Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.

Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chain
The love of comrades cannot take away.

-Translated by A.E. Housman-