Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Where the hell does this stuff come from??

The forces of the universe have converged, tallied everything that has gone wrong, and laid them squarely at my feet. "J'accuse," they said. And I, beaten, bloody, bruised, with no more desire to put up a defense, accept their verdict. My rights have been stripped: my right to self, my right to happiness, my right to life. Justice has been served. All is well.

I was tempted to write the above so that it looks like free-verse, but I cringed. It's so... pretentious. It woudlve looked like this:

The forces of the universe have converged, tallied everything that has gone wrong, and laid them squarely at my feet.
"J'accuse," they said.
And I, beaten, bloody, bruised,
With no more desire to put up a defense,
Accept their verdict.
My rights have been stripped: my right to self, my right to happiness,
My right to life.

Justice has been served
All is well.


I look at it now and my skin crawls. My only consolation is that Hemingway wrote verses too. He also killed himself, but hey, you cant win 'em all. I read A.E. Hotchner's account of Hemingway's final years in his book Papa Hemingway and he tried to explain the depression Hemingway felt prior to his death, that the man feared he had lost his talent and can't live with that fact anymore. I have a more obvious explanation: he was drugged up to the wazoo. After his twin plane crashes, the doctors prescribed a variety of pain killers and various other drugs. You can't take that much medication without it affecting you. I think things wouldve been different had he stopped taking that lethal pharmaceutical cocktail.

3 comments:

grifter said...

It comes out of one's posterior. That's why you felt it was pretentious. I think we are all entitled to some pretentiousness in our lifetimes, but not at the expense of us being hung up about it and getting the shotgun (are you hearing me, Gonzo Thompson???)

Jego said...

Ive been expelling an inordinate amount of gas lately. Not all of them through the keyboard. Nyahahahahaa!!

grifter said...

Yep, some of them through your ears. nyhahahaha