From the mouths of babes . . .

There is nothing that clears a frustrated mind quite like a little time spent at the happiest place on earth. I really cannot tell you how much I enjoy that little slice of Anaheim, and consequently I cannot tell you exactly what I find so enjoyable about Disneyland, but one of those factors definitely has to be listening to the conversations that kids have with each other, and wonder to myself if I was ever prone to the same leaps of logic that these children take on a regular basis. This example has to be my favorite from yesterday afternoon; two young boys, who have randomly met in line to get into Disneyland and who are both clutching stuffed animals, begin to discuss which of their stuffed animals would be victorious if they were ever to enter into a physical altercation. Boy #1 is holding a cheetah and Boy #2 is holding a dog, and their conversation went something like this . . .

Boy #1: RAaarrRgh!
Boy #2: Rooowff!!
Boy #1: There's no way a dog could beat a cheetah!! Cheetahs eat dogs for breakfast!


(A short period of silence ensues)


Boy #2: . . . Not a dog with SUPERPOWERS!!!!


If only all answers in life were so obvious.

Because good poetry should never be kept to oneself

To Will. H. Low.

Youth now flees on feathered foot.
Faint and fainter sounds the flute,
Rarer songs of gods; and still
Somewhere on the sunny hill,
Or along the winding stream,
Through the willows, flits a dream;
Flits, but shows a smiling face,
Flees, but with so quaint a grace,
None can choose to stay at home,
All must follow, all must roam.

This is unborn beauty: she
Now in air floats high and free,
Takes the sun and breaks the blue; --
Late with stooping pinion flew
Raking hedgerow trees, and wet
Her wing in silver streams, and set
Shining foot on temple roof:
Now again she flies aloof,
Coasting mountain clouds and kiss't
By the evening's amethyst.

In wet wood and miry lane,
Still we pant and pound in vain;
Still with leaden foot we chace
Waning pinion, fainting face;
Still with grey hair we stumble on,
Till, behold, the vision gone!
Where hath fleeting beauty led?
To the doorway of the dead.
Life is over, life was gay:
We have come the primrose way.
-Robert Louis Stevenson


Nothing much to add to this, but a resounding Wow! and one extra thought of mine; there are, in the whole of literature, very few pieces that evoke feelings from me as strongly as music does. This is one of those pieces.

And Ms. Cannon, if you ever read this, I finally did read Treasure Island, and it was fantastic. Although it is odd to think that the same man who wrote this also made these lines famous;

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!"

Go figure.

In which I dearly wish to be somewhere else

"Who can tell how scenes of peace and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers in close and noisy places, and carry their own freshness, deep into their jaded hearts! Men who have lived in crowded, pent-up streets, through lives of toil: and never wished for change; men, to whom custom has indeed been second nature, and who have come almost to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their daily walks: even they, with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature's face; and carried, far from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once into a new state of being, and crawling forth, from day to day, to some green sunny spot, they have had such memories wakened up within them by the mere sight of sky, and hill, and plain, and glistening water, that the foretaste of heaven itself has soothed their quick decline, and they have sunk into their tombs as peacefully as the sun: whose setting they watched from their lonely chamber-window but a few hours before: faded from their dim and feeble sight! The memories which peaceful country scenes call up, are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we loved: may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old emnity and hatred; but beneat all this, there lingers, in the least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed conciousness of having held such feelings long before, in some remote and distant time; which calls upon solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride and wordliness beneath it"
-Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

I can think of few things more enjoyable than reading Dickens while listening to Vaughn Williams. But oh to read Dickens in the company of the rustling grass, with a friendly oak or amber looking over your shoulder! To listen to the melody of the wind as it tumbles over hillsides and rivers, rather than the sound that struggles out of my computer speakers! To look up from my book and see not the drab, off-white of my ceiling, but the deep and clear blue of a country sky!

And on a (somewhat) unrelated note . . .

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. It also makes one go a bit funny in the head.