Having made what was on the whole an uneventful trip to the stores I am now supplied with various comestibles to last the week, including some ginger snaps and potato chips (along with a bit of more sensible food) and, of course, the long-desired donuts which will make waking up worthwhile each of the next six days. There is also cheese.
Going out failed to invigorate me today. Usually I get at least a little bit of a buzz off of shopping, but today I just felt tired. Maybe it was seeing all those old people. It's the beginning of the month, and they all just got their checks and were out in force, slowing everything down. Everybody young was apparently home watching football. Anyway, I'm tired. Time to watch young Queen Victoria fail to murder anyone. She wasn't really English, of course, or I'm sure she would have.
Sunday Verse
The Magpie
by Robert S. Warshow
I walked one day
In the Garden of Wasted Things,
And there I found
The bitter ghosts of all that had been spent unwisely,
Or lost through brutal circumstance.
I found the childhood
That some labourer's child had never known;
I found the youth that some young man had squandered;
There I found some poet's genius
That had gone unrecognised.
I saw the ghosts of idle words,
And small talk,
That men had used to waste away the hours.
I saw the hopes that had been smothered,
And all the dreams
That never had come true,
And Laughter that had died for lack of bread.
I met with all the lives that had been misdirected,
And spoke with dreary shades
Of loves that might have been,
And songs that never had been sung.
I met with all these ghosts,
And many more;
And each of them
Sat silently in the shadows,
Brooding over quirks of mad Creation,
And puppets' dreams.