Back in high school, I started keeping a notebook of quotes I liked, gathering them from the literature we studied in classes, pop song lyrics and even from my teachers. I called the collection "Freaked-out Amoebas," the title coming from a description my senior English teacher made of something I can't remember. I just liked the phrase.
I still have the notebook. It's at Aloe House, not here in Richmond, following a Murphy's Law corollary for people who live in two places that says everything you want is at the other house. I'd love to look at it now, coming up on my 60th birthday, but I can't. So instead here's the beginning of a new version, more than 40 years on.
Some of these quotes were in the original FOA. Others just fit into where I am today. These are more pop-song than literary, but perhaps as we grow older it's easier to remember our cultural immersion rather than our education.
Anyway, some thoughts for the ages and the aging:
From Robert Herrick-
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
From Shakespeare-
And if I laugh at any mortal thing
'Tis that I may not weep.
From Billy Joel-
But you know that when the truth is told
You can get what you want or you can just get old.
You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through.
Ooo, when will you realize
Vienna waits for you?
From Paul Simon-
So I'll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end
And flowers never bend with the rainfall.
and-
Sail on, Silvergirl.
Sail on by.
Your time has come to shine,
All your dreams are on their way.
See how they shine.
Oh, if you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind.
And, of course, from Jimmy Buffett-
And if it doesn't work out there'll never be any doubt
That the pleasure was worth all the pain.
And finally-
If it suddenly ended tomorrow
I could somehow adjust to the fall.
Good times and riches and son of a bitches
I've seen more than I can recall.
These changes in latitude, changes in attitude
Nothing remains quite the same.
Through all of the islands and all of the highlands
If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.
I still have the notebook. It's at Aloe House, not here in Richmond, following a Murphy's Law corollary for people who live in two places that says everything you want is at the other house. I'd love to look at it now, coming up on my 60th birthday, but I can't. So instead here's the beginning of a new version, more than 40 years on.
Some of these quotes were in the original FOA. Others just fit into where I am today. These are more pop-song than literary, but perhaps as we grow older it's easier to remember our cultural immersion rather than our education.
Anyway, some thoughts for the ages and the aging:
From Robert Herrick-
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
From Shakespeare-
And if I laugh at any mortal thing
'Tis that I may not weep.
From Billy Joel-
But you know that when the truth is told
You can get what you want or you can just get old.
You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through.
Ooo, when will you realize
Vienna waits for you?
From Paul Simon-
So I'll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end
And flowers never bend with the rainfall.
and-
Sail on, Silvergirl.
Sail on by.
Your time has come to shine,
All your dreams are on their way.
See how they shine.
Oh, if you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind.
And, of course, from Jimmy Buffett-
And if it doesn't work out there'll never be any doubt
That the pleasure was worth all the pain.
And finally-
If it suddenly ended tomorrow
I could somehow adjust to the fall.
Good times and riches and son of a bitches
I've seen more than I can recall.
These changes in latitude, changes in attitude
Nothing remains quite the same.
Through all of the islands and all of the highlands
If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.
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