Saturday, December 12, 2020

Tweet Of The Day

 

Via @madamjujujive

1 comment:

  1. Marco McClean10:27 pm

    Famous novelty-record comic, writer, professional speaking voice (like the low register of a pipe organ), (and for awhile the mascot/M.C. of Macy's White Flower Days) Scott Beach once in the 1980s did a show in Crown Hall in Mendocino. It was a benefit for an experimental accelerated preschool, where over the course of about two hours he played the piano, the trumpet, the accordion, he danced the soft-shoe, he read the juicy bits from his (separated) wife Neva's then-hot-off-the-press bodice-ripper novel (she was in the audience, embarrassed to smiling tears), and he recited bits of favorite literature from memory, everything from /The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God/ to /The Cremation of Sam McGee/ to /The Lesson Of The Moth/ by Don Marquis:

    the lesson of the moth

    i was talking to a moth
    the other evening
    he was trying to break into
    an electric light bulb
    and fry himself on the wires

    why do you fellows
    pull this stunt i asked him
    because it is the conventional
    thing for moths or why
    if that had been an uncovered
    candle instead of an electric
    light bulb you would
    now be a small unsightly cinder
    have you no sense

    plenty of it he answered
    but at times we get tired
    of using it
    we get bored with the routine
    and crave beauty
    and excitement
    fire is beautiful
    and we know that if we get
    too close it will kill us
    but what does that matter
    it is better to be happy
    for a moment
    and be burned up with beauty
    than to live a long time
    and be bored all the while
    so we wad all our life up
    into one little roll
    and then we shoot the roll
    that is what life is for
    it is better to be a part of beauty
    for one instant and then cease to
    exist than to exist forever
    and never be a part of beauty
    our attitude toward life
    is come easy go easy
    we are like human beings
    used to be before they became
    too civilized to enjoy themselves

    and before i could argue him
    out of his philosophy
    he went and immolated himself
    on a patent cigar lighter
    i do not agree with him
    myself i would rather have
    half the happiness and twice
    the longevity

    but at the same time i wish
    there was something i wanted
    as badly as he wanted to fry himself

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