Paul Fort passed in 1960 in France.
He wrote:
Le bonheur est dans le pré, cours-y vite, il va filer...
Happiness is in the meadow; go quickly, before it runs away...
If he had been born in 1960, he might have written:
Le bonheur est dans le pré, cours-y vite, on va filer...
Happiness is in the meadow; go quickly, you can score....
("score" in the sense of buying drugs.)
And this reminded me of my flu shot last November. As we walked up to the nurses' table with doses of the vaccine arrayed in syringes, I said "Hi! We're looking for Needle Park."
I have no idea if anyone else was familiar with the book Panic In Needle Park, but it got a laugh anyway. So I dream of panic in the park and happiness in the meadow, and then I mix the two with indignation, savage indignation that continues to lacerate.
Everything seems so very stupid these days. I do not know how to describe it. It's like getting off a train into some odd country where everyone is on edge, but no one seems to know why. It is the middle of our winter, and the closed windows of cars waiting at the train station are heavily fogged to the point of condensation beginning to drip down the glass, and you wonder why no one cracks a window open for a little fresh air. Everyone wears The North Face and when they talk, it is filtered through layers of Polartec.
I would rather talk of the Image Grammar of Jacques Tati or Steven Spielberg than read about modern day discontents forced in to Foucault's philosophy. Ridley Scott's Alien - in my mind - started a Gothic pageantry and philosophy in the imagination that I find more interesting than Rimbaud right at the moment.
Why can we not jump over our self-imposed limits and run quickly to the meadow where that strange aurochs named Happiness ruminates?
I have no idea if anyone else was familiar with the book Panic In Needle Park, but it got a laugh anyway. So I dream of panic in the park and happiness in the meadow, and then I mix the two with indignation, savage indignation that continues to lacerate.
Everything seems so very stupid these days. I do not know how to describe it. It's like getting off a train into some odd country where everyone is on edge, but no one seems to know why. It is the middle of our winter, and the closed windows of cars waiting at the train station are heavily fogged to the point of condensation beginning to drip down the glass, and you wonder why no one cracks a window open for a little fresh air. Everyone wears The North Face and when they talk, it is filtered through layers of Polartec.
I would rather talk of the Image Grammar of Jacques Tati or Steven Spielberg than read about modern day discontents forced in to Foucault's philosophy. Ridley Scott's Alien - in my mind - started a Gothic pageantry and philosophy in the imagination that I find more interesting than Rimbaud right at the moment.
Why can we not jump over our self-imposed limits and run quickly to the meadow where that strange aurochs named Happiness ruminates?
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3 comments:
I think we can. But only for our own inner peace. The chaos, panic and idiocy is still all around.
I don't know what else to say. You've expressed this very well. My mind attaches to your words with something like relief.
We are a tragic race, perhaps, that finds relief in the description of our discontent.
As time goes on, I think we shall say less and less, for our words - if true and good - will only have an effect on coming generations. The present age will find no conversion to glory because it seeks none; it believes it has already found it.
The manner in which you expressed yourself reminds me of certain aspects of Galla Placidia of Rome, but there is no St. Paul around these parts, alas.
I refer to Galla's spiritual journey...
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