Sane Inside Insanity: HAPPY NEW YEAR

domenica, gennaio 02, 2005

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Happy new year

I've seen some nice things during these days. The white caps of Apennines across the gulf and the goldfish in the station's fountain. I saw a pheasant in a field during my trip to Milan to celebrate New Year's Eve, and a flying heron in the sunset while coming back. And without meaning to, because I wrote it in two pieces and then pasted them together, this sounds a lot like Roy Batty's final speech in Blade Runner. The heron should be a good thing, howewer.
And before leaving I did a couple of important things which I really had to do. This should help me start the new year with a lighter heart.

The place I booked on the train was in the only broken car. After a bit of a mess i found a place elsewhere: only later i discovered it was a smoking car, but I was too tired to move. The up side: a really kind lady conductor. It doesn't stop here: on the trip back my car was the only one that wasn't heated. And shall I forget the malfunctioning highway turnpike gate which I unfailingly selected coming back to Milan after the party?

However GPS Brida is behaving really well. She is often helpful and takes it graciously and pragmatically when I disregard her directions. Due to my habit of talking aloud in the car, I should tape myself and collect some good dialogue from Dragon's Theodoric and Aelfwine alternately cursing and showering with praise their beloved.

The party was very nice and quiet. I think we were all subdued because of the tragedy in Asia. I don't feel like talking about it. I would probably manage to whine about myself even with this. A few days ago our tv aired a Piero and Alberto Angela program about Pompeii. Maybe it was on purpose, maybe it was in bad taste, but it was very good. Better than the one on the rival program Gaia, which I can't stand with all its special effects. Ancient dead people are not as painful as recent dead people, quite the contrary. Despite the AW debacles, history is still a source of comfort to me.

I've linked to more friends' blogs, so I can try a little more to keep track of them from my foxhole. But I have lots of energy today, enough to travel some 500 km in 2 days. That's incredible! But hush, let us not tempt the gods.

QUOTES

Heart shall be bolder,
harder be purpose,
more proud the spirit
as our power lessens!
Mind shall not falter
nor mood waver,
though doom shall come
and dark conquer.
(The Battle of Maeldon, translated by Tolkien)

He who has a treasure, or a demon in his heart, cannot hide it. (King Theodoric the Great)

I' mi son un che, quando
Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo
ch'e' ditta dentro vo significando.
(Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio)

The lambs will stop for now. But, Clarice, you judge yourself with all the mercy of the dungeon scales at Threave; you'll have to earn it again and again, the blessed silence. Because it's the plight that drives you, seeing the plight, and the plight will not end, ever. (Hannibal Lecter)

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude. (Ernest Hemingway)

Would I embarrass you? Yes, it is possible. You see, I... I am crazy. I take the newer medications, but I still see things that are not here. I just choose not to acknowledge them. Like a diet of the mind, I choose not to indulge certain appetites. Like my appetite for patterns. Perhaps my appetite to imagine and to dream. (A Beautiful Mind)

Night gathers, and now my watch begins.
It shall not end until my death.
I shall take no wife, hold no lands,
father no children.
I shall wear no crowns and win no glory.
I shall live and die at my post.
I am the sword in the darkness.
I am the watcher on the walls.
I am the fire that burns against the cold,
the light that brings the dawn,
the horn that wakes the sleepers,
the shield that guards the realms of men.
I pledge my life and honor to the Night Watch
for this night and all the nights to come.
(GRRM)

Never criticize a person until you walk a mile in their shoes (Atticus Finch)

A warrior for peace is no less a warrior (General Korrd, unwittingly reminding of Yitzhak Rabin)

What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has ever existed? Only innocent lives, Peter. (Sirius Black)

Whatever makes a soldier sad will make a killer smile (Leonard Cohen)

I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can't. (John Coffey)

Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge, - as wild, untutored things are forced to feel - Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! (Starbuck)

I have dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. (Charlotte Bronte)

If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me? (Karen Blixen)

Do not you recognize me, Dumas? I am the rearguard of the Grande Armee. I have stood at Kovno, and thrown the last muskets in the Niemen. I am Marshal Ney. Give me a bowl of soup. (Attributed to Michel Ney).