Murder of Ravens

Not saying anything here that most people haven’t figured out for themselves already, just making it official.  The reason I have delayed writing this for so long is that I kept hoping that I would never have to write it at all.  Even now, as I type these words, I am somewhat astonished at how painful this is.

But I have run out of excuses and rationalizations.  I have run out of ways to kid myself.  I am forced to confront the realization that I’m not being fair to anyone: not to my readers, not to myself, and not to the people who have supported and encouraged me well after I have stopped giving them any reason to do so.

But the truth of the matter is that there are just too many demands on my time from the people in my life who need me.  By the same token, when I do have a few precious moments of free time, there are simply other ways in which I wish to spend them.  Something has to give.

And so, farewell for now.  I have enjoyed the blogging experience, all in all.  I’ve made some friends along the way, and I have had the pleasure and privilege of learning that some other people think I write well.  On my last poem, Annie commented, “When you find that place where your poetry lives, no one does it better. Perfect from beginning to end…”.

There is no better feeling than reading words like that, especially when they come from one whom I hold in high esteem, as a writer and a blogger.

Of course, there are also the feelings of self reproach, knowing that I have disappointed people who believed in me, people like Maureen, Evyl, Annie, and Spaz.  All I can say at this point is that I’m sorry for letting you down.  I wish it could be different, but right now it can’t be.

Oh, and Michael.  Did I mention Michael?  My friend, co-worker, and blogging mentor,  my sense of failure reaches its most profound depths when I consider how much time and effort he invested in me, and how much I have let him down.  Never has a teacher had a more irksome pupil.  And yet I also know he understands, and I am grateful for that.

It is somehow fitting that my last post (not counting this one) should be about him.  He shall be last as he was first.

As for the unanswered comments, all I can say is that I did indeed read and appreciate each comment.  I realize now I should have answered each one as it showed up, rather than allowing them to accumulate with the idea that I would answer them all at once.  Somehow, they just got away from me and I never caught up.  But I want everyone to know that all those comments meant a great deal to me.

And so, farewell.  For now.  Somehow I just don’t believe that this is it.  I’m thinking of this as an extended hiatus.  I do believe I will be back, although I cannot say when.  In the meantime, thanks to all for the support, encouragement, and love you have shown me over the past few years.

-Smith

If there was any doubt in my mind that our society is in a state of steep moral decline, those doubts were erased when I found out about this odious little company.

Now look, I’m not a Pollyanna.  People have been cheating on their spouses since the days of Neanderthal man.  What bothers me here is that now, in the 21st century, the very term “immoral behavior” has become quaint and irrelevant.  Now, it’s Big Business.  Now, it’s all good.  Forget about this little thing called morality, forget about your wedding vows, forget about your spouse’s or your children’s feelings.  There is no more shame in our society, no real notion of right and wrong.  If it feels good to me, then it must be okay.

The very idea that sometimes you just have to say “no” to yourself because what you’re about to do is wrong seems to have become as outdated the top hat and corset.

Once you buy into the mentality espoused by these people, then really, anything is possible.  Life is short, right?  So, for example:

Life is short…..embezzle from your employer!
Life is short…..plagiarize!
Life is short…..steal from your kids’ college fund!
Life is short…..steal gas from your neighbors’ cars!
Life is short…..cheat on your math test!
Life is short……tell her you love her if it gets you laid!
Life is short…..lie through your teeth if it gets you what you want!
Life is short…..desert the military!
Life is short…..stiff the waitress!
Life is short…..lie on that job application!
Life is short…..don’t pay that child support!
Life is short…..use your child support to buy cocaine!
Life is short…..don’t waste time spending it with your children
Life is short…..well, I think you’re getting the idea.

Life is short.  That is the justification for doing whatever the hell you want, to whomever you want.  Nothing else matters, nothing else is important or even relevant except your own personal gratification.

I seem to remember when I was a child I was taught something known as The Ten Commandments.  “Oh, there you go, Smith, bringing religion into it again!” I hear you say.  No, not really.  Allowing for the religious bent of the Bible that obviously colors the first four, aren’t the other six really just a social compact?  Let’s see, what do they really say?

Respect your parents.
Don’t kill people.
Don’t cheat on your spouse.
Don’t take things that don’t belong to you.
Don’t accuse anyone of something they didn’t do.
Don’t covet someone else’s spouse or property.

Gee, I dunno.  These kinda work for me.  It seems to me that they’re pretty hard to argue with, irrespective of your religious beliefs or lack thereof.  You don’t need to believe in God to accept the fact that some actions are just plain wrong and immoral.

I once had a boss who told me he valued integrity even more than honesty.  A callow youth in those days, I asked him what the difference was.  He said to me, “Integrity means doing the right thing when no one is watching you.”  And yet we live in a society in which concepts like respect and honor are seemingly less and less relevant.

To what extent does our society still value things like honesty and integrity?  I’m really starting to wonder.

-Smith

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is far more well known as a composer than a poet.  But in fact he wrote some poetry, including this little ditty about pipe smoking.

Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker

Whene’re I take my pipe and stuff it
And smoke to pass the time away,
My thoughts as I sit there and puff it,
Dwell on a picture sad and grey:
It teaches me that very like
Am I myself unto my pipe.
Like me, this pipe so fragrant burning
Is made of naught but earth and clay;
To earth I too shall be returning.
It falls and, ere I’d think to say,
It breaks in two before my eyes;
In store for me a like fate lies.
No stain the pipe’s hue yet doth darken;
It remains white. Thus do I know
That when to death’s call I must harken
My body too, all pale will grow
To black beneath the sod ’twill turn.
Or when the pipe is fairly glowing,
Behold then, instantaniously,
The smoke off into thin air going,
Till naught but ash is left to see.
Man’s frame likewise away will burn
And unto dust his body turn.
How oft it happens when one’s smoking:
The stopper’s missing from the shelf,
And one goes with one’s finger poking
Into the bowl and burns oneself.
If in the pipe such pain doth dwell,
How hot must be the pains of Hell.
Thus o’er my pipe, in contemplation
Of such things, I can constantly
Indulge in fruitful meditation
And so, puffing contentedly,
On land, on sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God.

Johann Sebastian Bach

(photo courtesy of Marcin’s Pipes and Tobacco blog)

I tied up some loose ends in the previous post, but I wanted to give this little tidbit its own space.

In case you haven’t noticed by now, “Murder of Ravens” has its own domain, “murderofravens.org”. Those good people at WordPress sell domain names for a measly $15 per year, complete with the redirect from the “wordpress.com” domain where all the WordPress blogs are housed. You don’t have to buy the domain from WordPress, but given my lack of technical expertise on these matters, it was just easier to buy it from them since they take care of all the technical junk for you.

Why did I do this, you ask? No really good reason, apart from the ego gratification of having my own domain, plus the fact that “murderofravens.org” seems a little snazzier and is certainly more streamlined than “murderofravens.wordpress.com”.

The only really salient point here is that while it is NOT necessary to change your blogroll or bookmarks, (the old URL simply redirects you to the new one), you SHOULD use the “murderofravens.org” URL if, for some strange reason, you actually feel compelled to link to this blog. Otherwise I may never be made aware of it, since the link won’t show up in my blog stats. Since I really do like to thank people who are kind enough to give me a link (even if I am a bit tardy in doing so), using the new URL will ensure that I see the link and can thank the linker.

I should also mention that there is another blog with a similar name, murderofravens.COM. That is NOT me. I only found out about this when I found I wasn’t able to register murderofravens.com, since it was already taken.

As you might imagine, this was a trifle annoying. After all, one puts a great deal of thought into coming up with a catchy, original name for one’s blog. When I started it, I don’t think I knew three people who even knew what a “murder of ravens” was, so I figured I was being pretty darn original, if I do say so myself. Now I find out that some clever soul has thought up the same name. Oh, well. I suppose cyberspace is big enough for two “murderofravens”.  And besides, .org has a little more cache, I guess.

As always, thanks to all who are so generous with their time and continue visit my little corner of cyberspace.

-smith

I was recently tagged by, of all people, my favorite atheist, “Bad”, over at “The Bad Idea Blog”. I must admit that I was somewhat astonished to be tagged by this highly intelligent, eminently readable, but somewhat dour individual. But on the other hand, it IS a literary meme, so perhaps it’s not so discordant after all.

The rules of this meme go like this:

1. Go to page 123 of the nearest book.
2. Find the 5th sentence.
3. Write down the next 3 sentences.

Pretty easy, as far as this sort of thing goes. This is undoubtedly why he tagged me with this in the first place: anything more involved and I probably would never have gotten to it, inveterate blogslacker that I am.

As it turns out, I happen to be re-reading J. M. Barrie’s “My Lady Nicotine”. Barrie is, of course, far more famous as the author of “Peter Pan”. In fact, Wikipedia makes no mention at all of this work in their entry about Barrie (a work extolling the pleasures of smoking is far too politically incorrect for Wikipedia, presumably).

The book was originally published in 1890, and recounts the adventures of Barrie and his four bachelor friends, Gilray, Marriot, Scrymgeour, and Jimmy (Jimmy’s last name is Moggridge, but for reasons revealed in the book, he alone of the four friends is always referred to by his first name).

While this book is comparatively obscure, it is actually rather popular with us pipe smokers. What makes this book so interesting (at least from my perspective) is that the stories are all related through the prism of the smoking habits of each of the five friends. While cigar smoking is occasionally referred to, it is the pipe which is usually at center stage in each of the short vignettes presented by Barrie. The five friends’ love of a particular mixture, known as the “Arcadia Mixture”, forms the central theme of the book.

Whether you smoke or not, the book is an extremely entertaining visit to late Victorian England, viewed through the eyes of someone who was there. Barrie’s subtle wit is in fine form here, beginning with the first chapter, in which he informs the reader that he has given up smoking. At the beginning of the chapter he is strident (like most reformed smokers) in his declaration that “I am much better without tobacco, and already have difficulty in sympathizing with the man I used to be”, yet by the end of the chapter he grows wistful, and as he launches into his series of tales, we see where his heart truly likes. Strangely, in the description of the book, the reviewer for Amazon.com seems to have complete missed the irony in this chapter.

As an interesting footnote, Barrie was close friends with the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle paid a subtle tribute to his friend in “The Crooked Man”, in which Holmes says to Watson, “You still smoke the Arcadia mixture of your bachelor
days, then! There’s no mistaking that fluffy ash upon your coat.”

So, without further ado, here is my contribution to the meme. Oddly enough, this particular passage has nothing to do at all with smoking.

I stood up and gazed. She was perhaps a hundred yards away fro me, but I could distinctly make out her swaying, girlish figure, her deerstalker cap, and the ends of her boa. (as, I think, those long furry things are called) floated in the wind. In a moment she was safe on the other side; but on the middle of the plank she had turned to kiss her hand to some of her more timid friends, and it was then that I fell in love with her.

-smith