birthday regrets

In November of 1995, the famous Dorati recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Festival Overture was re-released.

Somehow my father and I, while driving separately, though neither of us listened much to the classical station, both caught it on the radio at the same time, and both had to pull over to the side of the road so that the blasting cannons didn't cause us to crash.

I have a hard time making friends, and my father had a hard time making friends, and I think that we could have been good friends to each other; and now that I'm old enough to understand this, it's too late - he's been gone almost two years now.

Happy birthday, Dad.

from The Tempest

...Hell is empty
And all the devils are here.

from "Down at the Cross"

"[I]n our time, as in every time, the impossible is the least that one can demand--and one is, after all, emboldened by the spectacle of human history in general, and American Negro history in particular, for it testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of the impossible."

from Edwin Drood

"And be a friend to me, please; for I don't understand myself: and I want a friend who can understand me, very much indeed."

more comparative literature

From Twilight of the Idols:

Whoever must do secretly, with long suspense, caution, and cunning, what he can do best and would like most to do, becomes anemic[.]

From "A Dream Deferred":

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?

from Twilight of the Idols

" 'What is the task of all higher education?' To turn men into machines. 'What are the means?' Man must learn to be bored. 'How is that accomplished?' By means of the concept of duty. [...] 'Who is the perfect man?' The civil servant."

A version of this idea in song is available here.

overheard on the street

50-something man, indignant, to 40-something woman, sympathetic: "I won't tolerate that kind of behavior in front of the dogs."