Cathy in the Wright

A Lileks Moment...

It appears a bug of some sort is running through the house.

The Senator is down with something. Runny nose, coughing, and vomiting. Judging by the red patch beneath his nose, we are out of Kleenex and he's been using 40 grit sandpaper.

This morning I'm starting to feel run down.

And since I was kissing up The Gov pretty good yesterday...I guess that means by tomorrow night, The Senator and I can look forward to some company when we're up again at 4 a.m.

This blows.

Oh well. Dark cloud - silver lining. While sitting up with The Senator this morning, I hauled out one of my old college literature anthologies. Started with Beowulf, skipped over Chaucer and Edmund Spenser, revisited Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus" (from which we get "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships..."), and passed up Shakespeare. Next came John Donne. I always enjoyed Donne. Not a real flowery, kissy-face type of guy. A sample of some of my favorite passages:

From A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning:

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

and his Holy Sonnets rule. Here's No. 7:

At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels; and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go:
All whom the flood did, and fire shall, o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space;
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.

From his Devotions (Meditation 17):

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Great stuff.

Perhaps more than you were bargaining for this morning? Find me a babysitter so I can get some sleep, and I'll be back to posting blonde jokes by tomorrow night.

Excuse me. I'm off to empty the barf bucket and then start in on Milton.

Posted by Cathy at October 28, 2003 04:29 AM