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Life's Like That (I)
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  Labor & Labour  ·  Labour Party (GB) I  ·  Labour Party (GB) II  ·  Ladder  ·  Lady  ·  Lake & Lake Monsters  ·  Land  ·  Language  ·  Laos  ·  Las Vegas  ·  Last Words  ·  Latin  ·  Laugh & Laughter  ·  Law & Lawyer (I)  ·  Law & Lawyer (II)  ·  Laws of Physics & Science  ·  Lazy & Laziness  ·  Leader & Leadership  ·  Learner & Learning  ·  Lebanon & Lebanese  ·  Lecture & Lecturer  ·  Left Wing  ·  Leg  ·  Leisure  ·  Lend & Lender & Lending  ·  Leprosy  ·  Lesbian & Lesbianism  ·  Letter  ·  Ley Lines  ·  Libel  ·  Liberal & Liberal Party  ·  Liberia  ·  Liberty  ·  Library  ·  Libya & Libyans  ·  Lies & Liar (I)  ·  Lies & Liar (II)  ·  Life & Search For Life (I)  ·  Life & Search For Life (II)  ·  Life After Death  ·  Life's Like That (I)  ·  Life's Like That (II)  ·  Life's Like That (III)  ·  Light  ·  Lightning & Ball Lightning  ·  Like  ·  Limericks  ·  Lincoln, Abraham  ·  Lion  ·  Listen & Listener  ·  Literature  ·  Little  ·  Liverpool  ·  Loan  ·  Local & Civic Government  ·  Loch Ness Monster  ·  Lockerbie Bombing  ·  Logic  ·  London (I)  ·  London (II)  ·  London (III)  ·  Lonely & Loneliness  ·  Look  ·  Lord  ·  Los Angeles  ·  Lose & Loss & Lost  ·  Lot (Bible)  ·  Lottery  ·  Louisiana  ·  Love & Lover  ·  Loyalty  ·  LSD & Acid  ·  Lucifer  ·  Luck & Lucky  ·  Luke (Bible)  ·  Lunacy & Lunatic  ·  Lunar Society  ·  Lunch  ·  Lungs  ·  Lust  ·  Luxury  

★ Life's Like That (I)

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares;

My feast of joy is but a dish of pain;

My crop of corn is but a field of tares;

And all my good is but vain hope of gain.

The day is past, and yet I saw no sun;

And now I live, and now my life is done.  Chidiock Tichborne, Elegy

 

 

In this world I would rather live two days like a tiger, than two hundred years like a sheep.  Tipu Sulta

 

 

The secret of reaping the great fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.  Friedrich Nietzsche

 

 

Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, its awful!  Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, 1955

 

What are we doing here?  That is the question.  ibid.

 

All my lousy life I’ve crawled about in the mud!  And you talk to me about scenery!  ibid.

 

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment.  How many people can boast as much?  ibid.

 

They gave birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.  ibid.

 

 

Ever tried.  Ever failed.  No matter.  Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.  Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983

 

 

I couldn’t have done it otherwise, gone on I mean.  I could not have gone on through the awful mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.  Samuel Beckett, cited Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett, 1978

 

 

Attacking those nerves, Samuel Beckett expressed what he saw as the bleak and desperate desolation of our lives.  But his writing is also about finding ways to face up to that, to endure, to carry on and to laugh.  Samuel Beckett: Not I, Sky Arts 2013 starring Lisa Dwan, Royal Court Theatre

 

Not I is one of Samuel Beckett’s most remarkable plays written in his mid-sixties.  ibid.  

 

His play Waiting for Godot was first staged in Paris in 1953.  ibid.

 

Not I was written in Paris in 1972.  ibid.

 

Mouth: Out into this world, this world … This God-forsaken world … What?  Who?  No! … God?  ha-ha-ha! … No feeling of any kind … What?  Who?  No!  She! …  ibid.   

 

 

Nothing to be done.  Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot ***** starring Stephen Brennan & Barry McGovern & Johnny Murphy & Sam McGovern et al, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Estragon’s opening line

 

Vladimir: May one inquire where his Highness spent the night?

 

Estragon: In a ditch.  ibid.

 

Suppose we repented?  ibid.

 

All people are bloody ignorant apes.  ibid.

 

Estragon: Let’s go.

 

Vladimir: We can’t.

 

Estragon: Why not?

 

Vladmir: We’re waiting for Godot ...  ibid.

  

How about hanging ourselves?  ibid.  

 

Estragon: We’ve no rights any more? ... We’ve lost our rights?  ibid.

 

Estragon: His name is Godot?  ibid.

 

One is what one is.  ibid.  Vladimir

 

You’re not Mister Godot, sir?  ibid.  Estragon to Pozzo

 

The more people I meet the happier I become.  ibid.  Pozzo

 

You can’t drive such creatures away.  The best thing is to kill them.  ibid.

 

The tears of the world are a constant quantity.  ibid.

 

I can’t bear it any longer.  ibid.

 

Will night never come?  ibid.  Vladimir

 

That’s how it is on this bitch of an Earth.  ibid.  Pozzo

 

In the meantime nothing happens.  ibid.  Estragon

 

Nobody comes.  Nobody goes.  It’s awful.  ibid.

 

Waste and pine.  ibid.  Lucky’s monologue

 

I don’t seem to be able to depart.  ibid.  Pozzo

 

Vladimir: That passed the time.

 

Estragon: It would have passed in any case.

 

Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly.  ibid.

 

I sometimes wonder if we wouldn’t be better off alone.  ibid.  Estragon to Vladimir

 

What is there to recognise?  ibid.

 

The best thing would be to kill me.  ibid.

 

I can’t go on like this.  ibid.

 

This is becoming really insignificant.  ibid.  Vladimir

 

We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist.  ibid.  Estragon

 

Let’s abuse each other.  ibid.

 

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse.  ibid.  Vladimir

 

We have kept our appointment.  ibid.

 

We are all born mad.  Some remain so.  ibid.  Estragon

 

We’re bored to death.  There’s no denying it.  ibid.  Vladimir

 

What’ll we do?  ibid.  Estragon

 

Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time!  ibid.  Pozzo to Vladimir

 

I don’t know what to think any more.  ibid.  Vladimir

 

I can’t go on.  ibid.

 

Why don’t we hang ourselves?  ibid.  Estragon

 

I can’t go on like this.  ibid.

 

We’ll hang ourselves tomorrow.  Unless Godot comes.  ibid.  Vladimir

 

 

Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on,  I’ll go on.  Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable, 1959

 

 

Activism doesn’t give up.  Activism doesn’t fall silent.  Activism doesn’t rely on the opiate of hope.  Woody Allen once said, ‘I felt a lot better when I gave up hope’.  Real activism has little time for identity politics, which like exceptionalism can be fake.  These are distractions that confuse and sucker good people.  John Pilger, Socialism Chicago 2009, Power Illusion and America’s Last Taboo; viz also website

 

 

Bad Karma!  Again!  Guys, there’s some dinner on the floor if you want it.  And if you don’t like that that would also be cool.  The Young Ones s1e1: Demolition, Neil, BBC 1982

 

I’m going to kill myself now.  [sticks head in oven] I see things much more clearly now.  Goodbye, Rick.  I’ll probably come back as a lentil.  ibid.  Neil to Rick

 

The woods and the darkness and the howling wind!  Will the snows never cease?  We seem to reach back for ever.  ibid.  Russian couple next door

 

 

Rick: Nothing interesting ever happens to us ... Guys, Guys, look at us.  Squabbling.  Bickering like children.  What’s happening to us?  We never used to be like this ... Nothing ever changes.  Nothing ever happens to us ...  

 

Vyvyan: Monopoly?  The Young Ones: Boring

 

Screw stands guard outside prison: Because you see I look at life like this [tilts head]  ibid.

 

 

What a relaxed life is that which flees the worldly clamour, and follows the hidden path down which have gone the few wise men there have been in the world!  Fray Luis de Leon, Viva Retirada

 

 

Diary of a Nobody by Gordon & Weedon Grossmith was published in 1892 and records the daily battles against Life’s minor injustices of a Mr Charles Pooter.  Faulks on Fiction: The Snob, BBC 2011 

 

 

Believe each day that has dawned is your last.  Some hour to which you have not been looking forward will prove lovely.  As for me, if you want a good laugh, you will come and find me fat and sleek, in excellent condition, one of Epicurus’s herd of pigs.  Horace, Epistles

 

The pathway of a life unnoticed.  ibid.

 

Cease to ask what the morrow will bring forth.  And set down as gain each day that Fortune grant.  ibid.

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