Sometimes It Gets Like This

I have nothing immediately ready to write in the Journal today so I'm wandering around, pondering, reading blogs and comments, and generally annoying myself by getting in my way. There aren't even any good blog subjects lying about the place at the moment. Just silly thoughts that don't go anywhere.

For example, these two lines from the Saga keep occuring to me:

You offer Quetzalcoatl* to the morning
And I, a screaming Munch**

Why the heck those lines should be relevant today, is beyond me. I suppose I could just leave them there, allowing you to decide whether to go check up on the two names in them, but my need to be understood won't let me. I've put notes at the bottom of this to explain.

The Saga was a very long poem I wrote between the years of oh, about 1970 and 1972, I guess. It was about my thoughts and friends at the time and was, now I think about it, rather intense. I was a very intense young man. Actually, I guess I still am intense, I have learned how to hide it better, that's all. And the Saga sits over there in England with the rest of our stuff, waiting to be transported over here. So there's no way I can put it in here as a cheap way of adding to the blog. Which is a very fortunate escape for you, dear friends.

What is not so fortunate is that ugly word "Munch" in there. Any English-speaking reader is going to read it as "munch", whereas it is actually pronounced "Moonk". And that sounds better but would look ridiculous if I were to put it in the poem. So why put it in at all? I felt I had to; it was the only way to express how I felt at the time...

* Quetzalcoatl - Aztec serpent god; you have probably seen carvings of him on Aztec ruins. He was the god who the Aztecs believed would return to them, disguised as a white man with a beard. Being mistaken for Quetzalcoatl, the Spanish conquistador, Hernando Cortez, was able to stroll in and destroy their civilization.

** Munch - Edvard Munch, Norwegian expressionist painter of the 20th century, most famous for his painting entitled "The Scream" (which you've all seen, even if you don't know it - it is constantly ripped off by the advertising industry). His other paintings were just as expressive as The Scream but are not so immediately accessible. He did entertaining subjects like deathbeds and disease, perfect fodder for adolescent angst to identify with.