Wednesday, August 27, 2008

I can’t go on, I must go on, I’ll go on


Outside the weather is crappy yet again.

I have to continually remind myself that there are regions in this world where summer is not over in mid-August…That the sun shines more than ten times a year…

It’s just not here in Seattle.

I’m feeling glum today for many reasons. Maybe one reason is that I'm still reading that biography on Samuel Beckett, The Last Modernist by Anthony Cronin. As biographies go, it's not bad, certainly not as exhaustive as Damned to Fame.

Beckett's outlook on life is quintessentially Irish. It is hope amidst suffering, optimistic but cynical…Beckett is a man who, when a friend said about a sunny day, “Isn’t it a beautiful day? Makes one glad to be alive…”, Beckett replied with...

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that…”

But the real reason is I just found out that someone at work has been diagnosed with cancer.

But as Erin (maybe now going as Eloise), one of my students at BCC so elegantly said…

“F**k cancer!”


Life is suffering, as the buddhists say, but life is worth living.

We can't go on, we must go on, we go on.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Life is suffering, as the buddhists say, but life is worth living.
We can't go on, we must go on, we go on."


Sufferin' succotash, how about at least getting it right:

You must go on.

I can't go on.

I'll go on.

Dennis said...

Wow, the amount of empathy for another human's suffering is overwhelming...no sympathies or thoughts on the person with cancer, just..."get the quote right?"

Really?