Born Shouting

Two peasants discuss the need to rebuild a boundary wall that lies between their properties:

“…my luck is such that no sooner would we complete the task than the sun would go black, with all the toil for naught.”

The first flourished his arms in derisive reject of the argument.

“This is a risk we must assume. Notice: I drink wine, though I may not live to become drunk. Does this deter me? No! I reject the future; I drink now, I become drunk as circumstances dictate.”

from The Eyes Of The Overworld - Jack Vance page 187.

…don’t let fear of the future hold you back…drink to it…

I enjoy a certain degree of irreverence to my superiors, keeps us all on our toes. I like this view of the class system from a character from the most recent work of one of my favourite authors…

Roundly insulting one’s superiors behind their backs was one of the perks of being an inferior…

Choubris, Matter, Iain M. Banks

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To paraphrase Sly, who infamously never said ‘Don’t push me‘ in First Blood (he said ‘Don’t push it‘ in various ways)…

Don’t count me!

As a person in a generation that has so many numbers surrounding and defining us (NHS number, National Insurance number, bank account number, annual income amount, number of shares this and that bank …) I fear that those numbers begin to become me.

I feel I need to heed the warnings of those who came before…(here comes Tamkin again…)

The money. They make a killing by fantasy. Now, counting any number is always a sadistic activity. Like Hitting. In the bible, the Jews wouldn’t allow you to count them. They knew it was sadistic.

Dr Tamkin in ‘Seize the Day (Penguin Modern Classics)‘ by Saul Bellow.

“You are Number Six.”
“I am not a number — I am a free man!”

The Prisoner

With a death in the family a couple of weeks ago, my mind turns somewhat morbid. When in comes to how I would like to be able to approach death, Dylan Thomas says it so well.
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