[Video: In a scene deleted from Something’s Gotta Give, Jack Nicholson croons “La Vie en Rose” to Diane Keaton. (The audio was retained, though, as the soundtrack for the film’s closing credits.)]
From whiskey river:
Our task as [humans] is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.
(Albert Camus [source])
…and:
Tomorrow
there will be sun, scalloped by clouds,
ushered in by a waterfall of birdsong.
It will be a temperate seventy-five, low
humidity. For twenty-four hours,
all politicians will be silent. Reality
programs will vanish from TV, replaced
by the “snow” that used to decorate
our screens when reception wasn’t
working. Soldiers will toss their weapons
in the grass. The oceans will stop
their inexorable rise. No one
will have to sit on a committee.
When twilight falls, the aurora borealis
will cut off cell phones, scramble the internet.
We’ll play flashlight tag, hide and seek,
decorate our hair with fireflies, spin
until we’re dizzy, collapse
on the dew-decked lawn and look up,
perhaps for the first time, to read the long lines
of cold code written in the stars….
(Barbara Crooker [source])
…and:
Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.
(G. K. Chesterton [source])
Not from whiskey river:
The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them. I originally said that a cockney lamp-post painted pea-green was better than no light or no life; and that if it was a lonely lamp-post, we might really see its light better against the background of the dark. The Decadent of my early days, however, was so distressed by it that he wanted to hang himself on the lamp-post, to extinguish the lamp, and to let everything relapse into aboriginal darkness. The modern millionaire comes bustling along the street to tell me he is an Optimist and has two million five thousand new lamp-posts, all ready painted not a Victorian pea-green but a Futuristic chrome yellow and electric blue, and that he will plant them over the whole world in such numbers that nobody will notice them, especially as they will all look exactly the same. And I cannot quite see what the Optimist has got to be Optimistic about. A lamp-post can be significant although it is ugly. But he is not making lamp-posts significant; he is making them insignificant.
In short, as it seems to me, it matters very little whether a man is discontented in the name of pessimism or progress, if his discontent does in fact paralyse his power of appreciating what he has got. The real difficulty of man is not to enjoy lamp-posts or landscapes, not to enjoy dandelions or chops; but to enjoy enjoyment. To keep the capacity of really liking what he likes; that is the practical problem which the philosopher has to solve.
(G.K. Chesterton [source])
…and:
Femme du monde
Fat, face the color of blanc on blanc,
smelling of cheap tobacco and many unwashed garments,
from the other end of the car,
the unmistakable melody of La vi en rose
scratched against tender ears of Parisian commuters.
“Not La vi en rose again”, said the young Frenchman facing me.
I understood every word he said.The old woman singing was no tiny sparrow,
no waif.
Her corpulent canine companion was equally uncouth.
She sang Piaf’s signature song with a hostile gusto,
each syllable enunciated loudly.We sniggered as the singing voice came closer.
So close we began to sing along, conspirators, smiling.
And we welcomed the doleful silence at the song’s inevitable end.I gave her a centime or was it two?
She deserved it.
Was she blind?
Did it matter?As for me, I am weary of speaking shattered Spanish with
Argentinean intellectuals
and outmoded American slang with the Moroccan grocer and his
cousins
on the Boulevard Saint-Michel near rue du Val-de-Grâce
And I cannot seem to count past the number, sept!
Gloved hands push apart the Metro’s doors. It is journey’s end.I try singing Piaf’s mysterious refrain, grateful for my own
soulful silly version on the walk towards the rue Henri-Barbusse,
a short slice of street named for a revolutionary
or was he a pirate philosopher?Tired and cheered outside my American language, I am
puzzled with the battered glamour of this city
built for electric illuminations, swift flirtations,
as I follow the paths to dead poets shaped in solemn statuary
harboring the austere lawns of the Jardin du Luxembourg.
(Patricia Spears Jones [source])
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