Monday, July 28, 2008

Back.

Howdy. I've been back for about a week and I've got a long, long story about my trip. I don't know if I'm going to put it up all at once or serialize it. We'll see. I'm leaning to the all-at-once, though that's usually better for long-form journals than the web. But hell, I'm not going to publish it. If you'll read it, you'll read it together. The internet never forgets--you can always finish it off later. I want to pretty it up with links and pictures, and that's going to have to wait until tomorrow as I'm all tuckered out right now and it's past bed time.

But just to show you how much I love my gentle readers, and let you know you're not forgotten (no, not ever), I'm going to leave you with a poem that I uncovered in my Alaska reading. I can't even express how relieved I was to find this poem.

Cheerio.

The Men That Don't Fit In

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

Robert Service, "Songs of the Yukon"
1907

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