This morning I was chewing on the subject of words. The fact that I love them, play with them, roll them around on my tongue like chocolate. I got to thinking about my next blog and then it struck me again for the umpteenth time in about a week – I am quite happy to go about my life without really talking to my friends and family. Instead I am happy to write my blog, send my mails and texts, connect on FB and tweet.
I would draw the line at doing this with my partner – imagine that (and I have seen teens do this) sitting next to each other on the sofa and sending Skype messages – let your emails make love to each other. Instead of your fingertips reading the braille of your lover’s skin – you type away letting your fingertips touch the plastic, covering yet another item on the to-do list.
I used to say not me! I’m not going to get sucked up into this technology thing, I want to face-to-face people and I stuck to it resolutely until I realised I was so out of the loop, I was going loopy-de-loop, I didn’t get any news and my social life…. ok, ok – you get my point though.
It took me full circle and as I lie in the bath (where ruminating occurs for me) after my workout, I thought of Edwin Brock’s poem below and how apt it has become. Enjoy!
Five Ways to Kill a Man: Edwin Brock
There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it.
To do this properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.
Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.
Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.
In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.
These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man.
Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see
that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century,* and leave him there.
*[now 21st century]
I would draw the line at doing this with my partner – imagine that (and I have seen teens do this) sitting next to each other on the sofa and sending Skype messages – let your emails make love to each other. Instead of your fingertips reading the braille of your lover’s skin – you type away letting your fingertips touch the plastic, covering yet another item on the to-do list.
I used to say not me! I’m not going to get sucked up into this technology thing, I want to face-to-face people and I stuck to it resolutely until I realised I was so out of the loop, I was going loopy-de-loop, I didn’t get any news and my social life…. ok, ok – you get my point though.
It took me full circle and as I lie in the bath (where ruminating occurs for me) after my workout, I thought of Edwin Brock’s poem below and how apt it has become. Enjoy!
Five Ways to Kill a Man: Edwin Brock
There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it.
To do this properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.
Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.
Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.
In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.
These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man.
Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see
that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century,* and leave him there.
*[now 21st century]
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