Poetry, Quotes, and other things

[shadowkat]

1. Some good quotes online today.

Found on FB, which reminded me of where I'd read about Traflmadorians, prior to Slaughter-House Five.

from The Sirens of Titan:

Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren’t anything like machines. They weren’t dependable. They weren’t efficient. They weren’t predictable. They weren’t durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others.
These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame.
And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn’t high enough.
So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too.
And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn’t really be said to have any purpose at all.
The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren’t even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, “Tralfamadore."

From a poem by Percy Blyshe Shelley, reminding me why I preferred the Victorian Poets to the Victorian Novelists oops, he's one of the Romantics, and I actually preferred the Romantic Period to the Victorian period in regards to literature. The Victorians took themselves far too seriously, didn't have much of a sense of humor, and a bit of a superiority complex.

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni
Related Poem Content Details
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters—with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

You should read the whole thing, it's a powerful poem about our relationship with nature. (Thank you, mai, for the link.)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/45130

2. Don't know what to do about this. Apparently you can claim an Open ID and transfer all comments from LJ to DW. Now, I deleted my journal last week -- but I did it after I set up an Open Id account on LJ via dreamwidth and claimed it. I didn't do it for claiming comments, so much as a means of accessing Lj without signing the user agreement, and posting comments on it. I gave up when I realized I couldn't access my own journal through this methodology. I don't know if I inadvertently transferred comments or not.

I imported my LJ to DW when they announced they were moving the servers to Russia. After that I cross posted everything put picture posts, because I couldn't figure out how to post photos to DW. And being an idiot, I didn't force people to comment on DW solely (which is what a lot of my friends did.) I didn't see a reason to import again -- for fear of double posts or double content. And outside of a few additional comments here and there...plus photo posts, nothing major. I don't tend to re-read my journal. I write then forget for the most part. And I don't re-read the correspondence.

Also not a techie. And I don't want to undelete the journal and figure all this out, unless absolutely necessary. And I refuse to sign that user agreement. (Won't bore you again with all the reasons why I deleted and refused to sign. You either get it or you don't at this point.)

I'm thinking of just letting things be. Let the journal stay deleted. Let it be gone. Let go of the past. In a way I want a clean break with it. I saved the fandom stuff. It's just the most recent personal photologues that are gone, which is okay, because I felt a bit exposed by them and am not certain I want that accessible on the internet. Plus they were in locked posts anyhow. And who knows, I may figure out how to repost them.