With Friends Like These...

Expat@Large offers up a wonderfully positive look at the inevitable truths of life, with a collection of quotes and the above video by a group I've never heard of, but will immediately download from some UTorrent server.

Thirty years later, and I'm still listening to acoustic Neil Young and the depressing yet uplifting songs of Jackson Brown. Still struggling with my firm beliefs in nihilism and clinging to existentialism (hello Camus, stare at the tree root), it's always a pleasure to follow the musings and music recommendations of people like Expat and Spike. Thanks guys.

Smile, we're all gonna die one day. How else to take it, but with a grin, on the chin? What will you leave behind?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An acquaintance of mine, a neighbour of some friends, such a nice bloke, Robbie was his name, I'd had a few beers with him every now and then, including one time I bumped into him and his wife in a hotel cafe in Dubai -- he dropped dead the other day. Woke up feeling dizzy and unwell... Thunk.

Thunk makes you think. He was just 2 or 3 years older than me.

He had a fatalistic attitude in general, I remember. Was sort of pleasantly grumpy, well more cynical (as we all in our 50's are) than grumpy. I can see his face now, serious but amused - it in my memory, in my brain cells, he is part of me. And I wish I had seen him a bit more often, got to know him better. We got on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Everyone's life is its own odyssey. No-one who set sail with Ulysses got home alone...


I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;...