pynchon-l-digest V2 #2252

[Terrance]

 Paul, this is no lifeboat for old men.  
 But for the young idealist and his song.  

 See those dying journalists, swordless pens,
 The bombs falling, the refugee-crowded seas? 
 
 Fish, flesh, or fowl, denied all Ramadan long.
 Oh hear the bitterness of the young idealist's song. 
 
"old men know not the politics of all neglect
 where the Taliban is destroying monuments of unageing intellect."

No, an  aged man is but a paltry thing,
 A tattered coat upon a stick erected 
with Viagra's spell upon this boat
and weltering in the parching wind"

But  we will consume your heart away; sick with desire
 And fastened to a dying animal
 It knows not what it is.  we will gather it 
 Into the cyber spaces of eternity.

 And once out of nature it shall never take
 an old man's body from the life boat's wake
 But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
 Of hammered gold and gold enameling
 To keep a drowsy President awake
 Or set upon a golden bough to sing
 To young men and little girls 
 of blue gowns and mother of pearls that were her eyes
 and of what is past, or passing for youth in this old lifeboat world. 



Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Paul, for providing such a good example of how, with advancing age,
> people can grow so certain that their convictions -- yours, apparently,
> that this war is inevitable and right and that its critics are inevitably
> wrong -- are beyond question.  Thankfully, I have the opportunity to spend
> a lot of my time with several seniors who remain open to new ideas and who
> welcome discussion and debate of the issues of the day, including this war.
> Some of them disagree with anti-war views, but, unlike you, they don't
> dismiss out of hand the arguments and information presented by the war's
> critics, nor do they work so hard to discredit the war's critics through ad
> hominem attack without engaging any of the points offered for discussion,
> as you have consistently done here.  Instead, they take the time to read
> and think about the spectrum of views regarding the war, before accepting
> or rejecting them.
> 
> And, thank goodness for online journalism, which is in fact one of the only
> links to information and opinions about the way that have in fact been
> systematically excluded from the corporate media in the U.S.  Ridicule the
> messenger if you will, but you can't prevent the message from getting
> through.