"The word boredom did not enter the language until the eighteenth century*. No one knows its etymology. One guess is that bore may derive from the French verb bourrer, to stuff.
Question: Why was there no such word before the eighteenth century?
...
"Is it because the self first had the means of understanding itself through myth, albeit incorrectly, later understood itself through religion as a creature of God, and now has the means of understanding the Cosmos through positive science but not itself because the self cannot be grasped by positive science, and that therefore the self can perceive itself only as a ghost in the machine? How else can a ghost feel otherwise toward a machine than bored?"
(Walker Percy, Lost In the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book)
There's too much of everything
books, stars, flowers.
How can one flower be precious
in a bed of thousands?
How can a book count
in a library of millions?
The universe is a junkyard
burnt out meteors, busted up stars
planetary cast offs, throwaway galaxies
born and buried in an instant
repeating, repeating
Yet something remains
the dream of fewness
one woman, one man.
(Untitled, The Thomas Merton Poems, J.S. Porter. Moonstone Press, 1998)
Dying
Adam and Eve laid death
at the roots of the Tree of Life
Adam donned a hard hat
and the motto, "Safety First,"
while Eve snuck off
to the Cinema Paradiso
every afternoon for repeat
bargain matinee viewings of
the Bergman film in black & white--
that famous chess game with death.
"The Grim Reaper" became little
Cain and Abel's favorite
Saturday morning cartoon
when they moved out to the suburbs
and could afford cable TV
now that Adam had landed
a sweet promotion to
a management level position.
A little death goes a long way--
the sterile hospital smell,
the clinical distance,
the rubber gloves,
the pain,
the indignity of various
procedures, the cancer
with its claws inside you,
your life stretched out and nailed down
like a man on a cross
You regret the fear, the caution
that cut you off from things.
But then you see and smell
and taste and feel
the substance of your life.
And your mind, Lazarus-like,
shakes off its shroud and walks
in the wonder of it all.
Adam and Eve wake up
from their long sleep.
Drudgery and repetition turn the corner
and learn to be a funeral march
Dixieland style down Bourbon St.
to the gardens of the dead
where these bones lie waiting to be
refashioned for a new
and never ending dance.
(House of Words, J. Potter. Korrektiv Press, 2010)
*that was when people realized that they didn't have Mario Kart.
