Excelsior! – Yeah, Right

Posted on by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized
(Excelsior: a Latin word meaning loftier,
used in English as an interjection meaning Ever upward)
***
 
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ‘mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
      Excelsior!
 
His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
      Excelsior!
 
“Try not the Pass!” the old man said;
“Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!”
And loud that clarion voice replied,
      Excelsior!
 
In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
      Excelsior!

“Oh stay,” the maiden said, “and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast! “
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
      Excelsior!

***
A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
      Excelsior!
 
There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell like a falling star,
      Excelsior!
 
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 
***
 

IMG_2677I should have posted a list of resolutions on January 1.

I should have said, In 2014, I will write a blog post every day and write one short story a month and submit it for publication and finish my novel and query agents and sign with one and impress a publisher so much that he will offer a 6-book contract and an enormous advance to publish the novel and will pay for a coast-to-coast book tour and I will graciously accept and while waiting for the book tour I will lose 800 pounds and finish my second novel and I will reduce clutter and I will run a marathon and I will read Moby Dick and all of Henry James’ novels and I will learn to cook and will put a tasty and nutritious dinner on the table every night and I will read a book a week and will practice the piano and take voice lessons and a conversational Spanish class and I will, by January 1, 2015, be such a paragon of perfection that I will never have to make another New Year’s resolution ever again.

But all this week, I’ve been in a beastly mood, just waiting for some unsuspecting person to do something nice so I could switch on my evil eye, and that feeling was compounded when Ernest ate six inches of ribbon that was hanging from David’s birthday balloon, which we didn’t think he could reach but were we ever wrong, and then I stayed up two nights watching him for symptoms before delivering him to the emergency clinic Wednesday night and at dawn Thursday picked him up and delivered him to his regular doctor, who this afternoon said so far he seemed okay and probably just needed to come home and move around and relax because he’d been sort of frozen up, not because he was scared but because he didn’t like the people there, from which description I gather he was in a beastly mood, too.

To make a long post short, I don’t want to write about resolutions, much less make them, and even worse, I don’t want to spend 2014 striving to become a better and more productive person.

I want to recline in a vat of chocolate.

Anyway, to show I’m still a good person even though I don’t want to be, I’ll share this post from Totsymae: 9 Rules on How to Be Fabulous in 2014.

Nobody knows more about being fabulous than Totsymae, and I’m not talking everyday, garden variety fabulous. (To wit: Rule 1. Carry breath mints.)

I’ll be back in a day or two and maybe then I’ll have something more edifying to impart.

 

11 thoughts on “Excelsior! – Yeah, Right”

    1. You have any idea where that agent is waiting? Because we could go there and try to flush him out.

      You’re welcome and thank you for writing your blog. I’d like to copy your posts and paste them into my blog and tell people I wrote them. I won’t, but I sure would like to.

      Happy New Year, and Happy Blogging in 2014.

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  3. I just love reading your blog, Kathy. I say we should all just do the things we love to do. If I did the vat, I would choose dark chocolate with roasted almonds and sea salt….and then lapse into a sugar coma. I probably wouldn’t do the vat. I Just got back from a wintery walk to the spillway with Mark and the dogs. Ice fisherman drilling it up and reeling in rainbow cutthroat. Yes! Sunshine and very cold temps. Love it. Happy New Year!

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  4. Sunshine and very cold temps–what joy! I’m glad you like the blog. I wouldn’t really do the vat either, because I don’t like to be all sticky, but the dark chocolate with sea salt, five pounds of bonbons, a big pan of fudge, those would be okay.

    Happy New Year to you and all your family.

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  7. All mine made and broken already, Kathy, ten days in. Ho hum.Lovely piece of Longfellow.
    I have been in similar curmudgeonly form. Nothing fits, and everything is ill suited. I have elected to solve this whole ghastly shadow-world with an excellent and expensive haircut paid for with my Christmas money. I shall hold a war-council with myself over that cup of tea they always offer you, gazing at my transforming self in the hairdresser’s mirror.
    Here’s to an epiphany for each of us, and one that does not involve crazy stargazing men calling themselves wise.

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  9. I smiled reading this post ~ been there, done there, got the t-shirt. Your cat is gorgeous. Hope he’s no worse for the ribbon ingested.

    Don’t worry about the resolutions. You’re in good company. Most people have broken theirs already.

    Or, if you want one, pick a good one ~ “Eat chocolate every day.” I bet you’ll nail it!

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