What Book Is This?

Ever read the book that this is from? Forgive me if I misquoted it- this should be pretty close:

"We are the centuries
We are the chin-choppers and the golly-woppers
and soon we shall discuss the amputation of your head

We are your singing garbagemen, Sir and Madam
and we march in cadence behind you, chanting
rhymes that some find odd

We have your eoliths
and your mesoliths and your neoliths
we have your
Babylons and your Pompeiis
your Caesers and
your chromium-plated
vital-ingredient -impregnated artifacts

We bury your dead, we bury your reputations and we bury you

We are the centuries"

I seem to have made a habit of reading this book every ten years- not so much by choice, but more because it just seems to be around whenever I really need a book and can't seem to find a new one.

I think it finds me . I always find something new in it.

Published in 1959 (remaining in print to this day), I first read it during the tail-end of the Cold War, again during the relative peace and prosperity of the 90's and once more just a few weeks ago. It scared and entralled me the first time, amused and inspired me the second time and returned to terrorize me again during it's latest visit.

Not that it scares me in the same way that a hungry alligator or a mustard gas attack does- it just reminds me that all things, even what seem to Chaos and Entropy , are cyclical- at least in regards to mankind and the human experience- likely the Cosmos as well, but that's outside my scope of comprehension.

Seeking, learning, loving , hoping, suffering, dying - these are our living mandates. It's what we do with them that matters- if it matters for a moment or a hundred lifetimes, it's still only temporary. Until the next time.

If there's always a next time, why struggle so much with the present? Or, as my Inner Nihilist annoyingly insists-"why bother?-nothing you do makes any difference."

Sometimes I want to throttle my Inner Nihilist . He's got a depressing sense of the absurd and I fear he knows more about life than I do- which pisses me off, as my I.N. is often wrong about so much other stuff. Why can't he be wrong about NOW?

Maybe he is. Maybe he is.