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Re: Palooka

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2013 4:15 pm
by Philip Hudson
Very nicely done, but what sixth grader could read this high flown prose? I like your offering, David, because it is packed with erudite descriptions of a town in the sticks. The lad doth protest too much, methinks. Beneath your overburden of humor lies a deep vein of sehnsucht for your idle and perhaps misspent, bucolic youth. Things never were quite what they used to be.

Re: Palooka

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2013 6:46 pm
by LukeJavan8
I'll piggy-back: very, very nicely done. Good images - thanks.

Re: Palooka

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2013 8:15 pm
by David McWethy
PH: I'll let one of the regulars with a higher ranking than mine take on "sehnsucht"; to all others who commented my reaction is much like "A good pun is its own reword" (that is, I'm pleased that my rambling seemed to meet with approval--which made this one of my nicer Father's Days).

Re: Palooka

Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:22 am
by Philip Hudson
Sehnsucht is a German word we have taken into English. In English it has some use in psychology. C. S. Lewis uses it to define human longings that are deep and perhaps unrealizable or ethereal. Many songs, especially country songs, are meant to create a sense of sehensucht.

Re: Palooka

Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 11:27 am
by Perry Lassiter
Also a good word for seeking one's spectacles.

Re: Palooka

Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 9:15 pm
by David McWethy
Sehnsucht is such a fine, elusive wisp of a word that I was going to suggest a more "high-browed" (than "country songs") example: Walt Whitman's closing lines to "Song of the Universal"
Is it a dream?
Nay but the lack of it the dream,
And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream
And all the world a dream.
but my poor old neo-Freudian spell checker had a schizophrenic episode when confronted with "Sehnsucht" and "sehensucht" in the same paragraph. Caught in a classic approach/avoidance conflict, it first timidly suggested "since such" but then considered that there might have been a bawdy intent, so included "sin such" as an option.

Sadly, the observation that
Things never were quite what they used to be"
is true: You can only be Jung once.

Re: Palooka

Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 11:14 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Drum roll and cymbal crash!

Re: Palooka

Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 11:18 pm
by Slava
Drum roll and cymbal crash!
AKA: Bah-Dah-Bing!

Re: Palooka

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 5:14 pm
by misterdoe
I was born in the sticks and my mother's family is even named Hicks, so I come by it naturally.
Hicks from the sticks! I love it! :lol:

Laughing with you, not at you, Philip. :wink:

Re: Palooka

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 12:24 pm
by Philip Hudson
Walt Whitman is unknown it the hinterlands and I am trying to keep it that way. Did you ever read his book of poems, "Leaves of Grass"? He was some kind of sick dude: necrophilia and other rank perversions. There were strong protests over his writings at the time. I believe in freedom of speech. He may get whatever attention he can. I shudder every time I cross the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia. I wince when I think I was exposed to his warped thinking in high school. I wonder that people can pretend to understand and appreciate him. I puke at the very thought of him!

Re: Palooka

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 9:18 pm
by gailr
I rather like many of them.

de gustibus non est disputandum, suum cuique

Re: Palooka

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 9:34 pm
by Philip Hudson
It is sick to imagine wallowing in the pubic hairs of a dead person, no matter how many lilacs bloom at one's door yard.

Re: Palooka

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 10:03 pm
by Philip Hudson
I just noticed I have a "personal tie" to Whitman. As a child, he was kissed on the cheek by the Marquis de Lafayette. My great-great grandmother ,as a child, was also kissed on the cheek by the the Marquis de Lafayette in Montgomery, Alabama. Lafayette was alive at the time.

Re: Palooka

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 10:55 am
by LukeJavan8
As Gail said: "de gustibus.....however :mrgreen:

Re: Palooka

Posted: Wed Jul 03, 2013 4:15 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Walt might be excused if he was high on pot. After all, didn't Leaves of Grass refer to a marijuana patch?