Life is Real...

Sometimes the seeming futility and endlessness of life reminds me of a poem I list among my favorites. It is

A Parody on a Psalm of Life

Life is real, life is earnest,
And the shell is not its pen –
“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”
Was not spoken of the hen.

Art is long and Time is fleeting,
Be our bills then sharpened well,
And not like muffled drums be beating
On the inside of the shell.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the great barnyard of life,
Be not like those lazy cattle!
Be a rooster in the strife!

Lives of roosters all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And when roasted, leave behind us,
Hen tracks on the sands of time.

Hen tracks that perhaps another
Chicken drooping in the rain,
Some forlorn and henpecked brother,
When he sees, shall crow again.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The words of this poem often come to me when I am suffering from lack of sleep and major assignments are looming in the very near future. The incident that occasioned the remembrance of this poem today and thus memorializing it in my blog was that wonderful institution commonly referred to as Daylight Savings Time. I can assure you that as I look at the clock and the time of 117 AM registers in my somewhat somniatic (yes I just made up a word) state for the second time in an hour, Daylight Savings Time is a myth as it is certainly not light outside. Furthermore, since that said institution, i.e. Daylight Savings Time, has just moved the clocks back one hour, today my 8 hour overnight shift has just been lengthened to 9 hours....and I have 5 major assingments due next week.....why do I do this??? Well...can you think of something better to do with life than to further probe the recesses of my sleep deprived state?? I like adventure and setting the clocks back is almost like crossing the International Date Line without having to travel! Hey...if we set the clocks back an hour everyday for a year would time slow down? Life is real...Life is ernest.......and the sh......Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz