Musings on MLK,Jr. Holiday

Have you ever read archy and mehitabel by don marquis? It is a great collection of poems. Archy is a cockroach who thinks he was once a poet whose soul went into the body of a cockroach. Everynight he climbs his way onto a computer and after an hour of "frightfully difficult literary labor," he creeps away. (Working on an old-timey typewriter, all his works are in lower case; he can't hold down the "shift" key and type the letter at the same time. That's also the same reason there's no punctuation marks.) His friend, Mehitabal the cat, thinks she was once Cleopatra. (But don't all cats think that?) Anyway, this collection of poems is great. Today being Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, I got to thinking about one of these poems, "the lesson of the moth," and I thought I'd share it:

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what doesn that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myselft i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy

Then I think about a poster I have in my room:

Those who
Stand for nothing
Fall for anything

This day, for me, is more than upholding the words, "All men are created equal." Today is a day that gives me time to reflect upon the people who were so passionate about a cause that they risked ridicule or death (and at times paid that price): Jesus Christ, the men at the Alamo, our soldiers past and present, astronauts, firefighters, policemen, our Founding Fathers, Galileo, the pioneers who traveled west for the first time, Gandhi, all those women who broke the barrier of positions held by men, and the list goes on and on....

Today is a today to think about your passions in life and what you deem important.