Quote of the Day: TS Eliot

TS Eliot may have once said, "There are no causes that are permanently lost, because there are no causes that are permanently won." There is no significance to this quote today other than the fact that I have always liked it because it comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. It's probably a good thing that neither winners nor losers can afford to rest on their laurels because the criteria for deciding which one you are is incredibly vague.





Have you ever seen somebody who looked so out of place that you couldn't help trying to figure out what what route led them to that particular point in their life? Like for instance, what personal, historical, and metaphysical forces shaped the world in such a way that a real cowboy (not the Village People kind) found himself moseying along in front of Pike's Place Market at 5:30AM on a Monday morning. I mean this guy did not fit in at all. He wasn't a construction worker heading to the early shift, a homeless man digging through trash, or an important person wearing khakis and carrying a laptop case. This guy looked like he had wandered in from the set of Bonanza. He was wearing a dusty cowboy hat, a leather coat with a western fringe, a vest, a bolo tie, and boots that looked like they had kicked a few piles of manure in their day. He was also very old and hunched over like he'd been sitting in the saddle for too long. You could just tell he said "dadgummit" a lot and chewed tobacco. There was also no doubt in my mind that he could castrate a bull with his bare hands. So what was he doing in downtown Seattle at five in the morning walking around like it was Laredo, Texas? Maybe there was some kind of cattle drive I didn't hear about this weekend. If I hadn't been too involved in my own little world, I probably would have asked him what his story was.





This morning I realized how excited I am to see Harold Pinter's play Betrayal this week. I am seeing it this Wednesday night at the Rep and it's been forever since I've seen a real play. I really should see more plays because my knowledge of modern drama is the weakest arrow in my quiver of American literature. I know enough names to fake my way through a conversation but that's about it. Speaking of wining and losing, Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize and then died shortly thereafter. Talk about winning and losing at the same time.