The Idea-smithy

To ask or not to ask – that is the question
To tell or not to tell – that is the second question
To do or not to do – that is the next question
To confess or not to confess – that is yet another question
To think or not to think – that is an easy question with an impractical answer
To trust or not to trust – that is the most difficult question of all
But…to be or not to be – that is the only one anybody ever thinks of

Dangerous dates got me thinking about Julius Ceaser’s ill-fated ‘Ides of March’
Incidentally every month has an ‘Ides’…its either on the 13th or the 15th.
And the Ides of July is the 15th day of the 7th month….today.
Well, don’t get out of the house and all that……gaaaaakkkk too late….thump!

Nope this isn’t a horror flick fan club and neither is it about the supernatural. It is as a lot of blogs are, about the writer.

So I was born on Friday the thirteenth. And that is all this is about.
No, I don’t have 666 marked on my head (that would be SOME birthmark to show on a passport wouldn’t it?)
Yeaaaaaaah and if I hear one more time about how ‘unlucky’ I am I’ll prove you right!
So why am I making such a big deal out of it?
Most people don’t even remember that in that particular year, the 13th coincided with Friday.
Well…everyone likes to think they’re unique in some way….

Call it symbolic of life…..
Someone born on Friday the thirteenth writes under the blogname of ‘Just a statistic’
How wonderfully mundane…
How typical…

The weather sure is fine.
I like fine food and fine wine.
I am so, so very fine.
Fine to the point of snapping
Hairline fine, gossamer fine
Of course I’m in a fine mess
With all the unpaid fines

Fine, fine, FINE!
Yeah, sure, I’m fine

My choices truncate my life to the popular.

Instinctively I flow with the crowd wherever, it goes
I rush to agree with whatever has the majority vote
Ignoring, denying, repressing anything that contradicts
Rejecting all that stands out
But my heart beats out of time from the common pulse

While I discard unconventional desires that find no place in the format
And stretch my values to fit the world that exists
Try as I might, I cannot muffle that errant rhythm
A constant throbbing reminder that life isn’t just a tight fit…
Its a screaming, hysterical blue fit
Barely contained in such concepts as society, civilization and culture

And the reality that 6 billion rhythms
Are being subdued, altered, muffled, stifled
In an effort to truncate to the median

Mediocrity loves itself but greatness is self-destructive.

Wonderful ideas fizzle out while staid, outdated conventions live on and on. Brilliant geniuses, artists, philosophers, scientists, thinkers are condemned or just throw themselves off the nearest cliff….but the average man celebrates 75 years of existence.

Is that the natural order of things? So that everything ‘medianizes’ after a while?