[ExI] Jack London on primeval feelings

[Jeff Davis]

I only just noticed this post today, as I was cleaning out my inbox.
A previous submission of the "literary" sort had prompted me to flag
Robert as a "person of interest".  And now this.

I think it was 1982.  I'd pulled substitute teacher duties for an
English class at Oceana HS in Pacifica.  The assignment was to read
JL's "Love of Life".  Each of the kids would read a paragraph or two
and then pass it on.  There wasn't time enough to read the whole
thing, so two classes running, we got about two thirds of the way
through.

The next day, I went to the library at SF State, where I was a student
in ME and/or Physics, checked out an armful of JL, and
retired to read it all, starting with the last third of "LoL".
Understand.  I abandoned my "legitimate academic pursuits".  Dumped
them completely, jettisoned utterly, never looked back --
"...renounced my baptism, all seals and symbols of redeemed sin..." --
and began a new "career" as a curiosity-led, self-indulgent denizen of
libraries, wastrel, and wise-ass.

Dame fortune is fickle.   Not impressed with the Puritans.  Otherwise
how can you explain my lush retirement, my summer home in BC, my
winter home in Baja?  For each plaintive cry that life's unfair, some
undeserving scoundrel somewhere is smiling, taking up the slack,
enjoying an extra helping,... of good luck.  When this grasshopper,
having spent his summer singing and dancing, stood in the doorway of
the industrious ants, shivering in the winter chill, was he turned
away, as the fable requires?  Nope.  Sorry.  No schadenfreude for you
today.  Rather, I was beckoned toward the warmth of her chamber by the
queen ant in a fetching neglige, a snifter of wine in one hand,
fragrant lotion in the other.  Go figure.

Better to be lucky than smart.

And it started with Jack London.

Best, Jeff Davis

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well
please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take
the consequences."
                                                              P.J. O'Rourke



On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 9:47 PM, Robert Masters <rob4332000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> >From Jack London's THE CALL OF THE WILD
> (arranged as verse):
>
>
> With the aurora borealis
> flaming coldly overhead,
> or the stars leaping in the frost dance,
> and the land numb and frozen
> under its pall of snow,
> this song of the huskies
> might have been the defiance of life,
> only it was pitched in minor key,
> with long-drawn wailings
> and half-sobs,
> and was more the pleading of life,
> the articulate travail of existence.
>
> It was an old song,
> old as the breed itself--
> one of the first songs of a younger world
> in a day when songs were sad.
>
> It was invested
> with the woe of unnumbered generations
> this plaint
> by which Buck
> was so strangely stirred.
>
> When he moaned and sobbed,
> it was with the pain of living
> that was of old
> the pain of his wild fathers,
> and the fear and mystery
> of the cold and dark
> that was to them fear and mystery.
>
> And that he should be stirred by it
> marked the completeness
> with which he harked back
> through the ages of fire and roof
> to the raw beginnings of life
> in the howling ages.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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