Woodpile Reflections

Yesterday I spent the afternoon stacking the woodpile, carrying bits of cut wood from one place to another and trying to fit it all together, along with Dad and Jeremy. It's a repetitive job, and I had that song stuck in my head, from Avenue Q; 'Only For Now' (or whatever it's called). I was thinking about the future, you know, what to do with the rest of my life and all that, so I guess that's what called it to mind, it starts something like this:

"Everyone's a little unsatisfied,
Everyone goes round a little empty inside"
But it's actually kind of comforting, particularly when it gets to the end, where the structure is more repetitive, like this:

"For now we're healthy, for now we're employed,
For now we're happy, if not overjoyed"
And it's getting hard to rememberr, so wilfully cut-and-pasted:
"Only for now!
(For now there's life!)
Only for now!
(For now there's love!)
Only for now!
(For now there's work!)
For now there's happiness!
But only for now!
(For now discomfort!)
Only for now!
(For now there's friendship!)
Only for now (For now!)
Only for now!"

And for some reason this reminded me of an Old English poem, I think it's The Wanderer, and the lines which, in translation, go something like this...
"Here wealth is transitory, Here friends are transitory,
Here man is tranistory, Here kin is transitory"

This sounds more gloomy, all this pleasant things are passing away, but it comes after a litany of hardships, and I think it's part of the consolation of the poem (if you're interested, I wrote an essay talking about this sort of thing, you can read it if you want, or I have bibliographical references... ;P) so anyway it's essentially saying the same thing as the song: nothing lasts, and that is both good and bad.
It seems almost ironic, here are two 'poems', one written around a thousand years ago by a scribe in Anglo-Saxon England, the other performed on Broadway only a year or so ago, both talking about how nothing lasts. There is some continuity in life, and that is that nothing lasts. Strange, no?

Which reminds me of one more song, Gary Shearston's 'Balmain Backyard':
"In a Balmain backyard, observing Saturn,
My heartstrings record, an unchanging pattern"

I really only included the first line for atmosphere... Our lives may be changeable, unpredictable, prone to ending, but they are in a way part of a pattern of human life of which some things are the same thousands of years later. And reminds me of the Norse idea of the Wyrd (I think) who wove the lives (or rather fates) of men on a giant loom. So we're all threads on a giant tapestry here. There's things that could be said about the word 'wyrd' and the concept of fate, but I don't know enough about it really...

So that brings me a long way from where I started, but seemed like a good way to occupy myself while stacking a woodpile at the beginning of summer. And if anyone is still reading this blog, I hope it was a pleasant enough way of killing some of the summer-holidays time. :)