Yesteryear (comedy)
| Taliesin Wordweaver |
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In modern times, we like to whine
our modern luxuries aren't so fine as what we had in yesteryear, when work was work, the boundaries clear between the punch-clock and house, the bands of commitment clean, and we worked with our hands. No telecommute, no ringing phone, when we were home, our time was our own. The old-timers say it's true: They must be right, and so must you. The ages always seem this way. Night seems nice by bustling day. In eighteen-hundred and twenty-two, Wordsworth said the same as you. He said that man was corrupt and frail, and all his works are false and pale, and only Nature's work is pure, and Mortal Man cannot endure. Our feeble wits cannot suffice, our lifetime comes but once, not twice. So bow to Nature, and new-tilled earth! In sprouting seeds we find rebirth. Such is Truth, Romantics say. But millennia before his day, others put to word and rhyme distaste for mortals' use of time. We tilled our Mother Earth's own flesh, and sowed our seed to reap and thresh with brutal strokes of the keening flail Society had waxed too frail. It had to cleave to a higher path, or face our ancient Mother's wrath. In older times, when Men were Good, and nothing harder than living wood was shaped by hand (excepting bone, or saber-teeth, or flinty stone), not even then was Mankind pure. The best of times can never endure. The glory days were already gone like melting frost at golden dawn. But back before we mammals were cursed, when chewing was novel, and fur a first, then, oh then, we got it right! Our niche was snug, but not too tight, and all was just as it ought to be: We lived in perfect harmony. I mourn the loss of that happy time, when our forebears’ lives were truly sublime. Although to tell the truth, I wish that I had been born in the age of fish, before we leggy things were made, and vertebrates first declined to wade in shining pools and noble ponds encircled by primaeval fronds. Or better, monocellular form, when righteous living defined the norm. Amino acids knew their place, no sign of pride besmirched their face. Then was all as it ought to be, but now it's not, as all can see. |
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