05:42 - 16.10.05
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It's late - or very early - depending on your point of view, of course. Getting up just now or going to bed. I'm doing the latter so my choice is door number two. My day was very quiet except for getting the quote for the work I had had an estimator come in to do. Quite honestly it was within range of what I expected. In a hot housing market building materials do not come cheaply. Actually the materials listed were at a very good rate and the labour is worth the priice if it is done well and on time. Still, when the young woman who was asked to fax it to me read it she yelped and commented oh - that is a huge, huge sum of money. Marketing 101 - don't scare your clients. Whatever, the work has to be done or it will cost a lot more later. Can you tell that I'm trying to convince myself of that yet?
This article on the Hunter's Moon coming up at 6 in the am local time on Monday morning was interesting. Given there is a lunar eclipse at the same time it should make for an interesting journey in to work. These days sunrise is over an hour later than the eclipse you see so we will see it, if you see what I mean. Yes I know I'm a bit punchy. I think this sonnet of Shakespeare's sort of captures the flavour of the moment.
XIV.
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
Anyway now "To sleep. Perchance to dream.."Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
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