"Truth is stranger than fiction."

I don't think a whole lot of people realize that the quote in the title line of this post is actually Lord Byron.

I've had many an entertaining little chat this week, with friends who've humored me and digested my post on "Byrony" below. I'm actually kind of shocked that anyone was interested, but, alas, yes! One person requested excerpts, and I'm ashamed that I originally failed to provide them. Here are a few of my favorites; each is ripe with musings of "Byrony," if you will--that strange desire to critique the finaglings of the world and its social mores while wanting nothing to do with any of it in one's own life! Byronically, being a critic of something spells emotional involvement in it. Right?

What is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour:
For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,
And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper,"
To have, when the original is dust,
A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.
(from Don Juan)

Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.
(from Don Juan)

And, how could I have forgotten this haunting gem, found scrawled in one of Christopher McCandless' notebooks when they found his body in Alaska:

There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and the music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
[If you haven't read John Krakauer's Into the Wild and/or seen Sean Penn's film adaptation, talk to me! I'll lend you both!]

And how amazing is this?:

"John Keats"

Who killed John Keats?
'I,' says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly;
'Twas one of my feats.'
Who shot the arrow?
'The poet-priest Milman
(So ready to kill man),
Or Southey or Barrow.'

Check ya later.