lonely

Poetry: Johnny Mercer’s “Early Autumn”

art, language & literature / /

Man, these are beatiful, evocative lyrics by Johnny Mercer:

When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze
and touches with her hand the summer trees,
perhaps you’ll understand what memories I own.

There’s a dance pavilion in the rain all shuttered down,
a winding country lane all russet brown,
a frosty window pane shows me a town grown lonely.

That spring of ours that started so April-hearted,
seemed made for just a boy and girl.
I never dreamed, did you, any fall would come in view
so early, early.

Darling if you care, please, let me know,
I’ll meet you anywhere, I miss you so.
Let’s never have to share another early autumn.

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David Foster Wallace on TV, loneliness, & death

art, language & literature / /

From Larry McCaffery’s “Conversation with David Foster Wallace” (Dalkey Archive Press at the University of Illinois: Summer 1993):

One thing TV does is help us deny that we’re lonely. With televised images, we can have the facsimile of a relationship without the work of a real relationship. It’s an anesthesia of “form.” The interesting thing is why we’re so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness. You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.

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Living in a cave behind your house

commonplace book, law, weird / /

From Reuters’s “Chinese fugitive leaves cave after 8 years” (5 October 2006):

A Chinese man wanted by police on gun charges has given himself up after hiding in a cave constructed at the back of his house for eight years, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The 35-year-old man from the southeastern city of Fuzhou had tunneled the cave out of a hill behind the bedroom of his house and had put a wardrobe in front of the entrance as a disguise, Xinhua said in a report seen on Thursday.

The man, named as Liu Yong, left the cave during the day to read, wash and watch television in the house, but went back into it at night, it said.

He told his wife he was hiding from debt collectors, the report said.

Xinhua said Liu was accused of attacking people with guns, but it didn’t give any more details.

Liu gave himself up to police on Tuesday after no longer being able to cope with the “psychological pressure”, Xinhua added.

Some of his accomplices have already been sentenced to death, it said.

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Dead five years before he was discovered

commonplace book, true stories, weird / /

From Reuters’s “Body found in bed 5 years after death” (4 October 2006):

Austrian authorities have discovered the body of a man who apparently died at home in bed five years ago, a Vienna newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The corpse of Franz Riedl, thought to have been in his late 80s when he died, went undetected for so long because his rent had been paid by automatic order from the bank account into which he received his pension, the daily Kurier said.

Neighbors said there was no strange smell coming from Riedl’s apartment and authorities who found the body after a court order was given to enter said his body appeared to have “mummified” and was well preserved.

“He had been frail and a woman had helped him,” the husband of the apartment block’s caretaker told Kurier, adding that mail had always piled up outside the pensioner’s flat. “We thought he had moved in with her or gone to an old people’s home.”

Police said they were not certain as to exactly when the man had died, but that they had found only schilling notes in the apartment — the currency used by Austria before the introduction of the euro on January 1, 2002.

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Kaspar Hauser

commonplace book, history, language & literature, weird / /

From Damn Interesting’s “Feral Children“:

One of the more mysterious cases is that of Kaspar Hauser, who was discovered in Nuremberg, Germany in 1828. He was unsteady on his feet, held a letter for a man he had never met, and only spoke the phrase “I want to be a horseman like my father is.” The letter was addressed to the captain of the 4th squadron of the 6th cavalry regiment:

Honored Captain,

I send you a lad who wishes to serve his king in the Army. He was brought to me on October 7th, 1812. I am but a poor laborer with children of my own to rear. His mother asked me to bring up the boy, and so I thought I would rear him as my own son. Since then, I have never let him go one step outside the house, so no one knows where he was reared. He, himself, does not know the name of the place or where it is.

You may question him, Honoured Captain, but he will not be able to tell you where I live. I brought him out at night. He cannot find his way back. He has not a penny, for I have nothing myself. If you do not keep him, you must strike him dead or hang him.

Kaspar was about sixteen years old, but he behaved like a small child. At first, when a mirror was handed to him he would look behind it trying to find the person behind the mirror, and he burned his hand while touching a candle’s flame in curiosity. Kaspar had excellent night vision and a keen sense of smell. He detested meat and alcohol, and was offended by the smell of flowers. Unlike many of the other cases described here, Kaspar did learn much over time, eventually learning to speak enough to describe the small cage in which he had been raised, and the mysterious keeper who finally released him outside of town. But about five years after appearing from nowhere, Kaspar was assassinated. The reason for his murder might be because some believed he was the missing heir to the throne of Baden. His assassin lured him away under the pretense that they would reveal who his parents were, and stabbed him fatally in the chest. The mystery of his early life and violent death has never been satisfactorily answered.

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Dead for 3 years

commonplace book, true stories / /

From The Telegraph‘s “Skeleton woman’ dead in front of TV for years“:

A woman’s skeleton was discovered in her flat three years after she is believed to have died, it emerged today.

Joyce Vincent was surrounded by Christmas presents and the television and heating in her bedsit were still on.

The 40-year-old’s body was so decomposed that the only way to identify her was to compare dental records with a holiday photograph.

Police believe she probably died of natural causes in early 2003, and was only found in January this year when housing association officials broke into the bedsit in Wood Green, North East London.

They were hoping to recover the thousands of pounds of rent arrears that had piled up since her death.

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