Going Viking....

"Hello Silence, my old friend……"  Paul Simon

'S almost half past three 'n except for the distant crowing of an anxious rooster, it's one 'o them silent nights….or at least as silent as this modern world gets…T'ain't like it use's be, y'know…back in them olden daze, it could get durn near as silent as the grave sometimes but now, now there's always a distant noise of some kind…borne on the night air…ambient noise like ambient light…part of the package…what we get for living in this age…not that any of us have had any real choice in it…in this life, you play the hand you're dealt whether you want to or not…

There wuz a line in a Whitman poem about being 'the Captain of your fate, Master of your soul' or vice versa…whatever!  Truth be told, I think the chaos theory of life may be the only relevant theory that humankind has ever come up with that makes even the slightest sense…'n that certainly has t'be suspect, coming as it does from the drinking horns of the wild Norsemen…

I woke up a little bit ago thinking about a 'wild' Norse friend of mine that I haven't seen for a couple years 'n it came t'me that every Norseman that I've even known has all been on the stodgy, conservative side 'n I can't imagine any of 'em going viking…the word 'viking' which we've come to recognize as a noun was once upon a time, a verb.  People went a-viking 'n it roughly translates as a Norse road trip where a group of them would board longboats 'n go to sea in search of…well, basically anything that struck the fancy of the moment…whatever they could beg, buy, or borrow…or take by force…their arrival in most seacoast towns 'n villages usually meant raping 'n pillaging 'n plundering…the old-time Norse were great plunderers, so I've been led to believe…they were also great traders because some of those seaside towns were pretty rough places 'n didn't take kindly to being pillaged or plundered…anywaze, raping 'n pillaging 'n plundering is a pretty common practice for humanity on the whole 'n it's still going strong in this, our Twentyfirst century 'cept we don't call it 'going Viking' anymore ' n all the wild Norsemen are lost in the mists of time…

"Time flies whether you have fun or not!"  Justin Other Smith