pessimism

[incandescens]

The weather was nice today. I don't trust it an inch.

There ought to be a term for it; the shadowing of diary entries and logs, caused by the knowledge of what else happened today, and yet everyone talking so happily, so normally, so unaffectedly. One ought to be able to look back, years later, and say, "Yes, but while she wrote X, she was thinking about Y, because she must have been thinking about Y. It happened in the world she lived in. Looking back from the perspective of history into so well-informed a world with so many sources of information, how could anyone choose not to know what was going on around them?"

---

The Pessimist

They tell me that the weather's fair,
The day serene and balmy;
No more for rain need I prepare --
No chilly blast shall harm me.
They prate of 'warmth', of 'gentle glows',
They rave of how sublime it is;
I shake my head, as one who knows
Just what the British climate is.

They say the trees are growing green,
That flowers are in bloom,
That bees and butterflies are seen;
They bid me quit my room.
My hat and boots to me they bear.
They tell me what crime it is
To stay indoors; but I'm aware
Just what the British climate is.

The tale they tell is just the same
They told in days of yore.
I know the weather's deadly game --
I've seen it played before.
I call it deadly: well, to those
By nature such as I'm, it is.
One suffers much before one knows
Just what the British climate is.

This is my fixed resolve -- to keep
Thick clothing always handy,
Add extra blankets when I sleep,
And not run short of brandy.
I wager we'll be having snow
Before midsummer-time it is.
I'll take no risks. I chance to know
Just what the British climate is.

-- P.G. Wodehouse

Comments

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

Well-informed tends to be considered a function of TV watching, newspaper reading, that sort of thing. If you don't do either, news tends to trickle in at a lag.

Even then, well, let's say blowing up a few hundred schoolchildren is now considered by some to be a valid political statement. I've been finding that a lot of events lately seem to defy thought, let alone comment.

[archangelbeth]

And then there's me, who probably won't be mentioning it in my lj, because everything I have to say is either already said by someone else, or I'm just too... grargh.

[incandescens]

I think you may both be right, in that there's no analytical comment that can sensibly be made, and that most of the obvious things that come to mind have already been said.

[copperbird.livejournal.com]

((nods to that))