Sunday, September 09, 2012

SUNDAY BREAKFAST














I suspect I have been immersed in the popular culture for much too long. My imagination has become the functional equivalent of prune-wrinkled hands after staying in the bath longer than one intended. One symptom of this is that I no longer seem to be able to regard a harmless orange without being reminded how the orange is Francis Ford Coppola’s symbol of death or impending doom in the Godfather saga. I mean, check it out for yourself. Each time a character is snuffed, there are the bloody oranges. Here’s just a partial list – Don Vito is gunned down while buying oranges. At the commission meeting of the Five Families, bowls of oranges are in front of Tattaglia and Barzini. There's a bowl of oranges in front of Woltz before the horse loses its head. Vito has orange peel in his mouth moments before he dies. Fanucci picks up an orange from a fruit cart before he’s shot dead by De Niro. Johnny Ola gives Michael an orange as a gift from Roth, and oranges are in front of the guests at the crucial Havana meeting. Finally, at the very end of the trilogy, an orange drops from Michael's hand as he dies. And why all the contemplation of symbolism and mortality on this particular Sunday? I guess it’s because I had a birthday a few days ago and, at my current age, one starts to wonder how many more might be lined up. But don’t worry. I quickly turned away from such morbidity. I have too much to do and too much that needs to see the light of day to be mulling over the prospect of my demise. 

Click here for Love

The secret word is Florida

4 comments:

bengraham said...

This lends new significance to the classic line in Alan Moore's DR & Quinch, "Mind the oranges, Marlon."

Lyle Hopwood said...

Belated happy birthday wishes!

Anonymous said...

Outstanding post! All battles originate in the mind, and how often I've found myself washed up awakened on some rising biorhythm. I hold close the benefit of clarity rinsed through decades of chronic daily pain, but the rhythm...the primitive uniqueness of simple existence, the one and only gift, has nothing to do with time. As in the words of Bowie "Time is just a whore". I'm the same person I was the day I was born. The story changes, but stories ain't real. Biology is but an art-form; a life-form is not life. Life is not form.

Happy birthday Mick! Perhaps you might as well choose to enjoy yourself? I find zero evidence to suggest everlasting life is avoidable.


Flying Hour
by George Harrison

All through my life I've been hearing
All about those good old days
It makes no diff'rence
What was or what may be
Past it is gone
And future may not be at all
Present improve the flying hour
Some people look into the future
They're hoping that they'll see better days
It's such a sweet thought
It's something that could be, but
Past it is gone
And future may not be at all
Present improve the flying hour

BRIDGE:
What was and what may be
Is not here,
It is not clear to me.
Right now is the one thing
That I can feel
The one thing real to me... ooohh
So as you sit back to remember
That which you can not recall
It makes no diff'rence
What was or what may be
Past it is gone
And future may not be at all
Present improve the flying hour.

(SOLO ON VERSES)
It makes no diff'rence
What was or what may be
Past it is gone
And future may not be at all
Present improve the flying hour.
Past it is gone
And future may not be at all
Present improve the flying hour.
Blow away.

Woodchuck Pirate
aka Raymond J Raupers Jr USA

Johnny Haddo said...

fuck the oranges DoC..how about a Hillsborough piece from ya..word of warning..know your song well before you start singing _