Reflecting on the Thoreau quote, "we should read the eternities rather than the times" I found a passage that says almost the exact opposite in a Simon and Garfunkel song, Overs. The stanza goes,
"Why don't we stop foolin' ourselves,
The game is over, over, over,
No good times, no bad times
There's no times at all,
Just the New York Times."
Now the song is actually about two people who were in a relationship and aren't any more, but if we take this stanza out of its context I think that it could be interpreted to mean something with a much more encompassing interpretation that we can reflect on today. Assuming that nothing is original anymore, I think it is fair to say that we certainly like to think that we are original and in that sense we are foolin' ourselves, when we think the game is on the game has been over for years, and like a broken tape we just keep playing the same songs over and over. All we have left is the New York Times, because more than anything else what seems more original to us is the news. The news happens everyday, and more often than not it is the same shit that happens every day, but somehow it feel new and original everyday. I'm not sure why, but I do it everyday, I go to the Book Store, buy a newspaper for 50 cents and look through it like I'm going to see something I haven't seen before, but it's always the same. People debating, people passing laws, people getting arrested, people dying, people being born, and every once in awhile you'll get a nice article about someone doing something nice. But isn't that just life? It's weird to think about because, I look back at all that I've learned this semester and it seems like that was all they were doing back then too. I don't know why, but I like to think that there is more to life than what goes on in the newspapers. Maybe that is why I like the Metamorphoses so much because it has all those lying, cheating, dying, baby making aspects of real life but with a twist, magic.