how the world wags

Danse Macabre — John of Kastav — fresco dated 1490, Holy Trinity Church, Hrastovlje, Slovenia - public domain

nothing grows without the quiet power the purpose of decay such is man’s fate life’s necessary universal rot to generate regenerate compose and decompose all of us kings and queens for a while then make room hail the next long live by the grace of his predecessor’s putrefying grave and on we dance and prance in this endlessly magnificent farce

Dear reader, do not be fooled. In one way or another, all’s been said and written before. As always, the title for my pieces comes last by toying around with the lines and words. Here, “universal rot” stood out and I couldn’t help but think back to my student days, to the lines in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” which I once knew by heart:

‘It is ten o’clock; Thus we may see,’ quoth he, ‘how the world wags;

‘tis but an hour ago since it was nine;

And after one hour more ‘twill be eleven;

And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour we rot and rot; And thereby hangs a tale.”

So there was the "rot" that had played around in my subconscious, but even better, there was “how the world wags”. And so from hour to hour we rehash and rehash. That’s how the world wags its “tale”. Thank you, old Will.