Theatrical Muse 361

"Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live." Haruki Murakami.


Not all humans understand that. They’re too short-lived and some of them are too unlucky. It’s the good things that tend to pass, however close they’re held. It’s the bad things that can last humans for a lifetime, (especially if they’re bad enough to kill – or to get the customer so stirred up about it that he gets a real hot number.) Some of them sing that pain never dies, not really. Maybe they’re right.

The good things are different. Most humans haven’t got much control of their own lives and if a thing is good enough there’s usually somebody hanging around to take it away from them. (Monkeys live a lot like that, too, but they don’t sing worth a damn.)

Humans can’t even hold onto their lives for long enough to get much use out of them. Now, in some parts of the world the customers often sing that they get to make all their important choices while they’re still too inexperienced to really know what they’re doing. Years back even those countries looked at things differently, children were just smaller people. They did their chores and they sang their songs and, if they lived, one day they started thinking about getting married and the priest or the factor looked them up in the parish register and told them whether they could do it.

There weren’t as many choices in those kind of societies;there weren’t as many changes. There were losses, though. There are always losses.

Children die, lovers age.
Pain lives on, so does rage,
Beauty fades, laughter too.
Nothing lasts, know it true.
Nations fail, metals rust,
Petals fall into dust.

Humans spend most of their lives old and nobody gets anything to keep. Not even me.

I hear the songs, and I know.

Muse. Sweet the singing demon
Fandom, BTVS
Words, 300