Wednesday October 14th, 2015

The exercise:

Write something to do with: compromise.

Sweet mother of mercy, that was quite the game. I'm not really sure what else to say but... bring on the Kansas City Royals and the American League Championship Series. Oh, and maybe I should admit to watching the replay of that Bautista homer a few (dozen) too many times.

I spent the afternoon putting our squash into storage and planting out next year's garlic in the garden. We're doing a lot less this go around, what with baby number two due to arrive in the spring, but it's still a big job. Good thing the Jays won to give me a surge of energy or I would have had trouble getting through the remainder of the day.

Kat had a counselling client right around dinner time so I took Max into town for pizza. What can I say? I was in a celebrating kind of mood. He didn't quite understand the sentiment but he did enjoy the pizza and the rare nighttime outing.

Mine:

To strike the bargain
Sacrifices were made.
The deal's not perfect,
But a price must be paid.

Only time will tell
If the means were justified.
But what could we do?
Give up, shrug, say that we tried?

They are not happy
Either, I hope you know;
They bent just as far,
As far as they could go.

There is no winner,
But no loser as well.
A deal has been struck!
Let's move on from this hell.

2 comments:

Greg said...

That's quite the match, judging from the report you linked to! Even if I'm not sure I can pronounce the names of half of the players ("Rougned Odor?" That sounds like a floral-scented spray product). And at over three hours long it sounds like you must have been half-dead from nerves by the end of it :)
And after all that, you went out for pizza... without Kat? I hope you brought her something nice home to compensate :)
Great poem, the first two verses are really good. The third is a little weak I think, but that might be that the first two are so strong that it suffers by comparison. You pick it up again in the last verse though, which is a neat ending. I'm just left wondering what the bargain is and what hell is forthcoming as a result of it!

Compromise
Compromise, n. Etymology of this word is a little uncertain but most experts agree that is likely comes to us from OId Etruscan kumft, which eventually turned into our word comfort and romynsc which eventually turned into our word romance. Original meanings of those words are hotly debated, but the current leading theories are the kumft meant woolly like a young sheep and romynsc meant as calculating as a hyena. As these meanings have to deduced from 2,000 year old paintings on the sides of broken pottery vases there is considerable room for re-evaluation.
A compromise though is a comforting romance, an agreement by two or more people who should really open their eyes and take a long hard look at the world around them to do something that neither of them actually wants to have happen. Like a married couple in a fast-moving car who are so afraid of contradicting one another that they break through the safety fence and plunge from the road down the side of the ravine, the compromisers will hold hands and swear blind that the death of everyone they've ever loved is just a speedbump on the road to success.
A compromising position or situation is just the wedding chapel where these ill-considered vows are made to happen.

Marc said...

Greg - I was pretty sure that first name was a typo the first time I saw it. Apparently not.

Kat has a pretty strong aversion to pizza going on right now, so she preferred that over us bringing it home. Though we did go grocery shopping afterward (mostly to kill time until her session was over) and picked up a couple things for her.

Thanks for the kind words on mine. I'm in complete agreement on the third stanza. I just wasn't up to doing better with it last night.

Ah, one more entry for the dictionary. Loved the detail about the broken pottery :) And the definition itself is, as usual, brilliant stuff.