Cranky Large Medium reading, 9 August

Go away.

Will you go? Please? Pack yourself up and head out the way you came in. Run along, then. Go. Hop to it. What are you doing still standing in my majestic presence, and without offerings for worship? Oh, but you came to ask something of me... and that something, free of charge, no less? How bold of you! Why should I give you what you want? Because you'll leave once you get it? Say no more! Here you are:

You are fussy in your tastes, but you could offer genuine love, if you tried. Your domineering, opinionated and moody nature makes you ungracious under opposition. Your priggish honesty makes you intolerant of injustice to others, but you don't seem to be willing or able to do anything about it.

Are you happy, now? Of course not. Still, things could be worse. You could be me, having to look at you, here on my mountain, invading my serene solitude. Or, worse still, you could be with these people, all of whom, on this date in history, joined the ultimate solitude, six feet under: Trajan, Valens, Empress Irene, Emperor Horikawa, Edward Thorndike, Cecil Frank Powell, Sir Frank Whittle, John Harsanyi, James van Allen, Pope Damasus II, Edith Stein, Johann August Apel, Hermann Hesse, Judith Rossner, Philip E. High, Xavier Sigalon, Samuel Ferguson, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Bill Chase, Dmitri Shostakovich, Paul Samson, David Raksin, Gregory Hines, Harry Hillman, Walter O'Malley, Najm ad-Din Ayyub, William Noy, Simon Ockley, Robert Hampton Gray, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, Sharon Tate, Jacqueline Cochran, Joe O'Donnell, Bernie Mac

and Jerry Garcia.

So many roads, maybe you can walk down one away from here.
Happy birthday, anyway.