Will You, Won’t You?

This is the pond where I put those three pebbles sent to me from England.
The Lobster-Quadrille, from Alice in Wonderland.

….(and then) the Mock Turtle sang this, very slowly and sadly:

“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail,
“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my
tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the
dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the
dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the
dance?

“You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out
to sea!”
But the snail replied, “Too far, too far!” and gave a look
askance—
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join
the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join
the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join
the dance.

“What matters it how far we go?” his scaly friend replied.
“There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France—
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the
dance.
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the
dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the
dance?”

YES! We will join the dance.

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7 thoughts on “Will You, Won’t You?”

  1. Thanks for writing so consistently and with such surety of touch. There was a dancing Shiva in the Rietberg museum in Zurich which drew me to it again and again. I still want to go back and see it. The whole universe is dance, flow, relationships not things.
    Yes, I’ll join the dance.
    In gassho
    Walter

  2. … three pebbles sent to me from England, most excellent. I’m going to send you four one from bc,one pei, one ns and the last one from ns in august, its the right thing to do. this seems like a good thing a transzengarden.

  3. I’m glad there is dancing and thanks for leaving your comments and offers of more stones.

    Must get on and see if I can crack the audio upload problem.

  4. Waking up here, asleep in the UK, Edmonton without looking it up, late afternoon I imagine. You cracked the audio I see! Works fine.
    Walter

  5. Thanks Walter, glad the audio works where you are. It’s tea time here.

    I recorded from my computer directly into Odeo, which is fairly easy. What I am attempting to do is record on my iRiver player/recorder and then upload that. The settings for the kHz were not right yesterday. Better fortune to-day, but latter.

  6. You may wish to look at Audacity a free program that allows you to edit sound files, cutting and splicing sections. Not used it yet, so cannot comment more. I’m looking for a small recorder that outputs in MP3 – a Sony device I have had for years produces .msv proprietary Sony format, and conversion to MP3 is challenging to put it mildly. So, I’ll check out your iRiver gadget. Sim Lim Square is bound to have something suitable!

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