change the world and have
hell of a good time – planning
my day’s difficult

I took this image of the sunrise on Thursday as I drove over the Cross Island Parkway Bridge on Thursday.

I have to point out that had I waited another one or two seconds I would have reached the top of the bridge and the sun was the much more spectacular above the flat line of the Atlantic Ocean.

As I quote Alice Walker so often from her book the Color Purple, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

I have to append that to read, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by a sunrise somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

After taking the photo, I needed a quote on sunrise or getting up in the morning and I found this online, “I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.”

It was attributed to E. B. White.

That made me think, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

It sounded familiar but I checked the wording and I had never used it before.

I checked online for the source and I checked and I checked and I checked until my checker was sore.

And then I found that Andy White never said “I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.”

But he did say:

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.

If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.

But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world.

This makes it hard to plan the day.

I cited E. B. White: Notes and Comment, interview with Israel Shenker, July 11, 1969; New York Times; quoted in E. B. White: A Biography, by Scott Elledge, p. 3

And I did use that quote back in May.

And I used it one another haiku about sunrise viewed on a drive to work.

In May, I said:

rise in morning torn
desire improve, enjoy world
makes day hard to plan

Versus

change the world and have
hell of a good time – planning
my day’s difficult

I sure can imagine Mr. White having and saying he was having a hell of good time.

And I know of one scholar who says getting a quote kind of close but not word for word shows that maybe you didn’t memorize but that the thought certainly stuck in your head was more important.

Change the world and have one hell of a good time.

I might as well try.

rise in morning torn
desire improve, enjoy world
makes day hard to plan

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.

If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.

But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world.

This makes it hard to plan the day.

E. B. White: Notes and Comment, interview with Israel Shenker, July 11, 1969; New York Times; quoted in E. B. White: A Biography, by Scott Elledge, p. 3

dyeing an orange,
orange, man’s most impudent
gesture to this date

In the kitchen cabinet is a bag of oranges for morning juice.

Each orange is stamped “Color Added.”

The dyeing of an orange, to make it orange, is man’s most impudent gesture to date.

It is really an appalling piece of effrontery, carrying the clear implication that Nature doesn’t know what she is up to.

On a Florida Key, February 1941; Essays of E. B. White, p. 13