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Have you forgotten everything
Apr. 27th, 2006 07:54 pmI'm sort of melancholy tonight. I was thinking about this time last year, and the things that have happened in the last year and where I'll be a year from now.
In "Rites of Passage" we keep talking about how 'things change in a day' which is a fascinating and terrifying thought.
Quotes from "The Bridge of Beyond" that have been on my mind lately:
We have no marks to guide us than the bird in the air or the fish in the water, and in the midst of this uncertainty we live, and some laugh, and others sing. I thought I would sleep with one man only and he abused me; I thought Amboise immortal; I believed in a little girl who left me; and yet without quite knowing why, I don't regard any of all that as a waste of time. It may well be that all suffering, even the prickles in the canefields, are part of the glory of man... (168-9)
All rivers, even the most dazzling, those that catch the sun in their streams, all rivers go down to and are drowned in the sea. And life awaits man as the sea awaits the river. You can make meander after meander, twist, turn, seep into the earth - your meanders are your own affair. But life is there, patient, without beginning or end, waiting for you like the ocean. ..And I pondered, calculated everything, wondering what loops, meanders, and gleams would be mine on my way to the ocean. (52)
I think of Queen Without a Name, who used to say long ago with a smile: 'Life is a sea without a port and without a lighthouse, and men are ships without a destination.' And she would always be breathless as she said this, as if dazzled by the splendour of human uncertainty. (172)
As I struggled others will struggle, and for a long time yet people will know the same sun and moon; they will look at the same stars, and, like us, see in them the eyes of the dead. I have already washed and ironed the clothes I want to feel on my corpse. Sun risen, sun set, the days slip past and the sand blown by the wind will engulf my little boat. But I shall die here, where I am, standing in my little garden. What happiness!(172-3)
In "Rites of Passage" we keep talking about how 'things change in a day' which is a fascinating and terrifying thought.
Quotes from "The Bridge of Beyond" that have been on my mind lately:
We have no marks to guide us than the bird in the air or the fish in the water, and in the midst of this uncertainty we live, and some laugh, and others sing. I thought I would sleep with one man only and he abused me; I thought Amboise immortal; I believed in a little girl who left me; and yet without quite knowing why, I don't regard any of all that as a waste of time. It may well be that all suffering, even the prickles in the canefields, are part of the glory of man... (168-9)
All rivers, even the most dazzling, those that catch the sun in their streams, all rivers go down to and are drowned in the sea. And life awaits man as the sea awaits the river. You can make meander after meander, twist, turn, seep into the earth - your meanders are your own affair. But life is there, patient, without beginning or end, waiting for you like the ocean. ..And I pondered, calculated everything, wondering what loops, meanders, and gleams would be mine on my way to the ocean. (52)
I think of Queen Without a Name, who used to say long ago with a smile: 'Life is a sea without a port and without a lighthouse, and men are ships without a destination.' And she would always be breathless as she said this, as if dazzled by the splendour of human uncertainty. (172)
As I struggled others will struggle, and for a long time yet people will know the same sun and moon; they will look at the same stars, and, like us, see in them the eyes of the dead. I have already washed and ironed the clothes I want to feel on my corpse. Sun risen, sun set, the days slip past and the sand blown by the wind will engulf my little boat. But I shall die here, where I am, standing in my little garden. What happiness!(172-3)
