The Power and the Glory

Graham Greene

You know nothing, the stranger said fiercely. That is what everyone says all the time--you do no good. The brandy had affected him. he said with monstrous bitterness, I can hear them saying it all over the world.

The mule suddenly sat down under the priest. It was not an unnatural thing to do, for they had been travelling through the forest for nearly twelve hours. They had been going west, but news of soldiers met them there and they had turned east; the Red Shirts were active in that direction, so they had tacked north, wading through the swamps, diving into the mahogany darkness. Now they were both tired out and the mule simply sat down. The priest scrambled off and began to laugh. He was feeling happy. It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.

If he left them, they would be safe, and they would be free from his example. He was the only priest the children could remember: it was from him they would take their ideas of the faith. But it was from him too they took God--in their mouths. When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake? even if they were corrupted by his example? He was shaken with the enormity of the problem. He lay with his hands over his eyes: nowhere, in all the wide flat marshy land, was there a single person he could consult. He raised the brandy to his mouth.

He said, One of the Fathers has told us that joy always depends on pain. Pain is part of joy. We are hungry and then think how we enjoy our food at last. We are thirsty...He stopped suddenly, with his eyes glancing away into the shadows, expecting the cruel laugh that did not come. He said, We deny ourselves so that we can enjoy. You have heard of rich men in the north who eat salted foods, so that they can be thirsty--for what they call the cocktail. Before the marriage, too, there is the long betrothal... Again he stopped. He felt his own unworthiness like a weight at the back of the tongue. There was a smell of hot wax from where a candle drooped in the nocturnal heat; people shifted on the hard floor in the shadows. The smell of unwashed human beings warred with the wax. He cried out stubbornly in a voice of authority, That is why I tell you that heaven is here: this is a part of heaven just as pain is a part of pleasure. He said, Pray that you will suffer more and more and more. Never get tired of suffering. The police watching you, the soldiers gathering taxes, the beating you always get form the jefe because you are too poor to pay, smallpox and fever, hunger...that is all part of heaven--the preparation. Perhaps without them, who can tell, you wouldn't enjoy heaven so much. Heaven would not be complete. And heaven. What is heaven? Literary phrases form what seemed now to be another life altogether--the strict quiet life of the seminary--became confused on his tongue: the names of precious stones: Jerusalem the Golden. But these people had never seen gold.

He said, a poor man has no choice, father. Now if I was a rich man--only a little rich--I should be good.
The priest suddenly--for no reason--thought of the Children of Mary eating pastries. He giggled and said, I doubt it. If that were goodness...

Yes, he said again, and the mule plodded on. Sometimes, instructing children in the old days, he had been asked by some black lozenge-eyed Indian child, What is God like? and he would answer facilely with references to the father and the mother, or perhaps more ambitiously he would include brother and sister and try to give some idea of all loves and relationships combined in an immense and yet personal passion....But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery--that we were made in God's image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge. Something resembling God dangled from the gibbet or went into odd attitudes before bullets in a prison yard or contorted itself like a camel in the attitude of sex. He would sit in the confessional and hear the complicated dirty ingenuities which God's image had thought out, and God's image shook now, up and down on the mule's back, with the yellow teeth sticking out over the lower lip, and god's image did its despairing act of rebellion with Maria in the hut among the rats. He said, Do you feel better now? Not so cold, eh? Or so hot? and pressed his hand with a kind of driven tenderness upon the shoulders of God's image.

Such a lot of beauty. Saints talk about the beauty of suffering. Well, we are not saints, you and I. Suffering to us is just ugly. Stench and crowding and pain. That is beautiful in that corner--to them. It needs a lot of learning to see things with a saint's eye: a saint gets a subtle taste for beauty and can look down on poor ignorant palates like theirs. But we can't afford to.

He couldn't see her in the darkness, but there were plenty of faces he could remember from the old days which fitted the voice. When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity--that was a quality God's image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination. He began to feel an overwhelming responsibility for this pious woman. You and Father Jose, she said. It's people like you who make people mock--at real religion. She had, after all as many excuses as the half-caste. He saw the kind of salon in which she spent her days, with the rocking-chair and the photographs, meeting no one.

He took off his shirt and began to tear it into strips--it was hopelessly insanitary, but what else was there to do? except pray, of course, but one didn't pray for life, this life.

Unlike him, she retained a kind of hope. Hope is an instinct only the reasoning human mind can kill. An animal never knows despair. Watching her wounded progress he had a sense that this had happened daily--perhaps for weeks; he was watching one of the well-rehearsed effects of the new day, like a bird-song in happier regions.

It was appalling how easily one forgot and went back; he could still hear his own voice speaking in the street with the Concepcion accent--unchanged by mortal sin and unrepentance and desertion. The brandy was musty on the tongue with his own corruption. God might forgive cowardice and passion, but was it possible to forgive the habit of piety? He remembered the woman in the prison and how impossible it had been to shake her complacency. It seemed to him that he was another of the same kind. He drank the brandy down like damnation: men like the half-caste could be saved, salvation could strike like lightning at the evil heart, but the habit of piety excluded everything but the evening prayer and the Guild meeting and the feel of humble lips on your gloved hand.

That's another difference between us. It's no good your working for your end unless you're a good man yourself. And there won't always be good men in your party. Then you'll have all the old starvation, beating, get-rich-anyhow. But it doesn't matter so much my being a coward--and all the rest. I can put God into a man's mouth just the same--and I can give him God's pardon. It wouldn't make any difference to that if every priest in the Church was like me.

I was never any good at books, the priest said. I haven't any memory. But there was one thing always puzzled me about men like yourself. You hate the rich and love the poor. Isn't that right?
Yes.
Well, if I hated you, I wouldn't want to bring up my child to be like you. It's not sense.
That's just twisting...
Perhaps it is. I've never got your ideas straight. We've always said the poor are blessed and the rich are going to find it hard to get into heaven. Why should we make it hard for the poor man too? Oh, I know we are told to give to the poor, to see they are not hungry--hunger can make a man do evil just as much as money can. But why should we give the poor power? It's better to let him die in the dirt and wake in heaven--so long as we don't push his face in the dirt.

Oh well, perhaps when you're my age you'll know the heart's an untrustworthy beast. The mind is too, but it doesn't talk about love. Love. And a girl puts her head under water or a child's strangled, and the heart all the time says love, love.

The road that rises keeps on rising. Why? Is it fair to ask the road that rises to stop, to desist from it's upward inclinations if only for a while? Probably not, for every minute we enjoy the peaceful level or the easy decline, we find a many tonned lodestone weighted round our necks when once the road that rises again begins to rise. So the road must rise and always rise, but if this is so, how can we, men of weak legs and ankles, be expected to walk the road that rises?

Times come when feet are heavy and all paths still lead up. What then?

That's when dreams carry us on, and act as wings to the burdens on our backs. But who has dreams enough to carry him up this road that rises? Who has dreams so lush that they can weather the high altitudes? And what when wings of dream bone-crack, tendon-split under pressure?

What now?

Keep on walking: The Power and the Glory.

Cryano de Bergerac

Edmond Rostand

Truly, I should not look to find his portrait
By the grave hand of Philippe de Champagne.
He might have been a model for Callot--
One of those wild swashbucklers in a masque--
Hat with three plumes, and doublet with six points--
His cloak behind him over his long sword
Cocked, like the tail of strutting Chanticleer--
Prouder than all the swaggering Tamburlaines
Hatched out of Gascony. And to complete
This Punchinello figure--such a nose!--
My lords, there is no such nose as that nose--
You cannot look upon it without crying: "Oh, no,
Impossible! Exaggerated!" Then
You smile, and say: "Of course--I might have known;
Presently he will take it off." But that
Monsieur de Bergerac will never do.

(After a pause) And you brought me here to tell me this?
I do not yet quite understand, Madame,
The reason for your confidence.

Hush--absurd! How can you know?
I thought I loved you, ever since one night
When a voice that I never would have known
Under my window breathed your soul to me...
But--all this time, your letters--every one
Was like hearing your voice there in the dark,
All around me, like your arms around me...
(More lightly)
I came. Anyone would! Do you suppose
The prim Penelope had stayed at home
Embroidering,--if Ulysses wrote like you?
She would have fallen like another Helen--
Tucked up those linen petticoats of hers
And followed him to Troy!

I want her love
For the poor fool I am--or not at all!
Oh, I am going through with this! I'll know,
One way or the other. Now I shall walk down
To the end of the post. Go tell her. Let her choose
One of us.

Yes--that has been my life....
Do you remember that night Christian spoke
Under your window? It was always so!
While I stood in the darkness underneath,
Others climbed up to win the applause--the kiss!--
Well--that seems only justice--I will say,
Even now, on the threshold of my tomb--
"Moliere has genius--Christian has good looks--"
(The chapel bell is ringing. Along the avenue of trees above the stairway, the Nuns pass in procession to their prayers.)
They are going to pray now; there is the bell.

Cyrano will break your heart; Cyrano will crack the dam in your eyes; Cyrano will cry out words of weight and wisdom; Cyrano will walk the mile; Cyrano will save your life; Cyrano will wait with you till death; Cyrano will hold your hand; Cyrano will bear the load; Cyrano will kneel--but because of his nose...ah well, Cyrano will simply never be...

(More and more delirious)
"Very well,
But what the devil was he doing there?--
What the devil was he doing there, up there?"....
(He declaims)
Philosopher and scientist,
Poet, musician, duellist--
He flew high, and fell back again!
A pretty wit--whose like we lack--
A lover...not like other men....
Here lies Hercule-Savinien
De Cyrano de Bergerac--
Who was all things--and all in vain!
Well I must go--pardon--I cannot stay!
My moonbeam comes to carry me away....

Was this Cyrano a good life? Knowing love, he never knew love. That seems to be the threat of the play. Would you be Cyrano if you could? Who else better would you be? Michael Jackson was Cyrano, but that one is too obvious. You know Cyrano, he's walking all over the city. Can you see him? It's hard sometimes not to confuse Cyrano with the lepers, but he's not a leper. Do you think Mark Twain was Cyrano? There are many bumps on life's wheel that are being ground down, not all of them are Cyrano, but aren't many? We wish them normal, but wish them not. Would you have been Cyrano de Bergerac if you could? Before you choose, remember that he took the road that rises. He took it as far as he could.

Salome

Oscar Wilde

SALOME: Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit. Yes, I will kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan. I said it. Did I not say it? I said it. Ah! I will kiss it now....But wherefore dost thou not look at me, Jokanaan? Thine eyes that were so terrible, so full of rage and scorn, are shut now. Wherefore are they shut? Open thine eyes! Lift up thine eyelids, Jokanaan! Wherefore dost thou not look at me? Art thou afraid of me, Jokanaan, that thou wilt not look at me...? And thy tongue, that was like a red snake darting poison, it moves no more, it says nothing now, Jokanaan, that scarlet viper that spat its venom upon me. It is strange, is it not? How is it that the red viper stirs no longer...? Thou wouldst have none of me, Jokanaan. Thou didst reject me. Thou didst speak evil words against me. Thou didst treat me as a harlot, as a wanton, me, Salome, daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judaea! Well, Jokanaan, I still live, but thou, thou art dead, and thy head belongs to me. I can do with it what I will. I can throw it to the dogs and to the birds of the air. That which the dogs leave, the birds of the air shall devour....Ah, Jokanaan, Jokanaan, thou wert the only man that I have loved. All other men are hateful to me. But thou, thou wert beautiful! Thy body was a column of ivory set on a silver socket. It was a garden full of doves and of silver lilies. It was a tower of silver decked with shields of ivory. There was nothing in the world so white as they body. There was nothing in the world so black as thy hair. In the whole world there was nothing so red as thy mouth. Thy voice was a censer that scattered strange perfumes, and when I looked on thee I heard a strange music. Ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me, Jokanaan? Behind thine hands and thy curses thou didst hide thy face. Thou didst put upon thine eyes the covering of him who would see his God. Well, thou hast seen thy God, Jokanaan, but me, me, thou didst never see. If thou hadst seen me thou wouldst have loved me. I, I saw thee, Jokanaan, and I loved thee. Oh, how I loved thee! I loved thee yet, Jokanaan, I love thee only....I am athirst for thy beauty; I am hungry for thy body; and neither wine nor fruits can appease my desire. What shall I do now, Jokanaan? Neither the floods nor the great waters can quench my passion. I was a princess, and thou didst scorn me. I was a virgin, and thou didst take my virginity from me. I was chaste, and thou didst fill my veins with fire....Ah! ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me, Jokanaan? If thou hadst looked at me thou hadst loved me. Well I know that thou wouldst have loved me, and the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. Love only should one consider.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

If I am smooth as velvet and composed as Elvis, but have not love, well, what would I be, but something to entertain those who have love? If I pursue power, have I got any power over love? And if I universally acclaimed and respected, but have no love, where will my life be?

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.


Love is where our equality is found and therefore love is where our greatness rests. For we are equally capable of greatness in love, whether it's Scrooge loving a family enough for a momentary sigh, or the fool who lets himself be taken advantage of for the sake of love, both and all find towering greatness in love.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.


These words were too dangerous to be taken seriously, so they've become a cliche, a trite, overused expression, foolishness that is reserved for weddings and those who are too odd to know better. Do we dare to believe these words for what they are? Do we believe Salome?


And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

An Ideal Husband

Oscar Wilde

My dear Robert, it's an awkward business, very awkward indeed. You should have told your wife the whole thing. Secrets from other people's wives are a necessary luxury in modern life. So, at least, I am always told at the club by people who are bald enough to know better. But no man should have a secret from his own wife. She invariably finds it out. Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

No; that money gave me exactly what I wanted, power over others. I went into the House immediately. The Baron advised me in finance from time to time. Before five years I had almost trebled my fortune. Since then everything that I have touched has turned out a success. In all things connected with money I have had a luck so extraordinary that sometimes it has made me almost afraid. I remember having read somewhere in some strange book, that when the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

No, Lady Chiltern, I am not a Pessimist. Indeed I am not sure that I quite know what pessimism really means. All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next.

LADY CHILTERN. [thrusting him back with outstretched hands] No, don't speak! Say nothing! Your voice wakes terrible memories--memories of things that made me love you--memories of words that made me love you--memories that now are horrible to me. And how I worshipped you! You were to me something apart form common life, a thing pure, noble, honest, without stain. The world seemed to me finer because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived. And now--oh, when I think that I made of a man like you my ideal! the ideal of my life!
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. There was your mistake. There was your error. The error all women commit. Why can't you women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us--else what use is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon. A man's love is like that. It is wider, larger, more human than a woman's. Women think that they are making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols merely. You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now. And so, last night you ruined my life for me--yes, ruined it! What this woman asked of me was nothing compared to what she offered to me. She offered security, peace, stability. The sin of my youth, that I had thought was buried, rose up in front of me, hideous, horrible, with its hands at my throat. I could have killed it for ever, sent it back into its tomb, destroyed its record, burned the one witness against me. You prevented me. No one but you, you know it. And now what is there before me but public disgrace, ruin, terrible shame, the mockery of the world, a lonely dishonoured life, a lonely dishonoured death, it may be, some day? Let women make no more ideals of men! let them not put them on altars and bow before them or they may ruin other lives as completely as you--you whom I have so wildly loved--have ruined mine!

From tablecloths to idols of a different sort. Perfection. It is the reality of life that we ain't never gonna be perfect. Our priests will not be perfect, our parishioners will not be perfect. Our wives will not be perfect, our children will not be perfect, our husbands will not be perfect. Our jobs will not be perfect, our faith will not be perfect, our breath will not be perfect, our lives will not be perfect. What is perfect? An Ideal Husband?

For this reason love. Love does not require perfection. In all its many despotic demands, the one love does not make is perfection. Love is the answer to perfection in humanity.

Arms and the Man

Bernard Shaw

BLUNTSCHLI. [making a wry face] Do you like gratitude? I dont. If pity is akin to love, gratitude is akin to the other thing.

BLUNTSCHLI. I can't help it. When you strike that noble attitude and speak in that thrilling voice, I admire you; but I find it impossible to believe a single word you say.

LOUKA. I would marry the man I loved, which no other queen in Europe has the courage to do. If I loved you, though you would be as far beneath me as I am beneath you, I would dare to be the equal of my inferior. Would you dare as much if you loved me? No: if you felt the beginnings of love for me you would not let it grow. You would not dare: you would marry a rich man's daughter because you would be afraid of what other people would say of you.

BLUNTSCHLI. [overwhelmed] Twenty-three! Twenty-three! [He considers]. Hm! [Swiftly making up his mind and coming to his host] In that case, Major Petkoff, I beg to propose formally to become a suitor for your daughter's hand, in place of Major Saranoff retired.
RAINA. You dare!
BLUNTSCHLI. If you were twenty-three when you said those things to me this afternoon, I shall take them seriously.
CATHERINE. [loftily polite] I doubt, sir, whether you quite realize either my daughter's position or that of Major Serguis Saranoff, whose place you propose to take. The Petkoffs and the Saranoffs are known as the richest and most important families in the country. Our position is almost historical: we can go back for twenty years.
PETKOFF. Oh, never mind that, Catherine. [To Bluntschli] We should be most happy, Bluntschli, if it were only a question of your position; but hang it, you know, Raina is accustomed to a very comfortable establishment. Sergius keeps twenty horses.
BLUNTSCHLI. But who wants twenty horses? We're not going to keep a circus.
CATHERINE. [severely] My daughter, sir, is accustomed to a first-rate stable.
RAINA. Hush, mother: youre making me ridiculous.
BLUNTSCHLI. Oh well, if it comes to a question of an establishment, here goes! [He darts impetuously to the table; seizes the papers in the blue envelope; and turns to Sergius]. How many horses did you say?
SERGIUS. Twenty, noble Switzer.
BLUNTSCHLI. I have two hundred horses. [They are amazed]. How many carriages?
SERGIUS. Three.
BLUNTSCHLI. I have seventy. Twenty-four of them will hold twelve inside, besides two on teh box, without counting the driver and conductor. How many tablecloths have you?
SERGIUS. How the deuce do I know?
BLUNTSCHLI. Have you four thousand?
SERGIUS. No.
BLUNTSCHLI. I have. I have nine thousand six hundred pairs of sheets and blankets, with two thousand four hundred eider-down quilts. I have ten thousand knives and forks, and the same quantity of dessert spoons. I have three hundred servants. I have six palatial establishments, besides two livery stables, a tea garden, and a private house. I have four medals for distinguished services; I have the rank of an officer and the standing of a gentleman; and I have three native languages. Shew me any man in Bulgaria that can offer as much!
PETKOFF. [with childish awe] Are you Emporer of Switzerland?
BLUNTSCHLI. My rank is the highest known in Switzerland: I am a free citizen.
CATHERINE. Then, Captain Bluntschli, since you are my daughter's choice--
RAINA. [mutinously] He's not.
CATHERINE. [ignoring her]--I shall not stand in the way of her happiness.

The greatest question in Arms and the Man: Have you four thousand tablecloths?

Desire Under the Elms

Eugene O'Neill

CABOT (suddenly raises his head and looks at her--scornfully) Will ye ever know me--'r will any man 'r woman? (Shaking his head) No. I calc'late 't wa'n't t' be. (He turns away. ABBIE looks at the wall. Then, evidently unable to keep silent about his thoughts without looking at his wife, he puts out his hand and clutches her knee. She starts violently, looks at him, sees he is not watching her, concentrates again on the wall and pays no attention to what he says) Listen, Abbie. When I come here fifty odd year ago--I was jest twenty an' the strongest an' hardest ye ever seen--ten times as strong an' fifty times as hard as Eben. Waal--this place was nothin' but fields o' stones. Folks laughed when I tuk it. They couldn't know what I knowed. When ye kin make corn sprout out o' stones, God's livin' in yew! They wa'n't strong enuf fur that! They reckoned God was easy. They laughed. They don't laugh no more. Some died hereabouts. Some went West an' died. They're all under ground--fur follerin' arter an easy God. God hain't easy. (He shakes his head slowly) An' I growed hard. Folks kept allus sayin' he's a hard man like 'twas sinful t' be hard, so's at last I said back at 'em: Waal then, by thunder, ye'll git me hard an' see how ye like it! (Then suddenly) But I give in t' weakness once. 'Twas arter I'd been here two year. I got weak--despairful--they was so many stones. They was a party leavin', givin' up, goin' West. I jined 'em. We tracked on 'n' on. We come t' broad medders, plains, whar the soil was black an' rich as gold. Nary a stone. Easy. Ye'd on'y to plow an' sow an' then set an' smoke yer pipe an watch thin's grow. I could o' been a rich man--but somethin' in me fit me an' fit me--the voice o' God sayin': "This hain't wuth nothin' t' Me. git ye back t' hum!" I got afeerd o' that voice an' I lit out back t' hum here, leavin' my claim an' crops t' whoever'd a mind t' take 'em. Ay-eh. I actoolly give up what was rightful mine! God's hard, not easy! God's in the stones! Build my church on a rock--out o' stones an' I'll be in them! That's what He meant t' Peter!

It's a time for walking out front doors. Today as I left my house, just after stepping off the porch, a stranger approached me and held out a couple of twigs to me. I nodded to him, awkwardly, wondering why he was in my yard. He said, Here. Take it. I said, What? He said, Here, take this. And he handed me a handmade cross. I said, Uh, no thank you. I have a crucifix and I don't really need a dumpy handmade cross. No offense of course. He said, here, take it. I looked around innocently and said, Who, me? That's for me? No. You must have the wrong guy, I've already got my cross, see, I carry it around my neck. He said nothing, and gestured as if to give me the cross. I said, that's not even what a cross looks like. That's a plus sign. He said, It's a cross. I said, Don't you think I know what a cross looks like? I know what a cross looks like. It's suffering, it's pain, it's struggle, it's a challenge, it's not a silly wooden thing. He said, Take this cross, you asked for it. I said, How dare you tell me what I asked for! You don't even know me. Get off my property! He said, You're stupid. You should go be a businessman. I said, I won't! Ha! See, I knew it, you're a coward. You want me to give in, to give up the cross, but I tell you, I'm not gonna. I'm strong, I'll carry the cross. He said, You don't even have a real job. You aren't going anywhere. I said, Stop afflicting me! Leave me alone, I'm doing good work, I don't deserve this.

Although I didn't expect this to come to me while reading Desire Under the Elms, it did: the road that rises isn't easy and it never will be, taking up the cross isn't ever going to be easy. Often, I tell myself that of course I know what it means to take up my cross and of course I'm ready. I'll suffer. Watch. I'll sacrifice. But when it comes down to it, I'm still shocked and angered when someone presents me with a cross to carry. I even act surprised. But we don't get to choose our crosses, nor should we act as though good deeds are crosses. Persecution, mockery in the name of Christ--in our minds, these things are either childish (literally kids making fun of the Christian kid in school, how many times have you had that moral lesson taught you by your elders or in ponderous publications?) or terribly distant and drastic (we imagine there might come a time when our freedoms are taken away and we are put in jails and murdered because of our faith because fascists don't like faith or something like that--think of all the times you've heard the word persecution mentioned in the context of foreign churches, that's what persecution means to us, strangers being jailed by other strangers). But at the same time, we manage to complain a good deal about things. I'm not wealthy, I don't have a good life, I can't have fun, I don't attract cool people, I don't cheat like everyone else, I haven't ever gotten drunk and have missed out on all the partying--we complain as though these things weren't persecution. To see them as such doesn't belittle the "real" persecution of martyrs. But it would require Christians to be a bit more joyful about it. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad. Stop expecting Christian life to be easy: God is hard, God ain't easy.

The Sea Gull

Anton Chekhov

She knows, too, that I have no belief in the theatre. She loves the stage, she fancies she is working for humanity, for the holy cause of art, while to my mind the modern theatre is nothing but tradition and conventionality. When the curtain goes up, and by artificial light, in a room with three walls, these great geniuses, the devotees of holy art, represent how people eat, drink, love, move about, and wear their jackets; when from these commonplace sentences and pictures they try to draw a moral--a petty moral, easy of comprehension and convenient for domestic use; when in a thousand variations I am offered the same thing over and over again--I run away as Maupassant ran away from the Eiffel Tower which weighed upon his brain with its vulgarity.

Let us talk though. We will talk about my splendid bright life....Well, where shall we begin? (After thinking a little) There are such things as fixed ideas, when a man thinks days and night, for instance, of nothing but the moon. And I have just such a moon. I am haunted day and night by one persistent thought: I ought to be writing, I ought to be writing, I ought...I have scarcely finished one novel when, for some reason, I must begin writing another, then a third, after the third a fourth. I write incessantly, post haste, and I can't write in any other way. What is there splendid and bright in that, I ask you? Oh, it's an absurd life! Here I am with you; I am excited, yet every moment I remember that my unfinished novel is waiting for me. here I see a cloud that looks like a grand piano. I think that I must put into a story somewhere that a cloud sailed by that looked like a grand piano. There is a scent of heliotrope. I hurriedly make a note: a sickly smell, a widow's flower, to be mentioned in the description of a summer evening. I catch up myself and you at every sentence, every word, and make haste to put those sentences and words away into my literary treasure-house--it may come in useful! When I finish work I race off to the theatre or to fishing; if only I could rest in that and forget myself. But no, there's a new subject rolling about in my head like a heavy iron cannon ball, and I am drawn to my writing table and must make haste again to go on writing and writing. And it's always like that, always. And I have no rest from myself, and I feel that I am eating up my own life, and that for the sake of honey I give to someone in space I am stripping the pollen from my best flowers, tearing up the flowers themselves and trampling on their roots. Don't you think I am mad? Do my friends and acquaintances treat me as though I were sane? 'What are you writing? What are you giving us?' It's the same thing again and again, and it seems to me as though my friends notice, their praises, their enthusiasm--that it's all a sham, that they are deceiving me as an invalid and I am somehow afraid that they will steal up to me from behind, snatch me and carry me off and put me in a mad-house. And in those years, the best years of my youth, when I was beginning, my writing was unmixed torture. A small writer, particularly when he is not successful, seems to himself clumsy, awkward, unnecessary; his nerves are strained and overwrought. He can't resist hanging about people connected with literature and art, unrecognised and unnoticed by anyone, afraid to look anyone boldly in the face, like a passionate gambler without any money. I hadn't seen my reader, but for some reason I always imagined him hostile, and mistrustful. I was afraid of the public, it alarmed me, and when I had to produce my first play it always seemed to me that all the dark people felt hostile and all the fair ones were coldly indifferent. Oh, how awful it was! What agony it was!

It's all foolishness. There is no such thing as hopeless love except in novels. It's of no consequence. The only thing is one mustn't let oneself go and keep expecting something, waiting for the tide to turn....When love gets into the heart there is nothing to be done but to clear it out. Here they promised to transfer my husband to another district. As soon as I am there, I shall forget it all....I shall tear it out of my heart.

Why do you say that you kissed the earth on which I walked? I ought to be killed. (Bends over table) I am so tired! If I could rest...if I could rest! (Raising her head) I am a sea-gull....No, that's not it. I am an actress. Oh, well!

Now I know, I understand, Kostya, that in our work--in acting or writing--what matters is not fame, not glory, not what I dreamed of, but knowing how to be patient. To bear one's cross and have faith. I have faith and it all doesn't hurt so much, and when I think of my vocation I am not afraid of life.

Walking out my door this morning, I noticed there was a whopping big hay stack in the front yard. I happened to be looking for a needle at the time, so I figured there wasn't any place that I was more likely to find a needle than in the haystack. People talk about needles in haystacks often enough. I jumped in. What else would you do if you were confronted with a haystack? If you had a girl with you, I guess you'd make hay, but I didn't, so needle-hunting was the next best thing.

I don't know if you've ever been inside a haystack before, but it's not a terribly pleasant place, although, more spacious than I had imagined. Also more claustrophobic. Well, I went on in to that haystack and squirmed around a bit. I had imagined the best way to find the needle would be to let the thing stick you in the finger or something, you know, act like a giant pin cushion and see if you couldn't come out one needle to the good, but it turns out that hay is pretty prickly itself, so I found out pretty quickly that the haystack was full of pricks and very few of them were the needle. So I abandoned that idea and decided I might as well just go clutching after whatever there might happen to be in the haystack.

It wasn't long before I laid hold of something that surely wasn't hay, well I got all excited and tried to find my way back out of the haystack so I could look at this thing I'd grabbed, if I haven't mentioned it yet, I have to say that it's pretty dark in the haystack. Of course, I couldn't find my way out. I must have been going in circles, I don't see how else it could have been, but anyways, I resigned myself to being in the haystack for while. I pulled out my flashlight which I hadn't known I'd had until just then and had a look at what I'd found.
Well, it was a toy boat. It had a red hull and a white plastic set of decks and red smoke stacks, at least three of them. It was nice, but it wasn't really that useful for man adventuring in a haystack, and it sure as hell wasn't my needle that I was looking for in the haystack, so I tossed the toy boat aside, cast it adrift you might say, and went on looking for my needle.

The strategies available to a man looking for a needle in a haystack are pretty numerous. You can, say, burn down the haystack, consume it all in a fire and then sort through a much small pile of ashes for your needle, only thing is, it doesn't work so good when you are part of the ashes, which is what I would be if I did, so that idea's no good to me.

I don't really have any other strategies, I was just saying that, you know, cause mostly I am just looking around, clutching at the things in the haystack, hoping one of them will be my needle.

Reached out again and found a plunger. That was disgusting.

Stretched out my hand again and found a string of Christmas lights. Now how did they get here? Again, they ain't a needle, but they are Christmas lights, and who knows, maybe they would help me out of the haystack, you know, kinda help me get back to the real world, on with my life. But I know, deep down, I'll wonder where the needle is, no string of lights will be of any help to me. Besides, I'd probably just end up wanting to search through the haystack again.

and found a kitchen pan of some stainless steel. But I don't know, it doesn't seem quite right to me. Maybe I could use it as a needle. I've never tried that but i hear it works sometimes, use what you find as a needle, lots of happy lives been made do with that way. But a needle like a stainless steel pan doesn't really help me. I want a real needle.

So I'll keep looking for the needle, or The Sea Gull. Really, I've found it, I just can't quite get hold of it, but I will. As big as the haystack is, I've got the time and the will. I'll be back in the real world with my needle sooner or later.

The Cocktail Party

T S Eliot

Then no doubt it's all for the best.
With another man, she might have made a mistake
And want to come back to you. If another woman,
She might decide to be forgiving
And gain an advantage. If there's no other woman
And no other man, then the reason may be deeper
And you've ground for hope that she won't come back at all.
If another man, then you'd want to re-marry
To prove to the world that somebody wanted you;
If another woman, you might have to marry her--
You might even imagine that you wanted to marry her.

It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are.
That's the best advice that I can give you.

No--not happy: or, if there is any happiness,
Only the happiness of knowing
That the misery does not feed on the ruin of loveliness,
That the tedium is not the residue of ecstasy.
I see that my life was determined long ago
And that the struggle to escape from it
Is only a make-believe, a pretence
That what is, is not, or could be changed.
The self that can say 'I want this--or want that'--
The self that wills--he is a feeble creature;
He has to come to terms in the end
With the obstinate, the tougher self; who does not speak,
Who never talks, who cannot argue;
And who in some men may be the guardian--
But in men like me, the dull, the implacable,
The indomitable spirit of mediocrity.
The willing self can contrive the disaster
Of this unwilling partnership--but can only flourish
In submission to the rule of the stronger partner.

I have half a mind to change my mind now
To show you that I am free to change it.

You were so considerate, people said;
And you thought you were unselfish. It was only passivity;
You only wanted to be bolstered, encouraged...

EDWARD
I doubt if you have ever had a case like mine:
I have ceased to believe in my own personality.
REILLY
Oh, dear yes; this is serious. A very common malady.
Very prevalent indeed.

Like a child who has wandered into a forest
Playing with an imaginary playmate
And suddenly discovers he is only a child
Lost in a forest, wanting to go home.

The words for the building of the hearth.

To begin with, the monkeys are very destructive...

Not at all what I mean. Rather the contrary.
I'd say that she suffered all that we should suffer
In fear and pain and loathing--all these together--
And reluctance of the body to become a thing.
I'd say she suffered more, because more conscious
Than the rest of us. She paid the highest price
In suffering. That is part of the design.

If we all were judged according to the consequences
Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention
And beyond our limited understanding
Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.
Mrs. Chamberlayne, I often have to make a decision
Which may mean restoration or ruin to a patient--
And sometimes I have made the wrong decision.
As for Miss Coplestone, because you think her death was waste
You blame yourselves, and because you blame yourselves
You think her life was wasted. It was triumphant.
But I am no more responsible for the triumph--
And just as responsible for her death as you are.

Everyone makes a choice, of one kind or another,
And then must take the consequences. Celia chose
A way of which the consequence was crucifixion;
Peter Quilpe chose a way that takes him to Boltwell;
And nowt he consequences of the Chamberlaynes' choice
Is a cocktail party. They must be ready for it.
Their guests may be arriving at any moment.

There was a little girl who had the best imaginary friend in the world; his name was Barnebas and he was big like an adult and could reach all the things on top of the shelves, even the cookie jar, and Barnebas could build toy houses out of twigs and always outrace all the bigger kids. Barnebas always had new games to teach the little girl, and his games always made all the children run and dance about when they played them. Barnebas even knew how to make the little girl feel like she was no little girl at all, but all grown up and very important.

Barnebas went everywhere with the little girl. When she was in school, he sat under her desk and peeked out at all the other kids. Sometimes he would poke them and then the little girl would get in trouble, but mostly Barnebas behaved himself. After all, he never liked it when the little girl got into trouble. And when the little girl rode the bus, Barnebas would sit all the way in the back, so her other friends could sit next to her, but he knew how to talk like a ventriloquist and could be part of the conversation just as if he was sitting right next to the little girl. When the little girl went with her parent's to the store, Barnebas would ride in the bottom of the shopping carts while she rode in the seat up top. And when they went on vacations, he always managed to put himself in a suitcase that the little girl would unzip a little so they could have a conversation while they were driving.

The little girl was very comfortable with Barnebas. He made her feel like she wasn't ever alone, even when she went somewhere scary, like the attic or her parent's walk-in closet, or the big kids bathroom at school. If the little girl's parents had known how brave she was when Barnebas was around, they probably would have tried to convince her that Barnebas didn't exist, because most parents think that it isn't good at all for little girl's to be brave.

As it was, the little girl's father came up to her room one night and tried to explain that Barnebas was a good friend but that she had to remember that he wasn't real. The little girl's father didn't do a very good job of this, because he was a jolly man and he kind of liked Barnebas (it helped that the little girl had told her father that Barnebas came from the same town her father grew up in). Her father never really could convince himself that Barnebas was going to trick the little girl into anything dangerous, like the teachers at school told them. So the parents' attempt to convince themselves that Barnebas wasn't real ended up with the little girl's father having a very serious conversation with Barnebas about the Yankee's chance that year.

One day the little girl was playing near the woods, and without noticing it she went deeper and deeper into the woods, she and Barnebas were playing at Robin Hood and she was chasing very bad knights who liked to beat up poor people like the little girl's Grandma Selma. But luckily the little girl was very good at being Robin Hood and Barnebas was one of the best Little John's there ever was.

After they had trapped the knights and made them treat all the poor people to a great feast with cupcakes and dainties and pudding and mangoes, the little girl got hungry and decided that she wanted to go home. Besides it was getting late and her parents didn't like her to be out late in the afternoon.

The little girl told Barnebas to come on home but he didn't answer. She thought he might be trying to play hide and go seek, so she looked behind a few tall trees and beneath a few very green ferns, but Barnebas wasn't there. She called his name louder and louder but Barnebas just wasn't there. Suddenly she felt very alone. Barnebas was no where, she knew it all the way deep down inside her. Barnebas was gone. The little girl felt awful; the trees were very tall and the forest was very dark. There were strange noises everywhere and she thought she saw the shadows of scary things. The woods were a terrifying place and all she wanted was to be home.

The little girl started to run. She ran through the woods and into the field and across the field to the road and down the road to her home. She didn't stop running until she'd bumped up against her father's legs. And there she burst into tears.

Barnebas was gone! He wasn't her friend anymore! What happened?? Her father picked her up and hugged her and told her that it was part of growing up and that Barnebas went away so that she would be able to become a big girl and he told her that Barnebas was still there, he just was being quiet for a while--of course none of this helped nearly as much as the way the little girl's father hugged her and stroked her hair.

The little girl got used to her life without Barnebas, but she was always afraid to go near the woods. The woods grew very big in her mind and seemed to be about the scariest place on earth and she would have nightmares about them. But she often dreamed of them too because she thought she might find Barnebas there or at The Cocktail Party.

Answer to Job

Karl Jung

Miracles appeal only to the understanding of those who cannot perceive the meaning. They are mere substitutes for the not understood reality of the spirit. This is not to say that the living presence of the spirit is not occasionally accompanied by marvellous physical happenings. I only wish to emphasize that these happenings can neither replace nor bring about an understanding of the spirit, which is the one essential thing.

But myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again. It is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as the Greek heroes do. The fact that the life of Christ is largely myth does absolutely nothing to disprove its factual truth--quite the contrary. I would even go so far as to say that the mythical character of a life is just what expresses its universal human validity. It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail.

God is an authority only in so far as he authorized the writings of the New Testament, and with the conclusion of the New Testament the authentic communications of God cease. Thus far the Protestant standpoint. The Catholic Church, the direct heir and continuator of historical Christianity, proves to be somewhat more cautious in this regard, believing that with the assistance of the Holy Ghost the dogma can progressively develop and unfold. This view is in entire agreement with Christ's own teachings about the Holy Ghost and hence with the further continuance of the Incarnation. Christ is of the opinion that whoever believes in him--believes, that is to say, that he is the son of God--can "do the works that I do, and greater works than these." He reminds his disciples that he had told them they were gods. The believers or chosen ones are children of God and "fellow heirs with Christ." When Christ leaves the earthly stage, he will ask his father to send his flock a Counsellor (the "Paraclete"), who will abide with them and in them for ever. The Counsellor is the Holy Ghost, who will be sent from the father. This "Spirit of Truth" will teach the believers "all things" and guide them "into all truth." According to this, Christ envisages a continuing realization of God in his children, and consequently in his (Christ's) brothers and sisters in the spirit, so that his own works need not necessarily be considered the greatest ones.

Their author need not necessarily be an unbalanced psychopath. It is sufficient that he is a passionately religious person with an otherwise well-ordered psyche.

The numinosity of the object makes it difficult to handle intellectually, since our affectivity is always involved. One always participates for or against, and "absolute objectivity" is more rarely achieved here than anywhere else. If one has positive religious convictions, i.e., if one believes, then doubt is felt as very disagreeable and also one fears it. For this reason, one prefers not to analyze the object of belief. If one has no religious beliefs, then one does not like to admit the feeling of deficit, but prates loudly about one's liberal-mindedness and pats oneself on the back for the noble frankness of one's agnosticism. From this standpoint, it is hardly possible to admit the numinosity of the religious object, and yet its very numinosity is just as great a hindrance to critical thinking, because the unpleasant possibility might then arise that one's faith in enlightenment or agnosticism would be shaken. Both types feel, without knowing it, the insufficiency of their argument.

The papal declaration has given comforting expression to this yearning. How could Protestantism so completely miss the point? This lack of understanding can only be explained by the fact that the dogmatic symbols and hermeneutic allegories have lost their meaning for Protestant rationalism. This is also true, in some measure, of the opposition to the new dogma within the Catholic Church itself, or rather to the dogmatization of the old doctrine. Naturally, a certain degree of rationalism is better suited to Protestantism than it is to the Catholic outlook. The latter gives the archetypal symbolisms the necessary freedom and space in which to develop over the centuries while at the same time insisting on their original form, unperturbed by intellectual difficulties and the objections of rationalists. In this way the Catholic Church demonstrates her maternal character, because she allows the tree growing out of her matrix to develop according to its own laws. Protestantism, in contrast, is committed to the paternal spirit. Not only did it develop, at the outset, from an encounter with the worldly spirit of the times, but it continues this dialectic with the spiritual currents of every age.

Jung's Answer to Job is a curious mix of his attempt to humanize God and elevate logic to divinity. Psychoanalyzing God, or even psychoanalyzing the human record/perception of God is a dangerous task--not because of the people one might offend nor because of the difficulties inherent, but because of how carefully one must tread around logical grounds. Godel aptly demonstrated that logic only will come so far in the explanation of some things. God is one of those things. Whether you believe in God or not, the psychological fact of God, as Jung points out, is indisputable. But even that being the sole case, one cannot treat God with the same logical methods one would treat the atom bomb or algebra or even one's spouse. This, I think is where Jung steps into muddy ground. He fails to allow a safety valve for potential forces he deals with, and so many of his arguments are blown all to hell. In an analysis of the nature of God as revealed by the book of Job, it is seems fair for Jung to call God as the book presents him, a childish deity who refuses to consult his own omniscience; but, in doing so, Jung must admit that this is the viewpoint of man. Jung writes his Answer to Job with a voice that claims equal footing with the persona of God. Even when one only sees God as a psychological fact, this is a dangerous stance. For with God, there are no logical guarantees.

Coriolanus

William Shakespeare

Know, good mother,
I had rather be their servant in my way,
Than sway with them in theirs.

Faith, there hath been many great men that have flattered the people, who ne'er loved them; and there be many that they have loved, they know not wherefore; so that, if they love they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground. Therefore, for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or hate him manifests the true knowledge he has in their disposition, and out of his noble carelessness lets them plainly see't.

Bid them wash their faces
And keep their teeth clean.

I have found many in the world who would pass off their cowardice, their fear, their evil under the auspices of nobility. But true nobility can never be mistook. Nobility is a fire we must either join and be consumed of or strive to put out; it brooks no in-between. So in life, there are those who would say that difference with the world is condemnable, difference with the crowds is pathetic, yet people in large groups are notorious for both their stupidity and the damage their actions bring. There are crowds of those who falsely think they have aspired to something, but when they come out of the shadows, ashes are all they hold. The heroes of old whose praises we sing are often the men and women we murder and ridicule today. Be careful--this is the moral of Coriolanus.

The Comedy of Errors

William Shakespeare

He that commends me to mine own content,
Commends me to the thing I cannot get.
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.
So I, to find a mother and a brother,
In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.

There is something about searching, like The Comedy of Errors. Whether we know what we are looking for or do not have a clue, or simply (wrongly) think we know what it is we are after, searching defines most of us. Looking high and low and under rocks and in the trees, in cellars and behind clouds, we play hide and go seek and we go on treasure hunts with maps as priceless as they are spurious. Searching for a needle in a haystack, I found a beach ball and a toy boat, a book and some hay, and an old sock, the keys to my car, a job, a memory, a name and a tune, I found all manner of things and eventually my needle, too, which was tied to a thread so I could find my way back out again and escape the monster I had found in the haystack.

Mason & Dixon

Thomas Pynchon

Boy, ye're sending me 'pon a damn'd fool's errand.

Ah--your first, Sir?

At this turn of his Life, Capt. Grant has discover'd in his own feckless Youth, a Source of pre-civiliz'd Sentiment useful to his Praxis of now and then pretending to be insane, thus deriving an Advantage over any unsure as to which side of Reason he may actually stand upon.

Ah! it might seek you out, mightn't it,--and, in the Monomania of its Assault, grow careless enough to allow my Agents at last to apprehend it. That would be the Plan, anyhow. Agreed, you must consider how best to defend yourself,--wear clothing it cannot bite through, leather, or what's even more secure, chain-mail,--its Beak being of the finest Swedish Steel, did I mention that, yes quite able, when the Duck, in its homicidal Frenzy, is flying at high speed, to penetrate all known Fortification, solid walls being as paper to this Juggernaut.... One may cower within, but one cannot avoid, --le Bec de la Mort, the.... Beak of Death.

Aye. As if we're Lodgers inside someone else's Fate, whilst belonging quite someplace else...?

Unfortunately, young people, recalls the Revd, the word Liberty, so unreflectively sacred to us today, was taken in those Times to encompass even the darkest of Men's rights,--to injure whomever we might wish,--unto extermination, were it possible,--Free of Royal advice or Proclamation Lines and such. This being, indeed and alas, one of the Liberties our late War was fought to secure.

Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,--Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin.... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,--nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,--her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,--that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,--not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,--rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common.

Listen to me, Defecates-with-Pigeons. Long before any of you came here, we dream'd of you. All the people, even Nations far to the South and the West, dreamt you before ever we saw you,--we believ'd that you came from some other World, or the Sky. You had Powers and we respected them. Yet you never dream'd of us, and when at last you saw us, wish'd only to destroy us. Then the killing started,--some of you, some of us,--but not nearly as many as we'd been expecting. You could not be the Giants of long ago, who would simply have wip'd us away, and for less. Instead, you sold us your Powers,--your Rifles,--as if encouraging us to shoot at you,--and so we did, tho' not hitting as many of you, as you were expecting. Now you begin to believe that we have come from elsewhere, possessing Powers you do not.... Those of us who knew how, have fled into Refuge in your Dreams, at last. Tho' we now pursue real lives no different at their Hearts from yours, we are also your Dreams.

So will the Reign of Reason cheerily dispose of any allegations of Paradise.

I don't pray enough, Dixon subvocalizes, and I can't get upon my Knees just now because too many are watching,--yet could I kneel, and would I pray, 'twould be to ask, respectfully, that this be made right, that the Murderers meet appropriate Fates, that I be spar'd the awkwardness of seeking them out myself and slaying as many as I may, before they overwhelm me. Much better if that be handl'd some other way, by someone a bit more credible.... He feels no better for this Out-pouring.

It is possible, here comments the Rev'd Cherrycoke, that for some couples, however close, Love is simply not in the cards. So must they pursue other projects instead,--sometimes together, sometimes apart. I believe now, that their Third Interdiction came when, at the end of the eight-Year Traverse, Mason and Dixon could not cross the perilous Boundaries between themselves.

The old Astronomers sit for a while in what might be an Embrace, but that they forbear to touch.

You're safe, Charlie, she whispers. You're safe, She prays.

Some are bound by chains within to a bondage all the more terrible for it's invisible. Some strive to break these bonds and succeed only in ratifying their presence and invisibility. So to Love then, must all such prisoners cast their hopes. That there is some flaw in the awful logic of a fateful world that another would join us in our bonds, so close, so very close, that the restriction of chains becomes the union of souls. Upon Love do the doomed hang their dreams. Though with every move we tighten the bonds, realize our prison, hearts within these chains still hope upon lunacy. Even a prison may be a home.

Mason & Dixon, the story of astronomers, the story of fate, well told, even if everything seems to arrive a little late. Imagine: a man who suspects that he is a wet blanket, a stick in the mud, a bland sugarless doughnut, imagine a man who accepts the nickname Mopery. Such a man is Pynchon's Mason. Going through life, acceptant that he is not jolly, he is not a joker, he is not free to frolic for a many numbered total of reasons summed fate. Some people just aren't that way. Dixon, of course, is. Jolly, dashing, people who want this sort of thing call it raw. Dixon also is a much more interesting character. It's how it is. But then Mason isn't. Life sucks for Mason. But imagine Mason's mind, for he is intelligent enough to know himself for what he is. In fact, that may be one of the worst curses of melancholia, to be aware of the dampness of one's own soul. Mason is so aware and there are moments he tries to break out of it, moments when he would deny his own tragic flaw (what else makes a good story?). These moments are terrible. Even as he leaps for freedom, even as he strains against the chains, we see him falling short, we see him straining futile, and worst of all, we see in his eyes even as he tries that his own failure is all but known and only a little hope remains ignorant.

What I'm aiming at, though doing a poor job, is one of the most frightening things in the world. Many people never have to face it, and jolly good for them--such a one perhaps is Dixon--but others do not escape so luckily. To know of one's own failings, to try to fight them and yet to feel them triumphing over you--that tipping point is home to sickness's deep.

We read books to read ourselves. We write to write ourselves. Did Pynchon actually write any such characters?

Darkness at Noon

Arthur Koestler

Rubashov stood stiffly between the bed and the bucket, held his breath, and waited for the first scream. He remembered that the first scream, in which terror still predominated over physical pain, was usually the worst; what followed was already more bearable, one got used to it and after a time one could even draw conclusions on the method of torture from the tone and rhythm of the screams. Towards the end, most people behaved in the same way, however different they were in temperament and voice: the screams became weaker, changed over into whining and choking. Usually the door would slam soon after. The keys would jangle again; and the first scream of the next victim often came even before they had touched him, at the mere sight of the men in the doorway.

The old disease, thought Rubashov. Revolutionaries should not think through other people's minds.
Or, perhaps they should? Or even ought to?
How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody?
How else can one change it?
He who understands and forgives--where would he find a motive to act?
Where would he not?
They will shoot me, thought Rubashov.

Rubashov bowed his head. A suspicion had risen in him which affected him almost as a physical pain and made him forget everything else. Was it possible that this unfortunate youth had in fact drawn the conclusions from his, Rubashov's line of thought--that he stood there before him in the glare of the reflector as the consequence incarnate of his own logic?

You and I are really in a similar situation, he said comfortably and emptied his liqueur glass. We both have outlived our time. Guinea-pig breeding is finished with; we live in the century of the Plebeian.

Perhaps it was not suitable for a man to think every thought to its logical conclusion.

Citizen President, the accused Rubashov declared, I speak here for the last time in my life. The opposition is beaten and destroyed. If I ask myself today, For what am I dying? I am confronted by absolute nothingness. There is nothing for which one could die, if one died without having repented and unreconciled with the Party and the Movement. Therefore, on the threshold of my last hour, I bend my knees to the country, to the masses and to the whole people. The political masquerade, the mummery of discussions and conspiracy are over. We were politically dead long before the Citizen Prosecutor demanded our heads. Woe unto the defeated, whom history treads into the dust. I have only one justification before you, Citizen Judges: that I did not make it easy for myself. Vanity, and the last remains of pride whispered to me: Die in silence, say nothing; or die with a noble gesture, with a moving swansong on your lips; pour out your heart and challenge your accusers. That would have been easier for an old rebel, but I overcame the temptation. With that my task is ended. I have paid; my account with history is settled. To ask for mercy would be derision. I have nothing more to say.

Rubashov stood by the window and tapped on the empty wall with his pince-nez. As a boy he had really meant to study astronomy, and now for forty years he had been doing something else. Why had not the Public Prosecutor asked him: Defendent Rubashov, what about the infinite? He would not have been able to answer--and there, there lay the real source of his guilt....Could there be a greater?

Die in silence.

Dormir.

Communist revolutionaries are apparently no better than capitalists when it comes to missing the point of life; or should we say that both are human and therefore fallible? It remains that in a world so concerned with punishing crimes, we, the guilty, ignore the awful majority of crimes because we do not wish to be faced with the possibility that the world is topsy turvy: our hard is easy, easy hard, last first, and first last. We don't want to take the road that rises.
There is personal honor, and community honor and there is nobility which sees it's role in every case. There is Darkness at Noon and The Dark Knight but which is more accurate? For the sake of honor to be shown to the world, men have sacrificed their families, their brothers, their lives; for the sake of honor in the history books, men have sacrificed their futures, their pasts, their reputations, and their communities. But while Batman sacrifices his honor so that Gotham can keep pristine its heroes, Rubashov sacrifices his honor so that it may be used by his enemies--which is better? Are they different? Afterall, Rocky Sullivan went screaming to his the electric chair, not because he was a coward but because he was honorable. Man's honor or his society's honor? Well, maybe they are the same and it's only an issue of perception. Afterall, this song has been sung before.
All this can be bandied and argued, but you cannot escape from the last part: if you want to be an astronomer and deny yourself your vocation for the sake of the cause, your guilt might be greatest. This is the wisdom of childhood: a child knows that sometimes he must give up what he wants for the sake of doing good, but he would never consider renouncing the want itself. Smart is the child who knows that too much candy rots your teeth, but strange is the kid who refuses to want any sort of candy. This isn't about tastes, but the acknowledgment that we possess them. Yet here we go, a worldful of ascetics renouncing that we are selves, not denying the self of what it wants. We are eyes refusing to desire light, and ears denying our want of sound. We hide ourselves from our desires by trick, by barrage, by sleep, but always the sneaking voice is there. Because even when we take the easy course out, the shortest trip to oblivion, even when we sleep, we dream.

Billy Budd

Herman Melville

Though our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can expect anywhere to see; nevertheless, like the beautiful woman in one of Hawthorne's minor tales, there was just one thing amiss in him. No visible blemish indeed, as with the lady; no, but an occasional liability to a vocal defect. Though in the hour of elemental uproar or peril he was everything that a sailor should be, yet under sudden provocation of strong heart-feeling his voice, otherwise singularly musical, as if expressive of the harmony within, was apt to develop an organic hesitancy, in fact more or less of a stutter or even worse. In this particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch interferer, the envious marplot of Eden, still has more or less to do with every human consignment to this planet Earth. In every case, one way or another he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind us--I too have a hand here.

In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road, some bypaths have an enticement not readily to be withstood.

Master of tangent, Mr Mellville also knows the sound of inevitability. Characters sinking in a quicksand unrelenting, that despite their struggles they still do sink deeper down. Are Melville characters' actions as futile as seem his tangents? Maybe neither is either.
The paradox, of course, is that futility is realized in the striving for it's opposite: how else could a captain justify the execution of an innocent man, if not in order to serve some higher purpose? So one life is turned futile, one career too, but the Navy remains meaningful, it is powered, like all institutions of man, by futilizing lives.
But what can we do? Can we give a man who kills another the clemency he does not deserve? Can we forgive the ill-fortune of a knight who leaves a wake of destruction, even though it is a rightful curse? Can we let an old politician die in peace though his death be necessary for the preservation of our ideals? When it comes down to it, the only way to meaning is the way that does not make sense. Mercy, forgiveness, compassion, humility--these are illogical and do not make sense. But if we be ruled by logic, we'll find we are futile. If we do what makes reasonable sense, we'll find ourselves stranded on the tip of a fast melting ice-berg.
Billy Budd dreams of eye-winks and yells God Bless the Captain.

The War of the End of the World

Mario Vargas Llosa

He thought of Jurema. Was she a thinking being? A little domestic animal, rather. Diligent, submissive, capable of believing that statues of St. Anthony escape from churches and return to the grottoes where they were carved; trained like the baron's other female servants to care for chickens and sheep, to prepare her husband's food, to wash his clothes, and to open her legs only for him. He thought: 'Perhaps she'll be roused from her lethargy now and discover injustice.' He thought: 'I'm your injustice.' He thought: 'Perhaps you've done her a service.'

Nostalgia is an act of cowardice, Gall.

Gall looked at him, disconcerted, and found no truth or lie to offer him in reply.

But the soldiers fired point blank at the two adversaries and then threw themselves upon her, grunting, and dragged her into the dry underbrush. Badly wounded, the tracker and the phrenologist went on fighting.

You struck him in the face, Rufino, Jurema thinks. What did you gain by that, Rufino? What use was there in getting your revenge if you've died, if you've left me all alone in the world, Rufino? She does not weep, she does not move, she does not take her eyes from the two motionless men. That hand on Rufino's head reminds her that in Queimadas, when to the misfortune of all of them God willed that the stranger should come to offer her husband work, he had once felt Rufino's head and read its secrets for him, just as Porfirio the sorcerer read them in coffee grounds and Dona Cacilda in a basin of water.

It's something...difficult to put into words. Too unreal, do you follow me? It seems like a conspiracy in which everyone played a role, a total misunderstanding on the part of all concerned, from beginning to end.

The important thing in these dispatches are the intimations, the metallic, incisive, high-pitched voice said. Not what they say but what they suggest, what's left to the reader's imagination. They went to Canudos to see English officers. And they saw them. I talked with my replacement for an entire afternoon. He never once lied deliberately, he just didn't realize he was lying. The simple fact is that he didn't write what he saw but what he felt and believed, what those all around him felt and believed. That's how the whole tangled web of false stories and humbug got woven, becoming so intricate that there is now no way to disentangle it. How is anybody ever going to know the story of Canudos?

With all due respect, he murmured, I would like you to be my wife.

During the regiment's brief stay in Salvador, Dr Gama showed Teotonio around the medical school at the University of Bahia, in the Praca da Basilica Cathedral, and opposite the yellow facade with tall blue ogival windows, beneath the coral trees, the coconut palms, and the crotons, the doctor and the student had sat drinking sweetish brandy in front of the kiosks set up on the black-and-white mosiac pavement, amid the vendors hawking trinkets and women selling hot foods from braziers. They went on drinking till dawn, which found them, besides themselves with happiness, in a brothel of mulattas. As they climbed onto the train to Queimadas, Dr Gama had his disciple down an emetic potion, to ward off African syphilis, he explained to him.

Don't you see? the nearsighted journalist said, breathing as though he were exhausted from some tremendous physical effort. Canudos isn't a story; it's a tree of stories.

But Abbot Joao didn't let him. Was what he did his fault? he said, transfixed. Was it his fault that he committed countless cruelties? Could he do otherwise? Wasn't he paying his mother's debt? From whom should the Father have sought retribution for those wicked deeds? From him or from the duchess? His eyes were riveted on the Dwarf, in terrible anguish. Answer me, answer me.

I had never heard of Canudos before I read The War of the End of the World. Such is my ignorance. The very idea of a rebellion that doesn't seek to invade or expand or attack but denies the authority of the state in whose confines it finds itself, should have been familiar to me. After all, such was the founding of my own country. Perhaps. Except there are differences. Is it a rebellion if a group of people begin living in an abandon places far off in the backlands of a country and refuse to acknowledge the authority of the government? I guess. But not a terribly visible one. Yet Canudos itched.

Does it threaten a government if some group of people under the sway of that government deny it? It would be a threat to several governments (city, county, state, federal) for me to form a group of people and saw that we deny the government's authority here. But that is because I survive by the authority of the government. This life would not be possible without government. In Canudos however, they had isolated themselves from the rest of Brazil. They did not partake of the resources of the government, so perhaps they had the right to deny it's authority.

Whatever you think, the reality is, governments are not in the business of shrinking. For the same reason that the US Civil War was fought, the same reason Puerto Rico can never leave the US, the same reason that the UK's prominence and power began to wain with the relinquishment of the colonies, governments fail if ever they shrink. Or at least so firmly believe this that never will they shrink of their own accord. It's not their nature.

There's a lot going on out there.

When We Were Orphans

Kazuo Ishiguro

I know full well what you've been thinking all this time, Lieutenant! I could see it in your eyes. You believe this is all my fault, all this, all of it, all this terrible suffering, this destruction here, I could see it in your face when we were walking through it all just now. But that's because you know nothing, practically nothing, sir, concerning this matter. You may well know a thing or two about fighting, but let me tell you it's quite another thing to solve a complicated case of this kind. You obviously haven't the slightest idea what's involved. Such things take time, sir! A case like this one, it requires great delicacy. I suppose you imagine you can just rush at it with bayonets and rifles, do you? It's taken time, I accept that, but that's in the very nature of a case like this. But I don't know why I bother to say all this. What would you understand about it, a simple soldier?

Now we are grown, we can at last put things right.

It seems like some of the best books in the world, I cannot write anything about them. When We Were Orphans is not one of the best books in the world. Not even high up on the list. But I think Ishiguro is close to being a great author. He would be great if he could find more than one voice in his throat. Any one of his books would stick with you longer than most books, but if you read more than one of his books you'll find yourself wondering if he's really that good after all. It's the similarity, you see.
But back to not being able to write. There are many reasons a book will leave me speechless of the written word; sometimes, and this is the most common, the book inspires me to write and I end up writing something that isn't a review at all, sometimes it makes me want to say something so profound that I trap myself with the pressure and never get anything out at all, sometimes fills me with too many things to say and none of them closely connected. In every case, I usually let time pass and the feeling fade or deaden itself, slow gas escaping, like flat soda.
When We Were Orphans will make you squirm a good deal. And then some. Prepare for that.

The Dubliners

James Joyce

I think he died for me, she answered.

Artists think with sassy badness they can plunge and already have and leave their readers behind to catch them if they can, but mostly they're interested in creating the feeling of trying to catch so that they haven't got to produce the goods to be caught. And that's how to tell a true one from the false, from the poser. True Artist spends the time, same as Poser Artist, developing the feeling of wanting to catch; True Artist spends the time running rabbit from you so that you'll chase. But comes a time when True Artist and Poser Artist are separated. This time, True Artist turns and confronts the chasing dog Reader and says bite me. And Reader does. Then! Test. True Artist is revealed in the contrast between what True Artist dangles before Reader's eyes and what True Artist actually tastes like. Poser Artist never has the moment where they turn, sacrifice themselves, let their self be eaten by Reader. Poser Artist never gets inside Reader. Poser Artist asks Reader to get inside them. Of course that can't work.

Perfume

Patrick Suskind

Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.

This was in the year 1799. Thank God Madame had suspected nothing of the fate awaiting her as she walked home that day in 1746, leaving Grenouille and our story behind. She might possibly have lost her faith in justice and with it the only meaning that she could make of life.

Grenouille sat at his ease on his bench in the cathedral of Saint-Pierre and smiled. His mood was not euphoric as he formed his plans to rule humankind. There were no mad flashing of the eye, no lunatic grimace passed over his face. He was not out of his mind, which was so clear and buoyant that he asked himself why he wanted to do it at all. And he said to himself that he wanted to do it because he was evil, thoroughly evil. And he smiled as he said it and was content. He looked quite innocent, like any happy person.

He did not yield, because that desire was an old one of his, to run away and hide in a cave. He knew about that already. What he did not yet know was what it was like to possess a human scent as splendid as the scent of the girl behind the wall. And even knowing that to possess that scent he must pay the terrible price of losing it again, the very possession and the loss seemed to him more desirable than a prosaic renunciation of both. For he had renounced things all his life. But never once had he possessed and lost.

Perfume brings an awareness of one's nose and sense of smell that you will no doubt have lost. An entire novel devoted to the sense of smell is worthy of note simply because it calls attention to a sense that often gets ignored. Perhaps because the sense of smell lacks a victim of particular visibility (sight has blind people, and hearing has deaf people--both of whom are very visible), but who has heard people who lack a sense of smell as being disadvantaged or even disabled? The very idea is ridiculous: you can't smell? So what? Probably works out for the best, after all there are lots of bad smells out there. I wish I didn't have a sense of smell. There is no pity for those who are disabled in their olfactory capabilities.
Suskind's novel is a delightful read, even if he loses control at the end. You'll never be so aware of the power of your nose as in the moments after you finish Perfume.

JB

Archibald MacLeish

I heard upon his dry dung heap
That man cry out who cannot sleep:
If God is God, He is not good,
If God is good, He is not God;
Take the even, take the odd,
I would not sleep here if I could
Except for the little green leaves in the wood
And the wind on the water.

Job presents a disturbing question: is God's answer to Job just? God acknowledges that Job is a good man, in fact God is even proud of him. God acquiesces to Satan's taunting and decides to test Job. God takes everything Job has been given. Job is angry, complains, but overall is still a good man. He doesn't call God a liar or an evil God. Job asks God for justice. Satan says try again. God allows Job to be hurt in his body. Job really complains this time. Finally God comes down and asks Job to justify himself (Job has been asking God to justify himself). God says, I am really really big and really really powerful. What are you? Job says, uh, oh nothing. Sorry to trouble. God blesses Job with new everything.

This story is not a pleasant story. It presents all manner of horrible questions. Does Job not deserve anything? You almost have to say that all the good things Job had were gifts and blessings and that his innocence afforded him nothing, because God gave all, even life. Yet if you take this approach, it does not make you feel to good. After all, what is all this love and justice business? Saying that Job deserves nothing and should just take it with equal happiness whether it's the death of his children or the prospering of his flocks is kind of ridiculous. Almost as bad as the things Job's comforters say to him: all these bad things happening to you prove that you are a bad man. Look in yourself for your sin. But of course, this whole thing started because Job wasn't that bad man. In fact he was so good, God was proud of him. This is just one of the many problems presented by Job.

JB doesn't really give you an answer to any of them, although it paints the story in a more terrible light. If you would like a sense of the truly awe-full nature of the story, JB is a good place to start.

Mercy Among the Children

David Adams Richards

Scone smiled, with a degree of naive self-infatuation seen only in those with an academic education, shook his head at the silliness of academia, while knowing that his tenure was secure and every thought he had ever had was manifested as safe by someone else before him. My father never had such a luxury. There was a time my father would have been beaten by his own father if it was known that he read. Knowing this, tell me the courage of Dr. David Scone.

What my father believed from the time his own father died was this: whatever pact you made with God, God will honour,. You may not think He does, but then do you really know the pact you have actually made? Understand the pact you have made, and you will understand how God honours it.

I will say this once, and not to demean all the good they have tried to do for you. But I have found out, even before the death of my father, that no one can do an injury to you without doing an injury to themselves. The wind and rain battered the eaves of the shoe-box shaped house, as if to mock him.

You see, she never in her life thought it necessary to laugh at me, Autumn said.

Because Sydney was trusted, some men asked him to arbitrate on their behalf. Devlin coming to him was not unusual. They relied on him, and they teased him. All mocking is a form of fear. Those who are most mocked are generally most feared. My father was mocked all his life.

Son, a priest is not the Church, and the Church is not the faith, Father answered.

Sydney, listen to me, my mother said that night. I want you to listen to me. You are allowed anything in this life--except the luxury of being different--this is why you are being tried. This is perhaps the only reason. Don't think professors get away with being different, because they do not---they conform--is that the word? Yes, conform. Not one has come out to defend you. They have all hidden. When Miss Young knew the book was to be used against you last week--and you said it was a great book--she went to the university and not one English professor came forward to claim its greatness . They didn't want to be associated with you even though she said she saw it on at least three professors' shelves. You are not human to them; they don't want you to read what they do or come to the same conclusions they come to. So I now know what their learning is worth.

I shrugged as if to say it made no difference. Then I went home. Once I was alone, my elation subsided, and I was left only with a picture of Hanny's kind dark face looking at me in confusion and in shame because I had hit him in front of his wife.

She is the best lawyer I know and the kindest person to ever deal with us--because that's all any of us want, Ms. Whyne--not revolution or doctrine but only kindness. I felt smug saying this, but I did not take it back.

All of a sudden falsehood just goes away.

What should I get from books? Alcide asked in French. That you are not alone--even along this broken tractor road. You need to know nothing else, my father answered in French.

Of course, Father's innocence afforded him nothing.

Nobody can do harm to you without doing more harm to themselves. Is this vile lie or shining truth? We are a world that claims to have values and ideals and simultaneously a world that looks askance at those ideals, noting with cold eye that they don't do much good for those who live them. As many words as we use and know, I still comes first, sometimes family, but mostly I. When it comes down it, we only believe sin is as bad as the suffering we see. When the sinners triumph, enjoy their riches, and walk with gleaming shoes, we condemn but also connive a way to follow in their shining footsteps.

Often in my calmness or naivete or simplicity, I feel that I am not as real as all the angry people bent on destroying themselves and others. In a way, I think that is what Mercy Among Children is about. That we the great mass of people are not real unless we somehow are evil. Our sin is what distinguishes us, our evil is uniquely are own, it's the darkness that gives our faces definition. Though knowledge may come with evil. This does not necessarily mean that knowledge is what provides reality. Indeed, the ignorant are often more sincere, more real, than those considered knowledgeable.

Some even arrive at the folly of feeling they need forgiveness for their peace, enjoyment, and joy. For those who do not suffer wonder what they've done wrong.

Is a man who believes that evil doers do more harm to themselves than to the people they harm a man I should take seriously? And if his reaction is one of abject and complete pacifism, should I take that as a potentially commendable path? On the one hadn he suffers many evils but embodies Saul Bellow's man who ends the pain chain of X hit Y hit Z. On the other hand, this man brings such pain on his family and wife that it is questionable whether or not he actually does them harm himself. In this fallen world, how are we to be Holy? For the system no longer supports that version, and the holy tend to find themselves dumped. Too often it seems innocence affords us nothing.

This book will make your muscles spasm in anger, but if you take the time to feel around your anger a little you'll quickly begin to wonder just what you're angry at...