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So Everything Is Necessary. Every Least Thing. This Is The Hard Lesson. Nothing Can Be Dispensed With. Nothing Despised. Because The Seams Are Hid From Us, You See. The Joinery. The Way In Which The World Is Made. We Have No Way To Know What Could Be Taken Away. What Omitted. We Have No Way To Tell What Might Stand And What Might Fall.

-Cormac McCarthy

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So Everything Is Necessary.

Cormac McCarthy

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So Everything Is Necessary. Every Least Thing. This Is The Hard Lesson. Nothing Can Be Dispensed With. Nothing Despised. Because The Seams Are Hid From Us, You See. The Joinery. The Way In Which The World Is Made. We Have No Way To Know What Could Be Taken Away. What Omitted. We Have No Way To Tell What Might Stand And What Might Fall.

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The Core Of Literature Is The Idea Of Tragedy... You Don't Really Learn Much From The Good Things That Happen To You.

The Man Watched Him. Real Life Is Pretty Bad? What Do You Think? Well, I Think We're Still Here. A Lot Of Bad Things Have Happened But We're Still Here. Yeah. You Don't Think That's So Great. It's Okay.

But I Didn't Know What To Say To Him. What Do You Say To A Man That By His Own Admission Has No Soul? Why Would You Say Anything?

She Was Gone And The Coldness Of It Was Her Final Gift.

I Guess If Everybody Went Crazy Together Nobody Would Notice.

Because The Question For Me Was Always Whether That Shape We See In Our Lives Was There From The Beginning Or Whether These Random Events Are Only Called A Pattern After The Fact. Because Otherwise We Are Nothing.

I Felt Early On I Wasn't Going To Be A Respectable Citizen.

There Was A Sharp Crack From Somewhere On The Mountain. Then Another. It's Just A Tree Falling, He Said. It's Okay. The Boy Was Looking At The Dead Roadside Trees. It's Okay, The Man Said. All The Trees In The World Are Going To Fall Sooner Or Later. But Not On Us.

How Would You Know If You Were The Last Man On Earth? He Said. I Don't Guess You Would Know It. You'd Just Be It. Nobody Would Know It. It Wouldn't Make Any Difference. When You Die It's The Same As If Everybody Else Died Too.

Rage Is Really Only For The Good Days. The Truth Is There's Little Of That Left. The Truth Is That The Forms I See Have Been Slowly Emptied Out. They No Longer Have Any Content. They Are Shapes Only. A Train, A Wall, A World. Or A Man. A Thing Dangling In Senseless Articulation In A Howling Void. No Meaning To Its Life. Its Words. Why Would I Seek The Company Of Such A Thing? Why?

What You Alter In The Remembering Has Yet A Reality, Known Or Not.

I've Always Been Interested In The Southwest. There Isn't A Place In The World You Can Go Where They Don't Know About Cowboys And Indians And The Myth Of The West.

Long Before Morning I Knew That What I Was Seeking To Discover Was A Thing I'd Always Known. That All Courage Was A Form Of Constancy. That It Is Always Himself That The Coward Abandoned First. After This All Other Betrayals Come Easily.

Word Gets Around When The Circus Comes To Town, Don't It?

Somewhere In The World Is The Most Invincible Man. Just As Somewhere Is The Most Vulnerable.

It Starts When You Begin To Overlook Good Manners. Any Time You Quit Hearing Sir And Mam The End Is Pretty Much In Sight.

Do You Think That Your Fathers Are Watching? That They Weigh You In Their Ledgerbook? Against What? There Is No Book And Your Fathers Are Dead In The Ground.

Only Now Is The Child Finally Divested Of All That He Has Been. His Origins Are Become Remote As Is His Destiny And Not Again In All The World's Turning Will There Be Terrains So Wild And Barbarous To Try Whether The Stuff Of Creation May Be Shaped To Man's Will Or Whether His Own Heart Is Not Another Kind Of Clay.

It Is Personal. That's What An Education Does. It Makes The World Personal.

Words Pale And Lose Their Savor While Pain Is Always New.

You Forget What You Want To Remember, And You Remember What You Want To Forget.

What Do You Believe? I Believe That The Last And The First Suffer Equally. Pari Passu. Equally? It Is Not Alone In The Dark Of Death That All Souls Are One Soul. Of What Would You Repent? Nothing. Nothing? One Thing. I Spoke With Bitterness About My Life And I Said That I Would Take My Own Part Against The Slander Of Oblivion And Against The Monstrous Facelessness Of It And That I Would Stand A Stone In The Very Void Where All Would Read My Name. Of That Vanity I Recant All.

You Always Pay Too Much. Particularly For Promises. There Aint No Such Thing As A Bargain Promise.

Life Is A Memory, And Then It Is Nothing.

In Dreams We Stand In This Great Democracy Of The Possible And There We Are Right Pilgrims Indeed. There We Go Forth To Meet What We Shall Meet.

Then They Set Out Along The Blacktop In The Gunmetal Light, Shuffling Through The Ash, Each The Other's World Entire.

The Notion That The Species Can Be Improved In Some Way, That Everyone Could Live In Harmony, Is A Really Dangerous Idea. Those Who Are Afflicted With This Notion Are The First Ones To Give Up Their Souls, Their Freedom. Your Desire That It Be That Way Will Enslave You And Make Your Life Vacuous.

They Trekked Out Along The Crescent Sweep Of Beach, Keeping To The Firmer Sand Below The Tidewrack. They Stood, Their Clothes Flapping Softly. Glass Floats Covered With A Gray Crust. The Bones Of Seabirds. At The Tideline A Woven Mat Of Weeds And The Ribs Of Fishes In Their Millions Stretching Along The Shore As Far As The Eye Could See Like An Isocline Of Death. One Vast Salt Sepulchre. Senseless. Senseless.

I Think If You Were Satan And You Were Settin Around Tryin To Think Up Somethin That Would Just Bring The Human Race To Its Knees What You Would Probably Come Up With Is Narcotics.

You Go Back Home And Everything You Wished Was Different Is Still The Same And Everything You Wished Was The Same Is Different.

But There Are No Absolutes In Human Misery And Things Can Always Get Worse

By Day The Banished Sun Circles The Earth Like A Grieving Mother With A Lamp.

When You Die It's The Same As If Everybody Else Did Too.

I Didn't Mean I'd Seen Everything, John Grady Said. I Know You Didn't. I Just Meant I'd Seen Some Things I'd As Soon Not Of. I Know It. There's Hard Lessons In This World. What's The Hardest? I Dont Know. Maybe It's Just That When Things Are Gone They're Gone. They Aint Comin Back. Yessir.

There Was Someone There And They Had Been There. There Was No One There. There Was Someone There And They Had Been There And They Had Not Left But There Was No One There.

He Rocked In The Swells, Floating Like The First Germ Of Life Adrift On The Earth's Cooling Seas, Formless Macule Of Plasm Trapped In A Vapor Drop And All Creation Yet To Come.

The Freedom Of Birds Is An Insult To Me.

Each The Others World Entire.

Doomed Enterprises Divide Lives Forever Into The Then And Now

He Stood At The Window Of The Empty Cafe And Watched The Activites In The Square And He Said That It Was Good That God Kept The Truths Of Life From The Young As They Were Starting Out Or Else They'd Have No Heart To Start At All.

Our Waking Life's Desire To Shape The World To Our Convenience Invites All Manner Of Paradox And Difficulty.

For Me The World Has Always Been More Of A Puppet Show. But When One Looks Behind The Curtain And Traces The Strings Upward He Finds They Terminate In The Hands Of Yet Other Puppets, Themselves With Their Own Strings Which Trace Upward In Turn, And So On. In My Own Life I Saw These Strings Whose Origins Were Endless Enact The Deaths Of Great Men In Violence And Madness. Enact The Ruin Of A Nation.

It May Be That The Life I Desire For Her No Longer Even Exists, Yet I Know What She Does Not. That There Is Nothing To Lose.

The Jagged Mountains Were Pure Blue In The Dawn And Everywhere Birds Twittered And The Sun When It Rose Caught The Moon In The West So That They Lay Opposed To Each Other Across The Earth, The Sun Whitehot And The Moon A Pale Replica, As If They Were The Ends Of A Common Bore Beyond Whose Terminals Burned Worlds Past All Reckoning.

People Complain About The Bad Things That Happen To Em That They Don't Deserve But They Seldom Mention The Good. About What They Done To Deserve Them Things.

There Is For A Man Two Things In Life That Are Very Important, Head And Shoulders Above Everything Else. Find Work You Like, And Find Someone To Live With You Like. Very Few People Get Both.

People Apparently Only Read Mystery Stories Of Any Length. With Mysteries, The Longer The Better, And People Will Read Any Damn Thing. But The Indulgent, 800-page Books That Were Written A Hundred Years Ago Are Just Not Going To Be Written Anymore, And People Need To Get Used To That.

My Perfect Day Is Sitting In A Room With Some Blank Paper. That's Heaven. That's Gold, And Anything Else Is Just A Waste Of Time.

A Goodlookin Horse Is Like A Goodlookin Woman, He Said. They're Always More Trouble Than What They're Worth. What A Man Needs Is Just One That Will Get The Job Done.

And Perhaps Beyond Those Shrouded Swells Another Man Did Walk With Another Child On The Dead Gray Sands. Slept But A Sea Apart On Another Beach Among The Bitter Ashes Of The World Or Stood In Their Rags Lost To The Same Indifferent Sun.

Finally He Said That If Men Drink The Blood Of God Yet They Do Not Understand The Seriousness Of What They Do. He Said That Men Wish To Be Serious But They Do Not Understand How To Be So. Between Their Acts And Their Ceremonies Lies The World And In This World The Storms Blow And The Trees Twist In The Wind And All The Animals That God Has Made Go To And Fro Yet This World Men Do Not See. They See The Acts Of Their Own Hands Or They See That Which They Name And Call Out To One Another But The World Between Is Invisible To Them

The Carrion Birds Sat About The Topmost Corners Of The Houses With Their Wings Outstretched In Attitudes Of Exhortation Like Dark Little Bishops.

Acts Have Their Being In The Witness. Without Him Who Can Speak Of It? In The End One Could Even Say That The Act Is Nothing, The Witness All.

What He Could Bear In The Waking World He Could Not By Night And He Sat Awake For Fear The Dream Would Return.

A Man Seeks His Own Destiny And No Other, Said The Judge. Wil Or Nill. Any Man Who Could Discover His Own Fate And Elect Therefore Some Opposite Course Could Only Come At Last To That Selfsame Reckoning At The Same Appointed Time, For Each Man's Destiny Is As Large As The World He Inhabits And Contains Within It All Opposites As Well. The Desert Upon Which So Many Have Been Broken Is Vast And Calls For Largeness Of Heart But It Is Also Ultimately Empty. It Is Hard, It Is Barren. Its Very Nature Is Stone.

In The Neuter Austerity Of That Terrain All Phenomena Were Bequeathed A Strange Equality And No One Thing Nor Spider Nor Stone Nor Blade Of Grass Could Put Forth Claim To Precedence. The Very Clarity Of These Articles Belied Their Familiarity, For The Eye Predicates The Whole On Some Feature Or Part And Here Was Nothing More Luminous Than Another And Nothing More Enshadowed And In The Optical Democracy Of Such Landscapes All Preference Is Made Whimsical And A Man And A Rock Become Endowed With Unguessed Kinship.

The Blackness He Woke To On Those Nights Was Sightless And Impenetrable. A Blackness To Hurt Your Ears With Listening. Often He Had To Get Up. No Sound But The Wind In The Trees. He Rose And Stood Tottering In That Cold Autistic Dark With His Arms Outheld For Balance While The Vestibular Calculations In His Skull Cranked Out Their Reckonings.

You Never Know What Worse Luck Your Bad Luck Has Saved You From.

Fortune And Luck

In Dreams It Is Often The Case That The Greatest Extravagances Seem Bereft Of Their Power To Astonish And The Most Improbable Chimeras Seem Commonplace.

Last Words Are Only Words.

Choose Your Enemies Carefully 'cause They Will Define You Make Them Interesting 'cause In Some Ways They Will Mind You They're Not There In The Beginning But When Your Story Ends Gonna Last With You Longer Than Your Friend

He Said That Whether A Man's Life Was Writ In A Book Someplace Or Whether It Took Its Form Day By Day Was One And The Same For It Had But One Reality And That Was The Living Of It.

Do You Have Any Notion Of How Goddamned Crazy You Are?

The Flames Sawed In The Wind And The Embers Paled And Deepened And Paled And Deepened Like The Bloodbeat Of Some Living Thing Eviscerate Upon The Ground Before Them And They Watched The Fire Which Does Contain Within It Something Of Men Themselves Inasmuch As They Are Less Without It And Are Divided From Their Origins And Are Exiles. For Each Fire Is All Fires, And The First Fire And The Last Ever To Be.

Scared Money Can’t Win And A Worried Man Can’t Love.

If The Rule You Followed Brought You To This, Of What Use Was The Rule?

Suppose You Were The Last One Left? Suppose You Did That To Yourself?

Any Time You're Throwin Dirt You're Losin Ground.

He Looked At A World Of Incredible Loveliness. Old Distaff Celt's Blood In Some Back Chamber Of His Brain Moved Him To Discourse With The Birches, With The Oaks. A Cool Green Fire Kept Breaking In The Woods And He Could Hear The Footsteps Of The Dead. Everything Had Fallen From Him. He Scarce Could Tell Where His Being Ended Or The World Began Nor Did He Care. He Lay On His Back In The Gravel, The Earth's Core Sucking His Bones, A Moment's Giddy Vertigo With This Illusion Of Falling Outward Through Blue And Windy Space, Over The Offside Of The Planet, Hurtling Through The High Thin Cirrus.

Men Have In Their Minds A Picture Of How The World Will Be. How They Will Be In That World. The World May Be Many Different Ways For Them But There Is One World That Will Never Be And That Is The World They Dream Of.

Every Man's Death Is Standing In For Every Other. And Since Death Comes To All There Is No Way To Abate The Fear Of It Except To Love The Man Who Stands For Us.

Just Remember That The Things You Put Into Your Head Are There Forever, He Said. You Might Want To Think About That. You Forget Some Things, Dont You? Yes. You Forget What You Want To Remember And You Remember What You Want To Forget.

Men Believe Death's Elections To Be A Thing Inscrutable Yet Every Act Invites The Act Which Follows And To The Extent That Men Put One Foot Before The Other They Are Accomplices In Their Own Deaths As In All Such Facts Of Destiny.

On This Road There Are No Godspoke Men. They Are Gone And I Am Left And They Have Taken With Them The World.

If Much In The World Were Mystery The Limits Of That World Were Not, For It Was Without Measure Or Bound And There Were Contained Within It Creatures More Horrible Yet And Men Of Other Colors And Beings Which No Man Has Looked Upon And Yet Not Alien None Of It More Than Were Their Own Hearts Alien In Them, Whatever Wilderness Contained There And Whatever Beasts.

He Walked Out In The Gray Light And Stood And He Saw For A Brief Moment The Absolute Truth Of The World. The Cold Relentless Circling Of The Intestate Earth. Darkness Implacable. The Blind Dogs Of The Sun In Their Running. The Crushing Black Vacuum Of The Universe. And Somewhere Two Hunted Animals Trembling Like Ground-foxes In Their Cover. Borrowed Time And Borrowed World And Borrowed Eyes With Which To Sorrow It.

They Watched Storms Out There So Distant They Could Not Be Heard, The Silent Lightning Flaring Sheetwise And The Thin Black Spine Of The Mountain Chain Fluttering And Sucked Away Again In The Dark. They Saw Wild Horses Racing On The Plain, Pounding Their Shadows Down The Night And- Leaving In The Moonlight A Vaporous Dust Like The Palest Stain Of Their Passing.

Once There Were Brook Trout In The Streams In The Mountains. You Could See Them Standing In The Amber Current Where The White Edges Of Their Fins Wimpled Softly In The Flow. They Smelled Of Moss In Your Hand. Polished And Muscular And Torsional. On Their Backs Were Vermiculate Patterns That Were Maps Of The World In Its Becoming. Maps And Mazes. Of A Thing Which Could Not Be Put Back. Not Be Made Right Again. In The Deep Glens Where They Lived All Things Were Older Than Man And They Hummed Of Mystery.

There Is No Greater Monster Than Reason.

All The Pretty Horses

There's Hard Lessons In This World. What's The Hardest? I Dont Know. Maybe It's Just That When Things Are Gone They're Gone. They Aint Comin Back.

If Only My Heart Were Stone.

I Think By The Time You're Grown You're As Happy As You're Goin To Be. You'll Have Good Times And Bad Times, But In The End You'll Be About As Happy As You Was Before. Or As Unhappy. I've Knowed People That Just Never Did Get The Hang Of It.

The Frailty Of Everything Revealed At Last. Old And Troubling Issues Resolved Into Nothingness And Night. The Last Instance Of A Thing Takes The Class With It. Turns Out The Light And Is Gone. Look Around You. Ever Is A Long Time. But The Boy Knew What He Knew. That Ever Is No Time At All.

The World Was New Each Day For God So Made It Daily. Yet It Contained Within It All The Evils As Before, No More, No Less.

If You Dont Respect Me What Must You Think Of Yourself?

Each Memory Recalled Must Do Some Violence To Its Origins.

Your God Must Once Have Stood At A Dawn Of Infinite Possibilities, And This Is What He's Made Of It. You Tell Me That I Want God's Love? I Don't. Perhaps I Want Forgiveness, But There's No-one To Ask It Of. And There's No Going Back, There's No Setting Things Right, There's Only The Hope Of Nothingness.

The Universe Is No Narrow Thing And The Order Within It Is Not Constrained By Any Latitude In Its Conception To Repeat What Exists In One Part In Any Other Part. Even In This World More Things Exist Without Our Knowledge Than With It And The Order In Creation Which You See Is That Which You Have Put There, Like A String In A Maze, So That You Shall Not Lose Your Way. For Existence Has Its Own Order And That No Man’s Mind Can Compass, That Mind Itself Being But A Fact Among Others.

Where Hunters And Woodcutters Once Slept In Their Boots By The Dying Light Of Their Thousand Fires And Went On, Old Teutonic Forebears With Eyes Incandesced By The Visionary Light Of A Massive Rapacity, Wave On Wave Of The Violent And The Insane, Their Brains Stoked With Spoorless Analogues Of All That Was, Lean Aryans With Their Abrogate Semitic Chapbook Reenacting The Dramas And Parable Therein.

The World Shrinking Down About A Raw Core Of Parsible Entities. The Names Of Things Slowly Following Those Things Into Oblivion. Colors. The Names Of Birds. Things To Eat. Finally The Name Of Things One Believed To Be True. More Fragile Than He Would Have Thought. How Much Was Gone Already? The Sacred Idiom Shorn Of Its Referents And So Of Its Reality. Drawing Down Like Something Trying To Preserve Heat. In Time To Wink Out Forever.

Remember Her Hair In The Morning Before It Was Pinned, Black, Rampant, Savage With Loveliness. As If She Slept In Perpetual Storm.

All Progressions From A Higher To A Lower Order Are Marked By Ruins And Mystery And A Residue Of Nameless Rage.

No Lists Of Things To Be Done. The Day Providential To Itself. The Hour. There Is No Later. This Is Later. All Things Of Grace And Beauty Such That One Holds Them To One's Heart Have A Common Provenance In Pain. Their Birth In Grief And Ashes.

Where In This Pukehole Can A Man Get A Drink? He Said

Men Say They Only Learn This But He Said That No Creature Can Learn That Which His Heart Has No Shape To Hold.

They Came Upon Themselves In A Mirror And He Almost Raised The Pistol. It's Us, Papa, The Boy Whispered. It's Us.

I Don't Know What Sort Of World She Will Live In And I Have No Fixed Opinions Concerning How She Should Live In It. I Only Know That If She Does Not Come To Value What Is True Above What Is Useful, It Will Make Little Difference Whether She Lives At All.

Well, I Guess In All Honesty I Would Have To Say That I Never Knew Nor Did I Ever Hear Of Anybody That Money Didnt Change.

By The Time I Was Sixteen I Had Read Many Books And I Had Become A Freethinker.

War Is The Ultimate Game Because War Is At Last A Forcing Of The Unity Of Existence. War Is God.

Whatever Exists, He Said. Whatever In Creation Exists Without My Knowledge Exists Without My Consent. He Looked About At The Dark Forest In Which They Were Bivouacked. He Nodded Toward The Specimens He'd Collected. These Anonymous Creatures, He Said, May Seem Little Or Nothing In The World. Yet The Smallest Crumb Can Devour Us. Any Smallest Thing Beneath Yon Rock Out Of Men's Knowing. Only Nature Can Enslave Man And Only When The Existence Of Each Last Entity Is Routed Out And Made To Stand Naked Before Him Will He Be Properly Suzerain Of The Earth.

And The Dreams So Rich In Color. How Else Would Death Call You? Waking In The Cold Dawn It All Turned To Ash Instantly. Like Certain Ancient Frescoes Entombed For Centuries Suddenly Exposed To The Day.

He Thought That In The Beauty Of The World Were Hid A Secret. He Thought That The World’s Heart Beat At Some Terrible Cost And That The World’s Pain And Its Beauty Moved In A Relationship Of Diverging Equity And That In This Headlong Deficit The Blood Of Multitudes Might Ultimately Be Exacted For The Vision Of A Single Flower.

All Human Love Is A Faint Type Of God's; An Echoing Note From A Harmonious Whole; A Feeble Spark From An Undying Flame; A Single Drop From An Unfathomed Sea: But God's Is Infinite; It Fills The Earth And Heaven, And The Broad, Trackless Realms Of Space.

When The Shooting Starts Would You Rather Be Armed Or Legal?

We Think We Are The Victims Of Time. In Reality, The Way Of The World Isn't Fixed Anywhere. How Could That Be Possible? We Are Our Own Journey. And Therefore We Are Time As Well. We Are The Same. Fugitive. Inscrutable. Ruthless.

If People Knew The Story Of Their Lives How Many Would Then Elect To Live Them? People Speak About What Is In Store. But There Is Nothing In Store. The Day Is Made Of What Has Come Before. The World Itself Must Be Surprised At The Shape Of That Which Appears. Perhaps Even God.

Looking Over The Country With Those Sunken Eyes As If The World Out There Had Been Altered Or Made Suspect By What He'd Seen Of It Elsewhere. As If He Might Never See It Right Again. Or Worse Did See It Right At Last. See It As It Had Always Been, Would Forever Be.

I Don't Know What Of Our Culture Is Going To Survive, Or If We Survive. If You Look At The Greek Plays, They're Really Good. And There's Just A Handful Of Them. Well, How Good Would They Be If There Were 2,500 Of Them? But That's The Future Looking Back At Us. Anything You Can Think Of, There's Going To Be Millions Of Them. Just The Sheer Number Of Things Will Devalue Them. I Don't Care Whether It's Art, Literature, Poetry Or Drama, Whatever. The Sheer Volume Of It Will Wash It Out. I Mean, If You Had Thousands Of Greek Plays To Read, Would They Be That Good? I Don't Think So.

My Daddy Used To Tell Me Not To Chew On Somethin That Was Eatin You.

All The Pretty Horses

In History There Are No Control Groups. There Is No One To Tell Us What Might Have Been. We Weep Over The Might Have Been, But There Is No Might Have Been. There Never Was.

All The Pretty Horses

I Will Do What I Promised." He Whispered. "no Matter What. I Will Not Send You Into The Darkness Alone.

He May Be Dead; Or He May Be Teaching English.

Teaching English

He Was Just Hungry, Papa. He's Going To Die. He's Going To Die Anyway. He's So Scared, Papa. The Man Squatted And Looked At Him. I'm Scared, He Said. Do You Understand? I'm Scared. The Boy Didn't Answer. He Just Sat There With His Head Down, Sobbing. You're Not The One Who Has To Worry About Everything. The Boy Said Something But He Couldn't Understand Him. What? He Said. He Looked Up, His Wet And Grimy Face. Yes I Am, He Said. I Am The One.

What Man Is Such A Coward He Would Not Rather Fall Once Than Remain Forever Tottering?

They Spoke Less And Less Between Them Until At Last They Were Silent Altogether As Is Often The Way With Travelers Approaching The End Of A Journey.

When We're All Gone At Last Then There'll Be Nobody Here But Death And His Days Will Be Numbered Too. He'll Be Out In The Road There With Nothing To Do And Nobody To Do It To. He'll Say: Where Did Everybody Go? And That's How It Will Be. What's Wrong With That?

He Had Divested Himself Of The Little Cloaked Godlet And His Other Amulets In A Place Where They Would Not Be Found In His Lifetime And He'd Taken For Talisman The Simple Human Heart Within Him.

What Could A Child Know Of The Darkness Of God's Plan? Or How Flesh Is So Frail It Is Hardly More Than A Dream

Men's Memories Are Uncertain And The Past That Was Differs Little From The Past That Was Not.

He Sat A Long Time And He Thought About His Life And How Little Of It He Could Ever Have Foreseen And He Wondered For All His Will And All His Intent How Much Of It Was His Doing.

Listen To Me, He Said, When Your Dreams Are Of Some World That Never Was Or Some World That Never Will Be, And You're Happy Again, Then You'll Have Given Up. Do You Understand? And You Can't Give Up, I Won't Let You.

Ever Is A Long Time. But The Boy Knew What He Knew. That Ever Is No Time At All.

He Spoke Of His Campaigns In The Deserts Of Mexico And He Told Them Of Horses Killed Under Him And He Said That The Souls Of Horses Mirror The Souls Of Men More Closely Than Men Suppose And That Horses Also Love War. Men Say They Only Learn This But He Said That No Creature Can Learn That Which His Heart Has No Shape To Holo

If Trouble Comes When You Least Expect It Then Maybe The Thing To Do Is To Always Expect It.

I Can Normally Tell How Intelligent A Man Is By How Stupid He Thinks I Am.

Peering Down Into The Water Where The Morning Sun Fashioned Wheels Of Light, Coronets Fanwise In Which Lay Trapped Each Twig, Each Grain Of Sediment, Long Flakes And Blades Of Light In The Dusty Water Sliding Away Like Optic Strobes Where Motes Sifted And Spun.

Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave.

Ive Seen The Meanness Of Humans Till I Dont Know Why God Aint Put Out The Sun And Gone Away.

How Does A Man Decide In What Order To Abandon His Life?

Ever Dumb Thing I Ever Done In My Life There Was A Decision I Made Before That Got Me Into It. It Was Never The Dumb Thing. It Was Always Some Choice I'd Made Before It.

This Country Was Filled With Violent Children Orphaned By War.

Life Is Brief And To Have To Spend Every Day Of It Doing What Somebody Else Wants You To Do Is Not The Way To Live It.

Just Take Me With You. Please. I Cant. Please, Papa. I Cant. I Cant Hold My Son Dead In My Arms. I Thought I Could But I Cant.

He Lay On His Back In His Blankets And Looked Our Where The Quartermoon Lay Cocked Over The Heel Of The Mountains. In The False Blue Dawn The Pleiades Seemed To Be Rising Up Into The Darkness Above The World And Dragging All The Stars Away, The Great Diamond Of Orion And Cepella And The Signature Of Cassiopeia All Rising Up Through The Phosphorous Dark Like A Sea-net. He Lay A Long Time Listening To The Others Breathing In Their Sleep While He Contemplated The Wildness About Him, The Wildness Within.

A Man's At Odds To Know His Mind Cause His Mind Is Aught He Has To Know It With. He Can Know His Heart, But He Dont Want To. Rightly So. Best Not To Look In There. It Aint The Heart Of A Creature That Is Bound In The Way That God Has Set For It. You Can Find Meanness In The Least Of Creatures, But When God Made Man The Devil Was At His Elbow. A Creature That Can Do Anything. Make A Machine. And A Machine To Make The Machine. And Evil That Can Run Itself A Thousand Years, No Need To Tend It.

If God Meant To Interfere In The Degeneracy Of Mankind Would He Not Have Done So By Now? Wolves Cull Themselves, Man. What Other Creatures Could? And Is The Race Of Man Not More Predacious Yet?

Goodness Will Find The Little Boy. It Always Has. It Will Again.

They Say Death Comes Like A Thief In The Night, Where Is He? I'll Hug His Neck.

Nor Does God Whisper Through The Trees. His Voice Is Not To Be Mistaken. When Men Hear It They Fall To Their Knees And Their Souls Are Riven And They Cry Out To Him And There Is No Fear But Only Wildness Of Heart That Springs From Such Longing.

Yet It Is The Narrative That Is The Life Of The Dream While The Events Themselves Are Often Interchangeable. The Events Of The Waking World On The Other Hand Are Forced Upon Us And The Narrative Is The Unguessed Axis Along Which They Must Be Strung.

The Road Has Its Own Reasons And No Two Travelers Will Have The Same Understanding Of Those Reasons. If Indeed They Come To An Understanding Of Them At All.

The Truth About The World, He Said, Is That Anything Is Possible. Had You Not Seen It All From Birth And Thereby Bled It Of Its Strangeness It Would Appear To You For What It Is, A Hat Trick In A Medicine Show, A Fevered Dream, A Trance Bepopulate With Chimeras Having Neither Analogue Nor Precedent, An Itinerant Carnival, A Migratory Tentshow Whose Ultimate Destination After Many A Pitch In A Many A Mudded Field Is Unspeakable And Calamitous Beyond Reckoning.

They Rode On And The Sun In The East Flushed Pale Streaks Of Light And Then A Deeper Run Of Color Like Blood Seeping Up In Sudden Reaches Flaring Planewise And Where The Earth Drained Up Into The Sky At The Edge Of Creation The Top Of The Sun Rose Out Of Nothing Like The Head Of A Great Red Phallus Until It Cleared The Unseen Rim And Sat Squat And Pulsing And Malevolent Behind Them.

The Passing Of Armies And The Passing Of Sands In The Desert Are One.

For The Poor Any Choice Was A Gift With Two Faces.

What Business Is It Of Yours Where I'm From, Friendo?

The Wrath Of God Lies Sleeping. It Was Hid A Million Years Before Men Were And Only Men Have The Power To Wake It.

What Deity In The Realms Of Dementia, What Rabid God Decocted Out Of The Smoking Lobes Of Hydrophobia Could Have Devised A Keeping Place For Souls So Poor As Is This Flesh. This Mawky Worm-bent Tabernacle.

I Got What I Needed Instead Of What I Wanted And That's Just About The Best Kind Of Luck You Can Have.

There Is No God And We Are His Prophets.

There Is No God

The Trouble With A Liar Is He Can't Remember What He Said.

People Think They Know What They Want But They Generally Don't. Sometimes If They're Lucky They'll Get It Anyways.

Query: How Does The Never To Be Differ From What Never Was?

When I Came Into Your Life Your Life Was Over. It Had A Beginning, A Middle, And An End. This Is The End. You Can Say That Things Could Have Turned Out Differently. That They Could Have Been Some Other Way. But What Does That Mean? They Are Not Some Other Way. They Are This Way.

Do You Know What Happens With People Who Cannot Govern Themselves? That's Right. Others Come In To Govern For Them.

The Man Who Believes That The Secrets Of The World Are Forever Hidden Lives In Mystery And Fear. Superstition Will Drag Him Down." -the Judge

And For A Moment He Held Out His Hands As If To Steady Himself Or As If To Bless The Ground There Or Perhaps As If To Slow The World That Was Rushing Away And Seemed To Care Nothing For The Old Or The Young Or Rich Or Poor Or Dark Or Pale Or He Or She. Nothing For Their Struggles, Nothing For Their Names. Nothing For The Living Or The Dead.

Easy To See That Naught Save Sorrow Could Bring A Man To Such A View Of Things. And Yet A Sorrow For Which There Can Be No Help Is No Sorrow. It Is Some Dark Sister Traveling In Sorrow's Clothing. Men Do Not Turn From God So Easily You See. Not So Easily. Deep In Each Man Is The Knowledge That Something Knows Of His Existence. Something Knows, And Cannot Be Fled Nor Hid From. To Imagine Otherwise Is To Imagine The Unspeakable. It Was Never That This Man Ceased To Believe In God. No. It Was Rather That He Came To Believe Terrible Things Of Him.

They Heard Somewhere In That Tenantless Night A Bell That Tolled And Ceased Where No Bell Was And They Rode Out On The Round Dais Of The Earth Which Alone Was Dark And No Light To It And Which Carried Their Figures And Bore Them Up Into The Swarming Stars So That They Rode Not Under But Among Them And They Rode At Once Jaunty And Circumspect, Like Thieves Newly Loosed In That Dark Electric, Like Young Thieves In A Glowing Orchard, Loosely Jacketed Against The Cold And Ten Thousand Worlds For The Choosing.

All The Time You Spend Tryin To Get Back What's Been Took From You There's More Goin Out The Door. After A While You Just Try And Get A Tourniquet On It.

I Always Thought When I Got Older That God Would Sort Of Come Into My Life In Some Way. He Didn't. I Don't Blame Him. If I Was Him I'd Have The Same Opinion About Me That He Does.

Men Of God And Men Of War Have Strange Affinities.

Whatever In Creation Exists Without My Knowledge Exists Without My Consent.

The One Thing I Can Tell You Is That You Wont Survive For Yourself. I Know Because I Would Never Have Come This Far. A Person Who Had No One Would Be Well Advised To Cobble Together Some Passable Ghost. Breathe It Into Being And Coax It Along With Words Of Love. Offer It Each Phantom Crumb And Shield It From Harm With Your Body. As For Me My Only Hope Is For Eternal Nothingness And I Hope It With All My Heart.

They Were Watching, Out There Past Men's Knowing, Where Stars Are Drowning And Whales Ferry Their Vast Souls Through The Black And Seamless Sea.

Even If What You're Working On Doesn't Go Anywhere, It Will Help You With The Next Thing You're Doing. Make Yourself Available For Something To Happen. Give It A Shot.

I Yearn For The Darkness. I Pray For Death. Real Death. If I Thought That In Death I Would Meet The People I've Known In Life I Don't Know What I'd Do. That Would Be The Ultimate Horror. The Ultimate Despair. If I Had To Meet My Mother Again And Start All Of That All Over, Only This Time Without The Prospect Of Death To Look Forward To? Well. That Would Be The Final Nightmare. Kafka On Wheels.

The World Is Quite Ruthless In Selecting Between The Dream And The Reality, Even Where We Will Not.

I'd Rather To Make A Good Run As A Bad Stand.

The Night Is Quiet. Like A Camp Before Battle. The City Beset By A Thing Unknown And Will It Come From Forest Or Sea? The Murengers Have Walled The Pale, The Gates Are Shut, But Lo The Thing's Inside And Can You Guess His Shape? Where He's Kept Or What's The Counter Of His Face? Is He A Weaver, Bloody Shuttle Shot Through A Time Warp, A Carder Of Souls From The World's Nap? Or A Hunter With Hounds Or Do Bone Horses Draw His Dead Cart Through The Streets And Does He Call His Trade To Each? Dear Friend He Is Not To Be Dwelt Upon For It Is By Just Such Wise That He's Invited In

It Is Community And Respect, Of Course, But The Dead Have More Claims On You Than What You Might Want To Admit Or Even What You Might Know About And Them Claims Can Be Very Strong Indeed. Very Strong Indeed.

And In The Dream I Knew That He Was Goin On Ahead And That He Was Fixin To Make A Fire Somewhere Out There In All That Dark And All That Cold And I Knew That Whenever I Got There He Would Be There. And Then I Woke Up.

There's A Difference Between Quittin And Knowin When You're Beat.

You Give Up The World Line By Line. Stoically. And Then One Day You Realize That Your Courage Is Farcical. It Doesn't Mean Anything. You've Become An Accomplice In Your Own Annihilation And There Is Nothing You Can Do About It. Everything You Do Closes A Door Somewhere Ahead Of You. And Finally There Is Only One Door Left.

Usually, You Don't Know Where A Book Comes From ... It's Just There, Some Kind Of An Itch That You Can't Quite Scratch.

He Poured The Tumbler Full. Drink Up, He Said. The World Goes On. We Have Dancing Nightly And This Night Is No Exception. The Straight And The Winding Way Are One And Now That You Are Here What Do The Years Count Since Last We Two Met Together? Men's Memories Are Uncertain And The Past That Was Differs Little From The Past That Was Not.

From Daydreams On The Road There Was No Waking. He Plodded On. He Could Remember Everything Of Her Save Her Scent. Seated In A Theatre With Her Beside Him Leaning Forward Listening To The Music. Gold Scrollwork And Sconces And The Tall Columnar Folds Of The Drapes At Either Side Of The Stage. She Held His Hand In Her Lap And He Could Feel The Tops Of Her Stockings Through The Thin Stuff Of Her Summer Dress. Freeze This Frame. Now Call Down Your Dark And Your Cold And Be Damned.

Remembers Everything

Between The Wish And The Thing The World Lies Waiting.

You Have To Carry The Fire." I Don't Know How To." Yes, You Do." Is The Fire Real? The Fire?" Yes It Is." Where Is It? I Don't Know Where It Is." Yes You Do. It's Inside You. It Always Was There. I Can See It.

He Saw Very Clearly How All His Life Led Only To This Moment And All After Led To Nowhere At All. He Felt Something Cold And Soulless Enter Him Like Another Being And He Imagined That It Smiled Malignly And He Had No Reason To Believe That It Would Ever Leave.

Finally He Said That Among Men There Was No Such Communion As Among Horses And The Notion That Men Can Be Understood At All Was Probably An Illusion.

He Said That Those Who Have Endured Some Misfortune Will Always Be Set Apart But That It Is Just That Misfortune Which Is Their Gift And Which Is Their Strength.

All The Pretty Horses

When He Went Back To The Fire He Knelt And Smoothed Her Hair As She Slept And He Said If He Were God He Would Have Made The World Just So And No Different.

If One Were To Be A Person Of Value That Value Could Not Be A Condition Subject To Hazards Of Fortune. It Had To Be A Quality That Could Not Change. No Matter What.

We Wouldnt Ever Eat Anybody, Would We? No. Of Course Not. Even If We Were Starving? We're Starving Now. You Said We Werent. I Said We Werent Dying. I Didnt Say We Werent Starving. But We Wouldnt. No. We Wouldnt. No Matter What. No. No Matter What. Because We're The Good Guys. Yes. And We're Carrying The Fire. And We're Carrying The Fire. Yes. Okay.

It Was The Nature Of His Profession That His Experience With Death Should Be Greater Than For Most And He Said That While It Was True That Time Heals Bereavement It Does So Only At The Cost Of The Slow Extinction Of Those Loved Ones From The Heart's Memory Which Is The Sole Place Of Their Abode Then Or Now. Faces Fade, Voices Dim. Seize Them Back, Whispered The Sepulturero. Speak With Them. Call Their Names. Do This And Do Not Let Sorrow Die For It Is The Sweetening Of Every Gift.

She Looked Up At Him And Her Face Was Pale And Austere In The Uplight And Her Eyes Lost In Their Darkly Shadowed Hollows Save Only For The Glint Of Them And He Could See Her Throat Move In The Light And He Saw In Her Face And In Her Figure Something He'd Not Seen Before And The Name Of That Thing Was Sorrow.

The Societies To Which I Have Been Exposed Seemed To Me Largely Machines For The Suppression Of Women.

Here Beyond Men's Judgments All Covenants Were Brittle.

He Rose And Turned Toward The Lights Of Town. The Tidepools Bright As Smelterpots Among The Dark Rocks Where The Phosphorescent Seacrabs Clambered Back. Passing Through The Salt Grass He Looked Back. The Horse Had Not Moved. A Ship's Light Winked In The Swells. The Colt Stood Against The Horse With Its Head Down And The Horse Was Watching, Out There Past Men's Knowing, Where The Stars Are Drowning And Whales Ferry Their Vast Souls Through The Black And Seamless Sea.

Perhaps In The World's Destruction It Would Be Possible At Last To See How It Was Made. Oceans, Mountains. The Ponderous Counterspectacle Of Things Ceasing To Be. The Sweeping Waste, Hydroptic And Coldly Secular. The Silence.

Men Speak Of Blind Destiny, A Thing Without Scheme Or Purpose. But What Sort Of Destiny Is That? Each Act In This World From Which There Can Be No Turning Back Has Before It Another, And It Another Yet. In A Vast Endless Net. Men Imagine That The Choices Before Them Are Theirs To Make. But We Are Free To Act Only Upon What Is Given. Choice Is Lost In The Maze Of Generations And Each Act In The Maze Is Itself An Enslavement For It Voids Every Alternative And Binds One Ever More Tightly Into The Constraints That Make A Life.

When One Has Nothing Left Make Ceremonies Out Of The Air And Breathe Upon Them.

When The Lambs Is Lost In The Mountain, He Said. They Is Cry. Sometime Come The Mother. Sometime The Wolf.

In His Dream She Was Sick And He Cared For Her. The Dream Bore The Look Of Sacrifice But He Thought Differently. He Did Not Take Care Of Her And She Died Alone Somewhere In The Dark And There Is No Other Dream Nor Other Waking World And There Is No Other Tale To Tell.

He Can Give Me What You Cannot. Death Is Not A Lover. Oh Yes, He Is.

He Never Sleeps, The Judge. He Is Dancing, Dancing. He Says That He Will Never Die.

Books Lie, He Said. God Dont Lie. No, Said The Judge. He Does Not. And These Are His Words. He Held Up A Chunk Of Rock. He Speaks In Stones And Trees, The Bones Of Things. The Squatters In Their Rags Nodded Among Themselves And Were Soon Reckoning Him Correct, This Man Of Learning, In All His Speculations, And This The Judge Encouraged Until They Were Right Proselytes Of The New Order Whereupon He Laughed At Them For Fools.

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Katharine Fullerton Gerould

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