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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.

-Cormac McCarthy

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Where Hunters And Woodcutters

Cormac McCarthy

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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

Hard Weather, Says The Old Man. So Let It Be. Wrap Me In The Weathers Of The Earth, I Will Be Hard And Hard. My Face Will Wash Rain Like The Stones.

You Can Tell It Any Way You Want But That's The Way It Is. I Should Of Done It And I Didnt. And Some Part Of Me Has Never Quit Wishin I Could Go Back. And I Cant. I Didn't Know You Could Steal Your Own Life. And I Didnt Know That It Would Bring You No More Benefit Than About Anything Else You Might Steal. I Thinki Done The Best With Iti Knew How But Itstill Wasntmine. It Neverhas Been.

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.

I Tried To Put Things In Perspective But Sometimes You're Just Too Close To It.

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

They Lay Listening. Can You Do It? When The Time Comes? When The Time Comes There Will Be No Time. Now Is The Time. Curse God And Die. What If It Doesn't Fire? It Has To Fire. What If It Doesn't Fire? Could You Crush That Beloved Skull With A Rock? Is There Such A Being Within You Of Which You Know Nothing? Can There Be? Hold Him In Your Arms. Just So. The Soul Is Quick. Pull Him Toward You. Kiss Him. Quickly.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

He'd Half Meant To Speak But Those Eyes Had Altered The World Forever In The Space Of A Heartbeat.

Ah Me, Thou Destiny, Giver Of Evil Gifts.

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.

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 Don't Think Goodness Is Something That You Learn. If You're Left Adrift In The World To Learn Goodness From It, You Would Be In Trouble.

Lying Under Such A Myriad Of Stars. The Sea’s Black Horizon. He Rose And Walked Out And Stood Barefoot In The Sand And Watched The Pale Surf Appear All Down The Shore And Roll And Crash And Darken Again. 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.

One Of The Things You Realize About Gettin Older Is That Not Everybody Is Goin To Get Older With You.

You Say You Can't? Then Don't Do It. That's All.

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.

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.

A Dream Inside A Dream Might Not Be A Dream.

I Have No Enemies. I Dont Permit Such A Thing.

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

Fortune And Luck

It Is Supposed To True That Those Who Do Not Know History Are Condemned To Repeat It. I Don't Believe Knowing Can Save Us. What Is Constant In History Is Greed And Foolishness And Love Of Blood.

The Man Who Believes That The Secrets Of The World Are Forever Hidden Lives In Mystery And Fear. Superstition Will Drag Him Down. The Rain Will Erode The Deeds Of His Life. But That Man Who Sets Himself The Task Of Singling Out The Thread Of Order From The Tapestry Will By The Decision Alone Have Taken Charge Of The World And It Is Only By Such Taking Charge That He Will Effect A Way To Dictate The Terms Of His Own Fate.

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

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.

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.

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

The Cooler Days Have Brought A Wistful Mood Upon Him. The Smell Of Coalsmoke In The Air At Night. Old Times, Dead Years. For Him Such Memories Are Bitter Ones.

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.

There Is No Such Joy In The Tavern As Upon The Road Thereto.

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.

I Guess If Everybody Went Crazy Together Nobody Would Notice.

It's The Tide. It's The Dismal Tide. It's Not The One Thing.

Maybe It's Like Mac Says. Ever Man Winds Up With The Horse That Suits Him.

This Is The Nature Of War, Whose Stake Is At Once The Game And The Authority And The Justification. Seen So, War Is The Truest Form Of Divination. It Is The Testing Of One's Will And The Will Of Another Within That Larger Will Which Because It Binds Them Is Therefore Forced To Select. War Is The Ultimate Game Because War Is At Last A Forcing Of The Unity Of Existence.war Is God.

If A Dream Can Tell The Future It Can Also Thwart That Future. For God Will Not Permit That We Shall Know What Is To Come. He Is Bound To No One That The World Unfold Just So Upon Its Course And Those Who By Some Sorcery Or By Some Dream Might Come To Pierce The Veil That Lies So Darkly Over All That Is Before Them May Serve By Just That Vision To Cause That God Should Wrench The World From Its Heading And Set It Upon Another Course Altogether And Then Where Stands The Sorcerer? Where The Dreamer And His Dream?

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

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.

He Could Not Construct For The Child's Pleasure The World He'd Lost Without Constructing The Loss As Well And He Thought Perhaps The Child Had Known This Better Than He.

The Small Wad Of Burning Paper Drew Down To A Wisp Of Flame And Then Died Out Leaving A Faint Pattern For Just A Moment In The Incandescence Like The Shape Of A Flower, A Molten Rose. Then All Was Dark Again.

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.

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.

I Remember In Grammar School The Teacher Asked If Anyone Had Any Hobbies. I Was The Only One With Any Hobbies And I Had Every Hobby There Was... Name Anything, No Matter How Esoteric. I Could Have Given Everyone A Hobby And Still Had 40 Or 50 To Take Home.

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

The Martyr Who Longs For The Flames Can Be No Right Candidate For Them.

Here Beyond Men's Judgments All Covenants Were Brittle.

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

People Were Always Getting Ready For Tomorrow. I Didn't Believe In That. Tomorrow Wasn't Getting Ready For Them. It Didn't Even Know They Were There.

There Is No Forgiveness. For Women. A Man May Lose His Honor And Regain It Again. But A Woman Cannot. She Cannot.

Notions Of Chance And Fate Are The Preoccupations Of Men Engaged In Rash Undertakings.

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.

It's Not About Knowing Who You Are. It's About Thinkin You Got There Without Takin Anything With You. Your Notions About Startin Over. Or Anybody's. You Dont Start Over. That's What It's About. Every Step You Take Is Forever. You Can't Make It Go Away. None Of It.

Knowing Who You Are

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.

He Lay Listening To The Water Drip In The Woods. Bedrock, This. The Cold And The Silence. The Ashes Of The Late World Carried On The Bleak And Temporal Winds To And Fro In The Void. Carried Forth And Scattered And Carried Forth Again. Everything Uncoupled From Its Shoring. Unsupported In The Ashen Air. Sustained By A Breath, Trembling And Brief. If Only My Heart Were Stone.

Only That Man Who Has Offered Up Himself Entire To The Blood Of War, Who Has Been To The Floor Of The Pit And Seen The Horror In The Round And Learned At Last That It Speaks To His Inmost Heart, Only That Man Can Dance. - The Judge

The Names Of The Cerros And The Sierras And The Deserts Exist Only On Maps. We Name Them That We Do Not Lose Our Way. Yet It Was Because The Way Was Lost To Us Already That We Have Made Those Names. The World Cannot Be Lost. We Are The Ones. And It Is Because These Names And These Coordinates Are Our Own Naming That They Cannot Save Us. They Cannot Find For Us The Way Again.

Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave.

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

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.

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.

The Nights Were Blinding Cold And Casket Black And The Long Reach Of The Morning Had A Terrible Silence To It.

See The Hand That Nursed The Serpent. The Fine Hasped Pipes Of Her Fingerbones. The Skin Bewenned And Speckled. The Veins Are Milkblue And Bulby. A Thin Gold Ring Set With Diamonds. That Raised The Once Child's Heart Of Her To Agonies Of Passion Before I Was. Here Is The Anguish Of Mortality. Hopes Wrecked, Love Sundered. See The Mother Sorrowing. How Everything That I Was Warned Of's Come To Pass.

The World Could Only Be Known As It Existed In Men's Hearts. For While It Seemed A Place Which Contained Men It Was In Reality A Place Contained Within Them.

... A Man Leaves Much When He Leaves His Own Country.

If You Could Breathe A Breath So Strong You Could Blow Out The Wolf. Like You Blow Out The Copo. Like You Blow Out The Fire From The Candela. The Wolf Is Made The Way The World Is Made. You Cannot Touch The World. You Cannot Hold It In Your Hand For It Is Made Of Breath Only.

You Are Either Born A Writer Or You Are Not.

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.

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.

It Just Bothered Me That You Might Think I'm Somethin Special. I Aint.

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.

Deep In Each Man Is The Knowledge That Something Knows Of His Existence. Something Knows, And Cannot Be Fled Nor Hid From.

He Believed In God Even If He Was Doubtful Of Men's Claims To Know God's Mind. But That A God Unable To Forgive Was No God At All.

In The End We All Come To Be Cured Of Our Sentiments.

All The Pretty Horses

The Priest Therefore Saw What The Anchorite Could Not. That God Needs No Witness. Neither To Himself Nor Against. The Truth Is Rather That If There Were No God Then There Could Be No Witness For There Could Be No Identity To The World But Only Each Man's Opinion Of It. The Priest Saw That There Is No Man Who Is Elect Because There Is No Man Who Is Not. To God Every Man Is A Heretic.

How Surely Are The Dead Beyond Death. Death Is What The Living Carry With Them. A State Of Dread, Like Some Uncanny Foretaste Of A Bitter Memory. But The Dead Do Not Remember And Nothingness Is Not A Curse. Far From It.

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.

Probably I Dont Believe In A Lot Of Things That I Used To Believe In But That Doesnt Mean I Dont Believe In Anything.

Between The Wish And The Thing The World Lies Waiting.

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.

If It Is Life That You Feel You Are Missing I Can Tell You Where To Find It. In The Law Courts, In Business, In Government. There Is Nothing Occurring In The Streets. Nothing But A Dumbshow Composed Of The Helpless And The Impotent.

There Is No God And We Are His Prophets.

There Is No God

You Think When You Wake Up In The Mornin Yesterday Don't Count. But Yesterday Is All That Does Count. What Else Is There? Your Life Is Made Out Of The Days It’s Made Out Of. Nothin Else.

I Was Afraid I Was Goin To Die And Then I Was Afraid I Wasnt.

You Have My Whole Heart. You Always Did.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Dying Ain't In People's Plans, Is It?

If A Man's At Odds To Know His Own Mind It's Because He Hasn't Got Aught But His Mind To Know It With.

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.

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.

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

Each Memory Recalled Must Do Some Violence To Its Origins.

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.

Scars Have The Strange Power To Remind Us That Our Past Is Real.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

For Even If You Should Have Stood Your Ground, He Said, Yet What Ground Was It?

In Every Trade Save War Men Of Talent And Vigor Prosper. In War They Die.

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.

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

See The Child. He Is Pale And Thin, He Wears A Thin And Ragged Linen Shirt. He Stokes The Scullery Fire.

He Said That Men Believe The Blood Of The Slain To Be Of No Consequence But That The Wolf Knows Better. He Said That The Wolf Is A Being Of Great Order And That It Knows What Men Do Not: That There Is No Order In This World Save That Which Death Has Put There.

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.

Maybe. Anyway, Some Men Get What They Want. No Man. Or Perhaps Only Briefly So As To Lose It. Or Perhaps Only To Prove To The Dreamer That The World Of His Longing Made Real Is No Longer That World At All.

The Closest Bonds We Will Ever Know Are Bonds Of Grief. The Deepest Community One Of Sorrow.

The World To Come Must Be Composed Of What Is Past. No Other Material Is At Hand.

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

Men Of God And Men Of War Have Strange Affinities.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Hell Ain't Half Full.

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 Judge Placed His Hands On The Ground. He Looked At His Inquisitor. This Is My Claim, He Said. And Yet Everywhere Upon It Are Pockets Of Autonomous Life. Autonomous. In Order For It To Be Mine Nothing Must Be Permitted To Occur Upon It Save By My Dispensation.

He Thought Each Memory Recalled Must Do Some Violence To Its Origins. As In A Party Game. Say The Words And Pass It On. So Be Sparing. What You Alter In The Remembering Has Yet A Reality, Known Or Not.

It Is Not My Experience That Life’s Difficulties Make People More Charitable.

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.

Pain For The Old Was No Longer A Surprise.

If There's One Thing On This Planet You Don't Look Like It's A Bunch Of Good Luck Walkin Around.

Even The Damned In Hell Have The Community Of Their Suffering.

There Is No Greater Monster Than Reason.

All The Pretty Horses

Your Heart's Desire Is To Be Told Some Mystery. The Mystery Is That There Is No Mystery.

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.

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.

It Makes No Difference What Men Think Of War, Said The Judge. War Endures. As Well Ask Men What They Think Of Stone. War Was Always Here. Before Man Was, War Waited For Him. The Ultimate Trade Awaiting Its Ultimate Practitioner. That Is The Way It Was And Will Be. That Way And Not Some Other Way.

It Would Take A Hell Of A Wife To Beat No Wife At All.

The Voice Of The Almighty Speaks Most Profoundly In Such Things As Lives In Silence Themselves.

To Have A Child When You're Older, It Wrenches You Up Out Of Your Nap And Makes You Look At Things, You Know, Afresh. It Forces The World On You. And I Think It's A Good Thing.

This Country Will Kill You In A Heartbeat And Still People Love It.

He Imagined The Pain Of The World To Be Like Some Formless Parasitic Being Seeking Out The Warmth Of Human Souls Wherein To Incubate And He Thought He Knew What Made One Liable To Its Visitations. What He Had Not Known Was That It Was Mindless And So Had No Way To Know The Limits Of Those Souls And What He Feared Was That There Might Be No Limits.

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.

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

I Got Here The Same Way The Coin Did.

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

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 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.

There Is No Later. This Is Later.

It Takes Very Little To Govern Good People. Very Little. And Bad People Cant Be Governed At All. Or If They Could I Never Heard Of It.

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.

Things Separate From Their Stories Have No Meaning. They Are Only Shapes. Of A Certain Size And Color. A Certain Weight. When Their Meaning Has Become Lost To Us They No Longer Have Even A Name. The Story On The Other Hand Can Never Be Lost From Its Place In The World For It Is That Place.

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.

Nothin Wounded Goes Uphill, He Said. It Just Dont Happen.

We're Carrying The Fire.

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.

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

Teaching English

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.

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

It Was Always Himself That The Coward Abandoned First. After This All Other Betrayals Came Easily.

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

Years Later He'd Stood In The Charred Ruins Of A Library Where Blackened Books Lay In Pools Of Water. Shelves Tipped Over. Some Rage At The Lies Arranged In Their Thousands Row On Row. He Picked Up One Of The Books And Thumbed Through The Heavy Bloated Pages. He'd Not Have Thought The Value Of The Smallest Thing Predicated On A World To Come. It Surprised Him. That The Space Which These Things Occupied Was Itself An Expectation.

There Was Nothin To Set A Man's Mind At Ease Like Wakin Up In The Morning And Not Havin To Decide Who You Were.

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

If Only My Heart Were Stone.

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. It Is Supposed To Be True That Those Who Do Not Know History Are Condemned To Repeat It. I Don't Believe Knowing Can Save Us. What Is Constant In History Is Greed And Foolishness And A Love Of Blood And This Is A Thing That Even God--who Knows All That Can Be Known--seems Powerless To Change.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To See God Everywhere Is To See Him Nowhere.

She Smiled. I Think It's Just The Snow. I Think It Makes People Stop And Think. Bell Nodded. I Hope It Comes A Blizzard Then.

This Country Was Filled With Violent Children Orphaned By War.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

What Is It? Nothing. I Had A Bad Dream. What Did You Dream About? Nothing. Are You Okay? No. He Put His Arms Around Him And Held Him. It's Okay, He Said. I Was Crying. But You Didnt Wake Up. I'm Sorry. I Was Just So Tired. I Meant In The Dream.

Fear Of An Enemy Can Often Blind Men To Other Hazards, Not Least The Shape Which They Themselves Make In The World.

He Knew Only That His Child Was His Warrant. He Said: If He Is Not The Word Of God God Never Spoke.

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.

Last Words Are Only Words.

The Man Smiled At Him A Sly Smile. As If They Knew A Secret Between Them, These Two. Something Of Age And Youth And Their Claims And The Justice Of Those Claims. And Of Their Claims Upon Them. The World Past, The World To Come. Their Common Transciencies. Above All A Knowing Deep In The Bone That Beauty And Loss Are One.

I Ain't Got An Original Thought In My Head. If It Ain't Got The Scent Of Divinity To It, I Ain't Interested In It

Original Thought

There Is A Moon Shaped Rictus In The Streetlamp's Globe Where A Stone Has Gone And From This Aperture There Drifts Down Through The Constant Helix Of Aspiring Insects A Faint And Steady Rain Of The Same Forms Burnt And Lifeless.

Keep A Little Fire Burning; However Small, However Hidden.

But This Man Had Set Down With A Hammer And Chisel And Carved Out A Stone Water Trough To Last Ten Thousand Years. Why Was That? What Was It That He Had Faith In? It Wasn't That Nothin' Would Change. Which Is What You Might Think, I Suppose. He Had To Know Better'n That. I've Thought About It A Good Deal. . . And I Have To Say That The Only Thing I Can Think Is That There Was Some Sort Of Promise In His Heart. And I Don't Have No Intentions Of Carvin' A Stone Water Trough. But I Would Like To Be Able To Make That Kind Of Promise. I Think That's What I Would Like Most Of All.

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