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Tell me, have you done much circus work in your life?' [asked Mulder]. Nutt drew himself up to his full height. 'And what makes you think I've ever even gone to a circus, let alone been a slave in one?' he demanded... Finally Mulder managed to say, 'I didn't mean any offense.' 'Offended? Why should I be offended?' Nutt demanded. 'It's human nature to make quick judgements of people based only on their looks. Why, I have done the same thing to you.' 'Have you?' said Mulder. 'And what have you concluded?' 'I have taken in your all-American face, your unsmiling expression, your boring necktie. I have decided you work for the government,' Nutt said. 'You are- an FBI agent.' 'Am I really?' Mulder said. 'I hope you get my point,' Nutt said. 'I want to show how stupid it would be to look at you as a type, rather than as an individual.' 'But I am an FBI agent,' Mulder said, showing Nutt his badge. There was a loud silence. Then Nutt said, 'Sign the book please. ↗
If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves, why should not better conditions already make the rich more fit to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard in Utopia...Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed clean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul? As far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer is Christianity. Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment...Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. ↗
It seems to me there are things we should have talked about. Like, what happens if you think you've found the love of your life, but you notice, whenever you go into the city together, that he walks ahead of you in the subway station, and doesn't look behind for you until after he's gotten on the subway? And what if you find yourself wishing you did not have to tell him to wait for you? What if being with him starts to mean having to say those things..."Honey, what for me?" And you start to resent him making you do that in order to keep him walking by your side? ↗
The pageant of the river bank had marched steadily along, unfolding itself in scene-pictures that succeeded itself in stately procession. Purple loosestrife arrived early, shaking luxuriant locks along the edge of the mirror whence its own face laughed back at it. Willow-herb, tender and wistful, like a pink sunset-cloud was not slow to follow. Comfrey, the purple hand-in-hand with the white, crept forth to take its place in the line; and at last one morning the diffident and delaying dog-rose stepped delicately on the stage, and one knew, as if string music has announced it in stately chords that strayed into a gavotte, that June at last was here. One member of the company was still awaited; the shepherd-boy for the nymphs to woo, the knight for whom the ladies waited at the window, the prince that was to kiss the sleeping summer back to life and love. But when meadow-sweet, debonair and odorous in amber jerkin, moved graciously to his place in the group, then the play was ready to begin. ↗
#life
I never win anything," Dolorous Edd complained. "The gods always smiled on Watt, though. When the wildlings knocked him off the Bridge of Skulls, somehow he landed in a nice depp proof of water. How lucky was that, missing all those rocks?" "Was it a long fall?" Green wanted to know. "Did landing in the pool of water save his life?" "No," said Dolorous Edd. "He was dead already, from that axe in his head. Still, it was pretty lucky, missing the rocks. ↗
Soaking” seems like a crazy word in an intimacy book. Yet that is exactly what you want to do in your relational time with Him, you want to “soak in and soak up” His presence, “soak in and soak up” His love. ↗
Just don't eat all of it," Ram fusses. "It could be tampered with. You should show it to your dad first, he'll know--" "Ram has Seahorse Syndrome," Sahara tells me wisely. "What's that?" I ask. "In seahorses the dad's the one who gets pregnant and has babies. We learned about it in life science class. Ram thinks he's a mother hen. So he must be a seahorse. ↗
#life
You know, I've always hated those stories about princes and princesses with some extraordinary ability, special because they're born special.' 'Like me?' He smiled wickedly, making me laugh a little. 'I didn't see how those were happy stories, because life has given princes and princesses enough unearned advantages. I'd rather believe that anyone can accomplish remarkable things when she really tries. Maybe her accomplishments will never be recognized, but simply loving and caring for someone else, that's miraculous to me. ↗
Had Stella been named anything else, and/or had we lived in any other city besides New Orleans, my desperate call would have been just my desperate call. In that alternate universe the neighbors might have peeked from behind the curtains but they wouldn't have laughed or, worse, joined in. But you simply cannot shout the name Stella while standing under a window in New Orleans and hope for anything like an authentic or even mildly earnest moment. Literature had beaten me to this moment, had staked its flag here first, and there was nothing I could do outside in that soupy, rain-drenched alleyway that could rise above sad parody. Perhaps if she'd been named Beatrice, or Katarzyna-maybe then my life would have turned out differently. Maybe then my voice would have roused her to the window, maybe then I could have told her that I was sorry, that I could be a better man, that I couldn't promise I knew everything it meant but I loved her. Instead I stared up at that black window, shutmouthed and impotent, blinking and reblinking my eyes to flush out the rainwater. "Stella," I whispered. The French have an expression: "Without literature life is hell." Yeah, well. Life with it bears its own set of flames. ↗
#life #literature #love #life
