I. (where are your teeth now?) "... making it more than what it is lessens it."

"And I never understood why until that afternoon in Wakonda at the union meeting, sitting there remembering how I'd lost my bobcats, looking out the window of the grange hall at the spot where my boat had sunk in the bay, and hearing Floyd Evenwrite say to old man Syverson: 'All it wants is its fair advantage.'

So as close as I can come to explaining it, friends and neighbors, that is why that river is no buddy of mine. It's maybe the buddy of the brant geese and the steelhead. It is mighty likely a buddy of old lady Pringle and her Pioneer Club in Wakonda -- they hold oldtime get-togethers on the docks every Fourth of July in honor of the first time some old moccasined hobo come paddling across in his dugout a hundred years ago, the Highway of Pioneers they call it... and who the hell knows, maybe it was, just like now it is the railroad we used to float our log booms down -- but it still is no personal friend of mine. Not just the thing about the bobcats; I could tell you a hundred stories, probably, give you a hundred reasons showing why I got to fight that river. Oh, fine reasons; because you can spend a good deal of time thinking during those thinking times, when you're taking timber cruises walking all day long with nothing to do but check the pedometer on your foot, or sitting for hours in a stand blowing a game call, or milking in the morning when Viv is laid up with cramps -- a lot of time, and I got a lot of things about myself straight in my mind: I know, for an instance, that, if you want to play this way, you can make the river stand for all sorts of other things. But doing that it seems to me is taking your eye off the ball; making it more than what it is lessens it. Just to see it clear is plenty. Just to feel it cold against you or watch it flood or smell it when the damn thing backs up from Wakonda with all the town's garbage and sewage and dead crud floating around in it stinking up a breeze, that is plenty. And the best way to see it is not looking behind it -- or beneath it or beyond it -- but dead at it.


And to remember that all it wants is its fair advantage."

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

II. (digging t-th'ina)

"So by keeping my eye on the ball I found it just came down to this: that that river was after somethings I figured belonged to me. It'd already got some and was all the time working to get some more. And in as how I was well known as one of the Ten Toughest Hombres this side of the Rockies, I aimed to do my best to hinder it. 

And as far as I was concerned, hindering something meant -- had always meant -- going after it with everything you got, fighting and kicking, stomping and gouging, and cussing it when everything else went sour. And being just as strong in the hassle as you got it in you to be. Now that's real logical, don't you think? that's real simple. If You Wants to Win, You Does Your Best. Why, a body could paint that on a plaque and hang it up over his bedstead. He could live by it. It could be like one of the Ten Commandments for success. 'If You Wants to Win You Does Your Best.' Solid and certain as a rock; one rule I was gut-sure I could bank on. 

Yet it took nothing more than my kid brother coming to spend a month with us to show me that there are other ways of winning -- like winning by giving in, by being soft, by not gritting your goddamn teeth and getting your best hold... winning by not, for damned sure, being one of the Ten Toughest Hombres west of the Rockies. And show me as well that there's times when the only way you can win is by being weak, by losing, by doing your worst instead of your best. 

And learning that come near to doing me in."

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

"...and, with this just-for-fun contest, begins springing on herself an old, old trap."

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

"lying to herself with the truth: 'No one can see me.'"

"'Who knows who he snatched it from,' the seamstress thought. 'To think I had to eat what a thieving wind brought me!'"

The Seamstress and the Wind, César Aira

arrigato gozaiwash ..tu, fella.

It's Pat (1994)

1991-1992?

In dad's old pickup,
saddle blanket seat covers
wore elbows and thighs.

"The worst of being in prison, he thought, is not being able to lock one's door."

"Julien felt himself hardly worthy of so much devotion -- in truth he was weary of heroics. He would have found a simple, naive, even a timid tenderness affecting, whereas, on the contrary, the notion of an audience, of the presence of others, was always a requisite to Mathilde's haughty soul."

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)

permanent change, active reading

"Little by little, self-command returned. He compared himself to a general who has just half won a great battle. The advantage is assured, he said to himself -- and is immense; but what will happen tomorrow? all could be lost in an instant. 

With a passionate gesture he opened the Memoirs Dictated at St. Helena by Napoleon, and forced himself to read them for two long hours; his eyes alone were doing the reading -- but that did not signify; he compelled himself to go on. During this strange exercise, his heart and mind, soaring to the highest possible plane, worked on unconsciously. This is a heart altogether different from that of Mme de Rênal, he was saying to himself -- but got no further. 

'Make her afraid,' he cried suddenly, flinging the book away. The enemy will obey me only so far as I frighten him, that's when he daren't despise me."

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)

26 Bathrooms (1985)

"Ah well, it's all over, she said to herself with apparent calm; what remains is a great lesson for me; it was a terrible blunder, humiliating! It will teach me wisdom for the rest of my life."

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)

The Blues Brothers (1980)

"1ce the Powers luce itwl fetch itwl move itwl happen every 1 whats in its road. Some 1s got to happen it. If it aint me or you cud wel be some 1 wersen us cudnt it. So I wer on for letting it happen."

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

The Blues Brothers (1980)

"...If you cud even jus see 1 thing clear the woal of whats in it you cud see every thing clear. But you never wil get to see the woal of any thing youre all ways in the middl of it living it or moving thru it. Never mynd."

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

"Every thing emtyd out of the worl and out of me."

Addams Family Values (1993)

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban