Once a bum always a bum

"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable."

John Steinbeck

Travels with Charley in Search of America

I'll get you down if you don't

One time when it was the first of the month and there 
were curt notes from the water company and the rent wasn’t 
paid and a manuscript had come back from Colliefs and 
the cartoons had come back from The New Yorker and 
pleurisy was hurting Tom pretty badly, he went into the 
bedroom and lay down on the bed. 

Mary came softly in, for the blue-grey colour of his gloom 
had seeped out under the door and through the keyhole. 
She had a little bouquet of candytuft in a collar of paper 
lace. 

‘‘Smell,” she said and held the bouquet to his nose. He 
smelled the flowers and said nothing. “Do you know what 
day this is?” she asked and thought wildly for something to 
make it a bright day. 

Tom said : “Why don’t we face it for once? We’re down. 
We’re going under. What’s the good kidding ourselves?” 

“No we’re not,” said Mary. “We’re magic people; We 
always have been. Remember that ten dollars you found in 
a book — ^remember when your cousin sent you five dollars? 
Nothing can happen to us.” 

“Well, it has happened,” said Tom. “I’m sorry,” he said. 
“I just can’t talk myself out of it this time. I’m sick of 
pretending everything. For once I’d like to have it real — 
just for once.” 

"I thought of giving a little party tonight,” said Mary. 

“On what? You’re not going to cut out the baked ham 
picture from a magazine again and serve it on a platter, 
are you? I’m sick of that kind of kidding. It isn’t funny 
any more. It’s sad.” 

“I could give a little party,” she insisted. “Just a small 
affair . Nobody will dress. It’s the anniversary of the found- 
ing of the Bloomer League — ^you didn’t even remember 
that.” 

“It’s no use,” said Tom. ‘T know it’s mean, but I just 
can’t rise to it. Why don’t you just go out and shut the 
door and leave me alone? I’ll get you down if you don’t.” 

She looked at him closely and saw that he meant it. Mary 
walked quietly out and shut the door, and Tom turned over 
on the bed and put his face down between his arms. He 
could hear her rustling about in the other room. 

Steinbeck, Cannery Row

"It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people were so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much.

The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed.

It's the primary America we're in. It hit the night before last in Prineville Junction and it's been with us ever since. There's the primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and move spectaculars. And people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what's immediately around them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely.

Robert Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Welcome Home Stevie Y

On a Slushy April Night

"Oliver rose next morning, in better heart, and went about his usual occupations, with more hope and pleasure than he had known for many days. The birds were once more hung out, to sing, in their old places; and the sweetest wild flowers that could be found, were once more gathered to gladden Rose with their beauty. The melancholy which had seemed to the sad eyes of the anxious boy to hang, for days past, over every object, beautiful as all were, was dispelled by magic. The dew seemed to sparkle more brightly on the green leaves; the air to rustle among them with a sweeter music; and the sky itself to look more blue and bright. Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercise, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision."

Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist