Nocturnal

the smell of michigan when i was a boy

"I had been drinking Bulmer's Dry Cider, which I had found to be a marvelous drink. G.C. had brought some in from Kajiado from the Stores. It was very light and refreshing and did not slow you down at all shooting. It came in full quarts and had screw-in tops and I used to drink it in the night when I woke instead of water. Mary's extremely nice cousin had given us two small square sacking-covered pillows filled with balsam needles. I always slept with mine under my neck or, if I slept on my side, with my ear on it. It was the smell of Michigan when I was a boy and I wished I could have had a sweet-grass basket to keep it in when we traveled and to have under the mosquito net in the bed at night. The cider tasted like Michigan too and I always remembered the cider mill and the door which was never locked but only fitted with a hasp and wooden pin and the smell of the sacks used in the pressing and later spread to dry and then spread over the deep tubs where the men who came to grind their wagon loads of apples left the mill's share. Below the dam of the cider mill there was a deep pool where the eddy from the falling water turned out back in under the dam. You could always catch trout if you fished there patiently and whenever I caught one I would kill him and lay him in the big wicker creel that was in the shade and put a layer of fern leaves over him and then go into the cider mill and take the tin cup off the nail on the wall over the tubs and pull up the heavy sacking from one of the tubs and dip out a cup of cider and drink it. This cider that we had now reminded me of Michigan, especially with the pillow."

Ernest Hemingway

True at First Light

Next Stop: Keeweenaw

aurora borealis

If Charley hadn’t shaken and bounced and said “Ftt,” I might have forgotten that every night he gets two dog biscuits and a walk to clear his head. I put on clean clothes and went out with him into the star-raddled night. And the Aurora Borealis was out. I’ve seen it only a few times in my life. It hung and moved with majesty in folds like an infinite traveler upstage in an infinite theater. In colors of rose and lavender and purple it moved and pulsed against the night, and the frost-sharpened stars shone through it. What a thing to see at a time when I needed it so badly! 

John Steinbeck

Travels with Charley in Search of America

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