(no subject)
It strikes me kind of funny,
it's a funny thing indeed
how at the end of every hard-earned day
people find some reason to believe
-- Bruce Springsteen
But still. Still bless me anyway. I want more life. I can't help myself. I do. I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life.
-- Prior Walter, in Tony Kushner's Angels in America
Joggi stood before the mystery of his own life much as any other porcupine might have. That is to say, he was exceedingly cautious in the face of it. I do not mean to imply that it was difficult for Joggi to acknowledge the mystery. On the contrary! He had no trouble whatsoever recognizing the ebb and flow of his own limitations and the infinite variety and possibility within his universe. Joggi knew about the ongoing beat of life. The daily. The humdrum. The having-one-day-showed-up; and now, like it or not, the finding-oneself-here in the midst of existence, virtually crushed by an environment, called upon to create the entire world; the bittersweet mingling of all of this with an inner insistence to go on, and on, until....Until what? Joggi knew about the ongoing beat of life. It throbbed somewhere deep within him. Beneath the prickly spines. In the center of his tiny body. A thumping. Steady. Insistent. Unrelenting. The mystery.
-- from "The Porcupine Whose Name Didn't Matter", The Way of the Wolf by Martin Bell
it's a funny thing indeed
how at the end of every hard-earned day
people find some reason to believe
-- Bruce Springsteen
But still. Still bless me anyway. I want more life. I can't help myself. I do. I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life.
-- Prior Walter, in Tony Kushner's Angels in America
Joggi stood before the mystery of his own life much as any other porcupine might have. That is to say, he was exceedingly cautious in the face of it. I do not mean to imply that it was difficult for Joggi to acknowledge the mystery. On the contrary! He had no trouble whatsoever recognizing the ebb and flow of his own limitations and the infinite variety and possibility within his universe. Joggi knew about the ongoing beat of life. The daily. The humdrum. The having-one-day-showed-up; and now, like it or not, the finding-oneself-here in the midst of existence, virtually crushed by an environment, called upon to create the entire world; the bittersweet mingling of all of this with an inner insistence to go on, and on, until....Until what? Joggi knew about the ongoing beat of life. It throbbed somewhere deep within him. Beneath the prickly spines. In the center of his tiny body. A thumping. Steady. Insistent. Unrelenting. The mystery.
-- from "The Porcupine Whose Name Didn't Matter", The Way of the Wolf by Martin Bell