Feb 16, 2006 10:43
"I brought Mrs. Renling here a few times to dance and drink spring water; the mosquitos, though, were too active for her. Afterward I sometimes went alone; she didnt see why I should want to. Nor did she see what I strayed into town for in the morning or why I took pleasure in sitting in the sill green bake of the Civil War courthouse aquare after my think breakfast of griddle cakes and eggs and coffee. But I di, and warmed my belly and shins while the little locust trolley clinked and crept to the harbor and over the trstles of the bog-spanning bridge where the green beasts and bulrush-rocking birds kept up their hot, small -time uproar. I brought along a book, but there was too much brown stain on the pages from the sun, The benches were whilte iron, roomy enough for three or four old gaffers to snooze on in the swamptasting sweet warmth that made the redwing blackbirds fierce and quick, and the lfowers frill, but other living things slow and lazy-blooded. I soaked in the heavy nourishing air and this befriending atmosphere like rich life-cake, the kind that encourages love and brings on a mild pain of emotions. A state that lets you rest in your own specific gravity, and where you are not a subject matter but sit in your own nature, tasting original tastes as good as the first man, and are outside of the busy human tamper, left free even of your own habits. Which only lie on you illusory in the sunshine, in the usual relation of your feet or fingers or the knot of your shoestrings and are without power. No more than the comb or shadow of your hair has power on your brain."
-Saul Bellow "The adventures of Augie March"