[5485] in Central_America
New quotes for Fri Jun 17
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Central America)
Fri Jun 17 03:25:30 1994
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 03:25:11 -0400
From: Central America <root@charon.MIT.EDU>
To: ca-mtg@charon.MIT.EDU
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jcb (Jeff Bigler):
We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in the
time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.
...It has become that time of evening when people sit on their
porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and
the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds'
hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a
buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt: a loud auto:
people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of
aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of
vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard, and starched milk, the image upon them
of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber. A
streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping; belling and starting,
stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and
swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the
bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit
set to dog its tracks; the iron whine rises on rising speed; still
risen, faints; halts; the faint stinging bell; rises again, still
faniter; fainting, lifting, lifts, faints foregone: forgotten. Now is
the night one blue dew.
Now is the night one blue dew, my father has drained, he has coiled the
hose.
Low on the length of lawns, a frailing of fire who breathes...
Parents on porches: rock and rock. From damp strings morning glories
hang their ancient faces.
The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air at once
enchants my eardrums.
On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread
quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and
I too am lying there....They are not talking much, and the talk is
quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of
nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a
smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are
larger bodies than mine,... with voices gentle and meaningless like
the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home.
One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good
to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they
are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on
this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among
the sounds of the night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my
mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of
trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.
After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws
me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar
and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not
ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.
---by James Agee
Set to music by Samuel Barber ("Knoxville Summer of 1915")
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jrhernan (James R Hernandez):
{from system: This user's .plan file is not world-readable}
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pduvvur (Prasanth V Duvvur):
HIT LIFE HARD
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therese (Therese):
Never, ever say: "I fell asleep in class"
Instead, say: "Notwithstanding the scintillating repartage concomitant
to this scholastic assemblage, intransigent preternatural biological
functions conspired to surmount my fragile resolve, plunging
consciousness beneath my direct autonomy and thus insuring a rapid
decline into somnolency."
-- Ultimate Student's Handbook
--- End of Central America ---
