there is no choosing
only accepting – choosing
was done long ago
From the dark movie The Counselor, a 2013 crime thriller film directed by Ridley Scott.
I think I should have known it was written by Cormac McCarthy.
In movie, a lawyer gets caught up in things he would rather not be caught up in and seeks a way out.
He approaches some one in the inner circle of bad guys for help and advice.
What he gets is this.
I would urge you to see the truth in your situation …
That is my advice.
It is not for me to say what you should have done.
Or not done.
I only know that the world in which they are made.
You are at a cross in the road and here you think to choose.
But there is no choosing.
There is only accepting.
The choosing was done long ago.
The cold harsh logic of Mr. McCarthy’s that pervades most of his writing is chillingly present in this short soliloquy worthy of Big Bill himself.
Such simple words in such an unbelievable unfathomable combination.
In the more of this scene Mr. McCarthy gives a hint of the source of bit alluding to the poems of Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz (26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939), known as Antonio Machado.
The man who wrote:
Wayfarer, only your footprints
are the path, and nothing more;
wayfarer, there is no path,
you make the path as you walk.
As you walk you make the path,
and as you turn to glance behind
you see the trail that you never
shall return to tread again.
Wayfarer, there is no path,
only wake trails on the sea.
(Proverbios y cantares” in Campos de Castilla, 1917 edition)
There is no choosing.
There is no path.
Only wake trails on the sea.
There is only accepting.
The choosing was done long ago.
To be or not to be.
Such simple words.
I have access to all these same words.
It is getting these simple words in these combinations.
There’s the rub.
No Haiku For You 