structure no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed
Adapted from:
The last mile or so he had been concentrating on suits and the government and decided he no longer much believed in either.
Suits obviously had helped to promote bad government and he was as guilty as anyone for wearing them so steadfastly for twenty years.
Of late he had become frightened of the government for the first time in his life, the way the structure of democracy had begun debasing people rather than enlivening them in their mutual concern.
The structure was no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause, Nordstrom thought, was probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wore suits.
From the Man Who Gave Up his Name as published in Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison, (Grove Press Collection,: New York, 2016).
Suits.
Congress.
The Courts.
The Executive Branch.
The structure is no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause, is probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wear the same suit.
older people know that they are not going to become young again
Adapted from the line, “Young people seem not to know that they are going to get old, but older people know that they are not going to become young again.”
From Off to the side by Jim Harrison (Atlantic Monthly Press: New York,2002).
Then a few lines further down the page, Mr. Harrison warns, “There is a specific melancholy to hardship that accrues later as a collection of gestures, glances, and dire events.”
Holding my grandson, Ian, I was thinking of that bit of writing.
I was thinking that this little guy has no idea he is going to get old.
Using the word “old” as a state of being, as in ‘old people old’.
Ian will get older, we all know that, but Ian being OLD?
Then, there is me in that picture.
Certainly not young.
And very much assured that I am not going to become young again.
But then again, I live in a place where the median age is 64 so I am middle aged and I do see a lot of people who are both old and much older than I am.
So I feel young at least, young enough and as for knowing I am not going to become young again?
I am sure that wouldn’t go through all of that getting old all over again for anything.
to shoot the wall clock make it stop, better yet, keep backing up slowly
It’s not so comic the way that clocks race themselves with us in fragile tow and it’s not enough to say “What are we waiting for?” or “Why are we holding back?” though that might occur to us later.
We are far less capable of those radical emotional moves advocated by magazines that specialize in puddle-deep psychologisms, the usual seven steps to a victorious emotional life, as if we could put ourselves on a figurative grease rack or automated assembly line for overhaul.
It was all so ordinary though I wanted to shoot the wall clock, over and over. Anything to make it stop or, better yet, keep backing up slowly.
From True North by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).
I woke from a dream the other morning where all was as it was when I was a kid on the shore of Lake Michigan.
It was a disappointment when I woke and realized it was a dream.
It was all so ordinary though I wanted to shoot the wall clock, over and over.
Anything to make it stop or, better yet, keep backing up slowly.
You can’t can you?
It’s not so comic the way that clocks race themselves with us in fragile tow and it’s not enough to say “What are we waiting for?” or “Why are we holding back?” though that might occur to us later.
weren’t satisfied with having money unless there were many who didn’t
Oddly, it wasn’t the poverty that ground against the sensibilities so hard that depressed me the most but the attitude of many of the more fortunate who weren’t satisfied with having money unless there were many who didn’t have it.
Even quasi-religious people liked to quote Jesus as saying, “The poor you have with you always,” neglecting to add that he didn’t say to sit on your ass and don’t do anything about it.
The thought that my country accepts the idea that a quarter of its citizens are destined to be social mutants peels my nerves.
Our compassion quotient has seemed to lower a bit more every year of my adult life.
I never much minded when my colleagues would tease me for being a “bleeding heart” because if your heart doesn’t bleed you’re dead, and you’ve become just another greedy little shit factory on life’s way.
From The Road Home by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).
Yes of late I have been drawing a lot of inspiration from Mr. Harrison and The Road Home of late.
You can guess that I am re-reading it again and wonder if the power of some of Mr. Harrison’s writing would have been lessened had he left some of the rawness out of it.
But this is like trying to draw life lessons from watching the Soprano’s and wishing they could have dropping the violence.
The life frustrations of Tony in his sessions with the psychiatrist (“If my calling is so important, PICK UP THE PHONE”) I guess need the contrast with the miserable life of a mobster.
But I digress.
Our compassion quotient has seemed to lower a bit more every year of my adult life.
I could start with the compassion quotient but you could add almost any other aspect of life and it has seemed to lower a bit more every year.
It seems that I have read stories that for the first time, the next generation of Americans are looking at a worse world then the previous generation had.
We could start with that current man in the oval office and go down hill from there.
I read books and poems about a filled with bird song and all I have around my house is the caw caw of crows.
I read books filled with exclamations of wonder and beauty over the salt sea breeze and where I live on the Atlantic Coast of South Carolina, what you get is the pluff mud of the salt march which smells of dirty diapers.
Sports are money pits with nothing to do about sports.
I am tired of raging against the machine.
There is just too much money, dead money, money that isn’t doing anything but sitting in banks in account and doing nothing.
I don’t like to go to Woody Allen but in Annie Hall, the artist (Max von Sydow) says:
Money, money, money! If Jesus came back, and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.
the question, of course, is how you can make your soul clap its hands and sing
The question, of course, is how you make your soul clap its hands and sing.
My bones seemed built out of incomprehension.
The road was rutted enough by winter rains so that the car drove itself.
I was ringed by four mountain ranges in this valley but then natural beauty seems to offer no more than you can bring to it. There was scarcely a patch in a thousand square miles I hadn’t covered on foot.
Looking down you see blue and black gama, side oats gama, curly mesquite, sprangle-top, and the grassy skin of the local earth.
Straight up is invariably sky.
Up in my own country it was apparently our nature to kill seventy million buffalo just as it was our nature to destroy the Native cultures.
History will not help your soul clap its hands and sing but it is unconscionable to proceed without knowing it.
From True North by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).
Mr. Harrison is referencing the poem, Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats.
Mr. Harrison quotes the 2nd of 4 stanzas.
An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing.
And louder sing.
An aged man is but a paltry thing.
History will not help your soul clap its hands and sing but it is unconscionable to proceed without knowing it.
So much news of late.
How frail our constitution was.
How frail life is.
Therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.
BTW – to make this work, I had to add a word to Mr. Harrison’s words … have a feeling he would not have been happy but when I do the same thing to Shakespeare and Sandburg …
