woanologue

His hand, as proud as such a dignity,

Smoking with pride, marcht on to take his stand

On her bare breast, the heart of all her land;

  Whose ranks of blue veins, as his hand did scale,

  Left their round turrets destitute and pale

Yesterday was definitely one of those moments where I saw a clear link to link graph, of how I managed to plant myself in LA for almost two years and am now watching a Shakespearean play in freaking Topanga with a friend, like a local.

VICARRO: You always have something in your hands - to hold onto. Now that kid purse ...

FLORA : My purse?

VICARRO: You have no reason to keep that purse in your hands. You’re certainly not afraid that I’m going to snatch it!

FLORA : Oh, God, no! I wassen afraid of that!

VICARRO: That wouldn’t be the good-neighbor policy, would it? But you hold onto that purse because it gives you something to get a grip on. Isn’t that right?

FLORA : Yes. I always like to have something in my hands.

VICARRO: Sure you do. You feel what a lot of uncertain things there are. Gins burn down. The volunteer fire department don’t have decent equipment. Nothing is any protection. The afternoon sun is hot. It’s no protection. The trees are back of the house. They’re no protection. The goods that dress if made of - is no protection. So what do you do, Mrs. Meighan? You pick up the white kid purse. It’s solid. It’s sure. It’s certain. It’s something to hold on to. You get what I mean?

FLORA : Yeah. I think I do.

VICARRO: It gives you a feeling of being attached to something. The mother protects the baby? No, no, no - the baby protects the mother! From being lost and empty and having nothing but lifeless things in her hands! Maybe you think there isn’t much connection!

FLORA : You’ll have to excuse me from thinking. I’m too lazy.

Back in the days when unremitting toil was the lot of all but the very few and leisure still a hopeless yearning, hard and painful as life was, it still felt real. People were in rapport with the small bit of reality allotted to them, the sense of the earth, the tang of the changing seasons, the consciousness of the eternal on-going of birth and death. Now, when so many have leisure, they become detached from themselves, not merely from the earth. From all the widened horizons of our greater world, a thousand voices call us to come near, to understand, and to enjoy, but our ears are not trained to hear them. The leisure is ours but not the skill to use it. So leisure becomes a void, and from the ensuing restlessness, men take refuge in delusive excitations or fictitious visions, returning to their own earth no more.

Memoirs of A Geisha 2005

She has caught a cold and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.

prig : self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.

It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own power of adjustment.

One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer

The rich get richer and the poor get - children.

Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby anymore but of this clean, hard, limited person who dealt in universal skepticism and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm.

Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

The Lobster 2015

- Dr Hyla Cass