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"It's something that was said
before about . . . fellow travelers, I'm still thinking about that.
Can you really imagine traversing into . . . another world with the
ones so dearly traveled with here. I mean . . . there. I have to keep
reminding myself where I am. I mean where I am not! Damn it!"
"When does the luggage arrive?
If there is any luggage."
"Listen to that."
"Life the adventure is which
all parties are slain. One on the verandah, one running, one in bed
with one eye on the clock, one standing bravely with the wind in his
face as the report comes in. The manner of each death . . ."
"I used to hear train whistles
at night, and I never saw where the train-tracks were."
"Okay, I 'm only taking one
other person with me."
"I think I hear music now."
"It's accompanying him. On
his post-romantic journey to the other world."
"Excuse me, but isn't it too
late for that plan?"
"You don't look for someone
who is right to escape life with. You look for someone who is right
to live with. You would and she would be perfect for all-time lifetime,
every dotting the i's so to speak . . . every sentiment and every .
. . what should we choose for an example? . . . every decision shared
stamped into the memory of God!"
"Leave God Rout of this. If
we can't talk without reference to God, we're getting nowhere. God knows
that, if He knows anything."
"What is the origin of music?"
"Horses clomping on the road
to the merry old tavern."
"Rhythms akin to speech, but
not forming into speech? Maybe?"
"A discovery of sound while
spinning the linen . . ."
"And the loom is transformed
into the harp. Maybe."
"Say what you like."
"Of course if you wake up every
day with the big mystery
pressing on you, you have no
time or inclination for a regular job. I did everything I could to believe
they were all in it with me. But they just kept hauling out their golf
clubs and serving up those meals. Now I'm really in trouble, because
I'm an old man, and still have the heart of a dissenter. The only one
who believed in the profound. I'll crack this- yet."
"We do get some lunaticªs,
who are on the whole not prone to violence, but rather self-immolation."
"What did you say was the origin
of music?"
"Music is rather the origin
of something, rather than a thing one needs to question. I mean, nothing
proceeds it, as I see it."
"Maybe we are glorifying everything."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Because it's all we've got."
"I like to be alone with my
thoughts. My thoughts are so big, they are like twelve television sets.
I can sit there and react. It's incredible."
"The trouble, the thing with
life is, it is interesting. So you have a question about it, like when
you are five years old, the question is soon overwhelmed by the interesting.
The yard is a big screen mystery, the very setting for truth! In fact,
it occurs to you that this interesting aspect may be the answer to this
question. Life will answer to life. So you pursue this theory and are
inveilged with a whole life, while yet--"
"It actually isn't the ca,se.
The mystery stubbornly remains!"
"The music. The candlelight."
"What is the origin of candlelight?"
"Yellow leaves . . . strewn
along the path where they walk by the river."
"This must inevitably turn
into an exchange of two, a lovers' obscure talk, as the fate of the
universe surely depends upon them."
"Make it up as you go along!"
"I think if it's two, they
aren't lovers."
"Right, because there has to
be some--how should I put it, slack!"
"Right. Lover's exhaust each
other in life. Consume each other right in each other's presence. God!"
"I still think life is the
thing . . ."
"Where is God anyway?"
"They say God took a long,
and no doubt purposeful, vacation."
"That's the rumor. And around
here, rumors are . . . pandemic. And if you don't know what pandemic
is, I'll tell you.
