1566. “So they groped and shuffled along”
Kenneth Grahame, “The Return of Ulysses,”
The Wind in the Willows
A small band of animal friends proceed in near-total darkness toward their goal. They grope and they shuffle: sometimes this is the only way to reach home and renew honor. It may not feel very heroic, but best to keep going.
1579. “That’s wonderful, Sue. What are you studying?”
“Everything. Art, mostly. I love it. I’m really happy.” She
glanced across the prairie. “Nancy and I planned to go
to college together. We were going to be roommates.
I think about it sometimes. Suddenly, when I’m very
happy, I think of all the plans we made.”
Dewey looked at the gray stone inscribed with four
names, and the date of their death: November 15,
1959. “Do you come here often?”
“Once in a while. Gosh, the sun’s strong.” She
covered her eyes with tinted glasses. “Remember
Bobby Rupp? He married a beautiful girl.”
“So I heard.”
“Colleen Whitehurst. She’s really beautiful. And very nice, too.”
“Good for Bobby.” And to tease her, Dewey added, “But
how about you? You must have a lot of beaus.”
“Well. Nothing serious. But that reminds me. Do you have the
time? Oh,” she cried, when he told her it was past four, “I’ve
got to run! But it was nice to have seen you, Mr. Dewey.”
“And nice to have seen you, Sue. Good luck,” he called after
her as she disappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry,
her smooth hair swinging, shining—just such a young woman
as Nancy might have been. Then, starting home, he walked
towards the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the
big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Is this “pretty girl in a hurry” running away from a place and a person who reminds her of past catastrophe that she can never really escape? There is no reason to think so. Quite to the contrary: there is every reason to think that her alacrity is all in the direction of a future unharmed by that catastrophe. She revisits it as often as we (I assume we’re together, here) would wish her to: we certainly wouldn’t want her to dwell very long within its sights; nor, though, would we regard it as wise for her to try to avoid them altogether.
And what about the man who lingers a little longer with the remains of the catastrophe that had drawn his life near hers; the man who lingers long enough to witness the receding figure of the girl; the girl whom he has no great expectation of seeing again—no more than she imagines seeing the girl whose unfinished life she bears in her own person? Well, I guess he has the easier part in this story. I guess it’s easier to watch someone walk away from a past that should be passed, than it is to be the one who starts the walking away.
Note: “Horseman, pass by!” (Yeats, “Under Ben Bulben”).
1585. “I have loved you all my life!”
Dickens, David Copperfield
At moments of crisis or calmness, we don’t mind that this common sentiment makes no literal sense. (For starters, the woman, beloved by “you,” hasn’t even known, much less loved, “you” all her life.) The untenable, untethered testimony of the most familiar and mysterious claim of Love touches the heart when it is hurt or happy enough.
Hurt or happy enough, we take what love we can get. Maybe we give it too.
Note: “You?” (Chaplin, dir. City Lights, final frame).