The Small Town Metropolitan

Off The Shelf

"The philosopher is inconsolable at the irreparable loss of the least fleeting reality, a face, a gesture of the hand, an act of freedom or a musical harmony in which there flashes the slightest glimmer of love or beauty. He has his own solution, I must admit. He believes that not one of these things passes away because they are all preserved in the memory of the angels ... [who] will never cease to speak of them to one another and thus bring back to life in a thousand different forms the story of our poor world".

-Jacques Maritain

Off the shelf

There was much worse drama when Linda, aged twelve, told the daughters of neighbours, who had come to tea, what she supposed to be the facts of life.  Linda's presentation of the "facts" had been so gruesome that the children left Alconleigh howling dismally, their nerves permanently impaired, their future chances of a sane and happy sex life much reduced.

- The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford

Off The Shelf

"I could easily go on writing all night but I can't really see and it's extravagant on paper, so I shall merely think.  Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing."

- Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Quotes for a Grey Saturday Evening

Just returned from confession at a local church with a priest I don't know. The skies are grey and rain threatens. I never go to confession without wondering why I put it off so much. I always tell myself that I will go more often - then months go by, months in which I keep telling myself: "next week, I'll go."

Anyway, here are two quotes that always seem to spring to my mind, as I start to dredge my conscience and prepare for the sacrament.

First, a bit of Auden's As I Walked Out One Evening:

'O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

And then, a bit of The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

"For if this God exists, I thought, and if even you - with your lusts and your adulteries and the timid lies you used to tell - can change like this, we could all be saints by leaping as you leapt, by shutting the eyes and leaping once and for all: if you are a saint, it's not so difficult to be a saint."

Off The Shelf

"There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after." - J.R.R. Tolkein

Off The Shelf

"What's that you say? It's useless? Of course, but I've never needed hope of victory to make me fight! The noblest battles are always fought in vain!"

-Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, trans. Lowell Bair

What I Tell Myself As I Face Unemployment

"It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time."
- Winston Churchill

Off The Shelf

"Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles"
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Off The Shelf

"We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?"
- Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

I Will Arise?

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

- The Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats

I have been in one of those moods lately.  One of those moods in which I yearn for home and I think that I will chuck it all here in LA (not that I have much to chuck, to be perfectly honest) and pack up the little Ford and start driving East and not stop till I see the Pittsburgh skyline.  (Of course, knowing the little Ford, I would probably have to stop for extensive repairs before I hit Albuquerque).

I blame it mostly on the weather.  There is something so mournful about autumn, even autumn in LA when it can still be 70 and sunny six days out of seven.  The nights are getting cold now and the winds are alternately damp from the ocean and dry from the mountains.  I like the LA autumn, but I miss the PA one.  I miss great mounds of leaves piled about my feet.  I miss damp earth and frost in the mornings and roadside apple cider stands.  I miss watching football with my father.  Sure, we're off to a lousy start.  But that will only make the comeback sweeter.  Or we could always have heartbreak and glorious plans for next year. 

And I'm tired.  I'm working long hours and dog sitting on the side.  I don't have as much time to write as I'd like.  And even when I have the time, I don't seem to have the words.  Not lately.  And so I sit in traffic, which seems to get worse every day and I think about home.

I know that much of this is just plain old "grass is always greener-ism."  I only think about the good things that would/could happen if I went home.  I don't think about the LA things I would miss.  I don't think about the regrets I might come to have.  I don't think about snow still falling in March.

I almost left this summer.  I had purchased my plane ticket and made my plans.  And then my present job fell out of the sky and hit me on the head and I really had no choice but to give it a shot.  And I'm glad I did.  I like the job, and it could lead to better things, and there are thousands of people in this town who would give anything to be in my shoes, small cog though I am. 

But still I think.  I think about how nice it might be to "give up."  To give up the striving and the struggling and the starving and the hoping of this business in this town.  To go home and live more simply and give up a few of the dreams and have a more settled life.  Of course, the sort of things I'd try to do if I did go back are not without their own struggles.  And I may do it.  I may do it soon.

But not quite yet.