This film would have been broadcast right about the time I was conceived. Phenomenal illustration of the telescoping of time, and how very young America is.
“Indignation is not enough. The world is full of people who use it to excuse everything, including the worst of actions.”
Thomas Merton, in a letter to Mark Van Doren on the subject of the arms race. As quoted in:
Lawlor, Patrick T. “Poet to teacher, Thomas Merton’s letters to Mark Van Doren.” Columbia Library Columns November 1989 39(1):18-30. p.27.
This is how you make a life:
Pull talking out of people like a dentist performing a root canal. Hurt them
with the pulling. Haul it out energetically,
spread the talking around you like blankets, until you can’t
hear each other over all the muffled syllables, the too-long vowels.
Real life is like this:
Desdemona
He was a brute and I knew it,
real bad news,
but I loved the smell of danger,
his animal reek.
He loved me more,
gave me a fistful of it,
collecting bruises like love tokens
and broken bones like Valentines.
My arm, twisted.
My…
