Tag: Cormac McCarthy

And then one morning you wake up…

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You think when you wake up in the morning yesterday don’t count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothing else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I don’t know what all. Start over. And then one morning you wake up and look at the ceiling and guess who’s laying there?

—  Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

Notes:

Riding Metro North. Walking backwards.

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7:34 p.m. train. Grand Central station. Last peak hour train home. Standing room only. Heads down, glowing screens, wifi slow, thousands sucking on the same straw. Pages loading slowly, then stopping altogether. One head, after another, mine too, lifting in frustration.  Beach ball spinning, locked up. There’s a message in this. To thousands of us sitting on this train. Whether we are listening, now that is another story.

8:31 p.m. Walk home. Down the platform. Up the stairs. Across the bridge over I-95. Up the hill – and the last 1/4 mile stretch, before losing this tie, this shirt sticking to my back, and these leather shoes strapped around my feet for last 12 hours. Free me, please!

I see them in the distance. Two boys, 7 or 8 years old, kicking a soccer ball on front yard. Mom sitting on the porch reading. When’s the last time I’ve seen this? Continue reading “Riding Metro North. Walking backwards.” →

We’re on “The Road”.

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manilla-storm-garbage-pollution

A man collects recyclable materials from floating garbage washed into Manila after Tropical Storm Nida dumped 12 inches of rain on the Philippines.

Notes:

  • Title Credit Reference to “The Road“: “Cormac McCarthy’s tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what few dwellings remain intact in the woods.” (Quote Source: CormacMcCarthy.com. Find Book: Amazon.com. Find Movie Trailer: The Road)
  • Photo – wsj.com photo of the day by Ted Aljibe / Agency France – Presse / Getty images.

 

Riding Metro North. And Sleeptalking.

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train-gif

4:50 am.
11 minutes to the 5:01, the first train to Grand Central.
I step onto the front porch into darkness.
And into Salter’s Burning The Days…at both ends.

Peter Cottontail scurries down the driveway, his white tail bobbing.  A four-legged leaf clover.

“Did I stop and allow myself to be surprised? Or did I trudge on in a daze?” David Steindl-Rast prods in Awake, Aware and Alert.  Yes, David, Yes.

My head is down, I’m watching for icy patches. The footfall is covered with a moon shadow – the mind bleached with a word slurry. First Harrison: If you are strained, lacerated, enervated…take a night walk as far as you can get from a trace of civilization – a dance, and the ghost that follows you, your moon-cast shadow, is your true, androgynous parent.  And then Kalanithi: my specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus.  Lacerated. Enervated. Specklike. Immensity. My two feet. Flooded with Gratitude.  I keep walking.

4 minutes to departure. I pick up the pace. Continue reading “Riding Metro North. And Sleeptalking.” →