We have a disturbing cultural appetite for novelty, and it seems to me wrong each new laureate should dislodge the ideas of his or her predecessor, especially when they’re still unfolding.
Still
I can still remember the feel in my hand of that most wonderful American coin ever minted, a nickel with a buffalo on one side and the head of an Indian on the other. That nickel was a daily proof of our country’s past. Bring it back!
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky, The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard among the guns below.
One of those quiet types who logs a lot of time in the bedlam of her head, I sometimes need to be startled awake to the fact that the outside world still exists.
We still are pestered by two parties: the aristocratic, which is panting for a counter revolution, and the factious, which aims at the division of the empire and destruction of the authority – and perhaps of the lives – of the reigning branch, both of which parties are fomenting troubles.
When I was a child, my father used to take me for walks, often along a river or by the sea. We would pass people fishing, perhaps reeling in their lines with struggling fish hooked at the end of them. Once I saw a man take a small fish out of a bucket and impale it, still wriggling, on an empty hook to use as bait.
There is still a severe and scary amount of extreme poverty in rural parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma and sub-Saharan Africa.
I have not yet learned to keep still.
Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.
Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.