Kindle Notes & Highlights
It reminded him of another time, reminded him of a story he’d been meaning to tell himself.
“That’s what I’m sayin’,” Monday said. “It’s literary. When they put stuff in you can’t understand, that’s literary.”
There was something they couldn’t stand about having Indians around. Something that got inside their minds and ate away at them like maggots in rotten meat, and they couldn’t rest until they’d wiped out the “threat.”
They just couldn’t stand to know that somebody was around that didn’t live the way they did.
Perhaps a man was meant to see clearly only those movements that were approximate to the pace of his own life—the moon too slow, the movement of an insect’s legs too fast. There were whole worlds he could not understand, because he could not change his own nature to a new rhythm.
“Friend of me,” Devaux said, “you do not understand the essential. Before one votes, he makes certain he is the majority, or it does not march properly.”
“Seems like the times a man feels good are important, too.” “What ought t’ be ain’t what is,” Webb said. “Ain’t nobody cares.”
Night emptied itself into the ocean. The eastern sky stretched thin and pale across the endless forest, and in time was visited by a hollow sun that climbed the day in a furious masquerade of life. Night passed; day came. The animals of darkness sought shelter in the dawn silence, and the animals of light blinked at the world.
It was something he could not understand, this mindless violation of what existed and was good; the insensate drive to make the world conform to man’s size and comprehension, the violent rape of the earth by which he spread his ugly and diseased seed. It was a futile thing, a witless viciousness, and there were times when the thought of it made the old man sick.
When in the society of men he had a sense of terrible isolation from the real world, because he had no time to listen, and to see. There was always the suspicion, rapidly becoming conviction, that something was happening. Sometimes he had to run out someplace to sit quiet and see what the world was doing; to be still and listen to the roots talking. The veil of emotion and noise and shallowness that was always associated with the presence of human beings hid the world from him and made him tense.
It was like the difference between looking at a piece of meat with great joy, because you were hungry, and examining it carefully because you thought there were maggots in it.
