MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

They sat a long time looking into the fire smoking Muratti cigarettes out of a tin box. She kept fondling his hair and rubbing her hand round his shoulders and neck. ‘Why aren’t you more affectionate, Ward?’ she said in low gruff tones. ‘I’m the sort of woman likes to be carried off her feet...Take care...You may lose me...Over here the men know how to make love to a woman.

Gimme a chance, won’t you?...

It would have been a fine life except that he was in love. [...]

What are you going to do in Mexico fellowworker?

Oh, I want to kinda get into things, into the revolution.

The situation is very confusing here...Our townworkers are organizing and are classconscious, but the peons, the peasants, are easily misled by unscrupulous leaders.

I want to see some action...I was living in Los Angeles an’ gettin’ to be a goddam booster like the rest of ‘em.

“Suppose a feller didn’t want to get rich... you know what Gene Debs said, “I want to rise with the ranks, not from the ranks,” said Mac

Maisie and Bill laughed. “When a guy talks like that he’s ripe for the nuthouse, take it from me,” said Bill.

Mac flushed and said nothing.

Say, Ben, did you ever get a girl in trouble, a girl you liked a hellova lot?
Sure, hundreds of ‘em
Didn’t it worry you?
For crissake, Mac, if a girl wasn’t a goddam whore she wouldn’t let you, would she?
Jeez, I don’t see it like that, Ben...But hell, I don’t know what to do about it...She’s a good kid, anyways, gee...

Mac,you can’t do it;we need you here
But I’ll come back, honest I will, Fred
A man’s first duty’s to the workin’class!
As soon as the kid’s born an’ she can go back to work I’ll come back.You know how it is, Fred, I can’t pay the hospital expenses on 17-5o a week
You oughta been more careful
Hell,Fred,I’m made of flesh & blood like everybody else. For crissake,what do you want us to be,tin saints?

Ike sat up in bed. God damn it, I need a woman.
I’ve heard tell there’s swell broads in Seattle, honest, Ike
When does the friggin’ boat go? Jeez, I had two wet dreams last night, did you?
Mac blushed. He nodded his head
Jeez, we got to get us women. Wet dreams weakens a guy
I wouldn’t want to get sick
Aw, hell, a man’s not a man until he’s had his three doses

You blokes’ll keep quiet with that kinder talk if you knows what’s ‘ealthy for ye’
Hell, this is a free country, ain’t it? A guy’s free to talk, ain’t he? said Ike
A bloke kin talk so long as his betters don’t tell him to keep his mouth shut
Hell, I’m not tryin’ to pick a fight, said Ike
Better not, said the other man, and didn’t speak again

Maybe in Russia it’ll start; that’s the most backward country where the people are oppressed worst...There was a Russian feller workin’ down to the sawmill, an educated feller, who’s fled from Siberia...I used to talk to him a lot...That’s what he thought. He said the social revolution would start in Russia an’ spread all over the world. He was a swell guy. I bet he was somebody.

I like to read the paper, too. I like to know what’s goin on in the world.
A lot of lies most of it...all owned by the interests.
Ever read The Appeal to Reason?
Say, are you a Socialist?
Sure; I had a job in my uncle’s printin’ shop till the big interests put him outa business because he took the side of the strikers.
Gee, that’s swell...This is a big day for me. I don’t often meet a guy thinks like I do.

Say,is she pretty spicy?Gosh, if pop finds it he’ll give me a whalin’.Gosh, I bet you’ve read all them books.
Me? said Fainy haughtily.I don’t need to read books.I kin see life if I wanter. Here it is..it’s about fallen women.
Ain’t that pretty short for a dollar?I thought you could get a big book for a dollar.
This one’s pretty spicy.
Well, I guess I’ll take it before dad ketches me snoopin’ around

Fainy, you’re a bright boy.I wish I could have helped you more; you’re an O’Hara every inch of you. You read Marx..study all you can, remember that you’re a rebel by birth and blood.Don’t blame people for things.Look at that terrible forktongued virago I’m married to; do I blame her? No, I blame the system. And don’t ever sell out to the sonsofbitches, son; it’s women’ll make you sell out every time

I am not a labor leader. I don’t want you to follow me or anyone else. IF you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else would lead you out.

It was a day of premature spring. Across the rotting yellow ice on the lake came little breezes that smelt unexpectedly of flowers. The girls looked terribly pretty and their skirts blew in the wind and Fainy felt the spring blood pumping hot in him, he wanted to kiss and to roll on the ground and to run out across the ice-cakes and to make speeches from the tops of telegraph poles and to vault over trolleycars..

The strike was not popular on Orchard Street.It meant that Mom had to work harder and harder, doing bigger & bigger boilerfuls of wash,& that Fainy & his older sister Milly had to help when they came home from school.& then one day Mom got sick & had to go back to bed instead of starting in on the ironing,& lay with her round white creased face whiter than the pillow & her watercreased hands in a knot under her chin.

That winter there was a strike in the Chadwick Mills and Pop lost his job. He would sit all day in the front room smoking and cursing:
‘Ablebodied man, by Jesus, if I couldn’t lick any one of those damn Polaks with my crutch tied behind my back...I says so to Mr Barry; I ain’t goin’ to join no strike. Mr Barry, a sensible quiet man, a bit of an invalid, with a wife an’ kiddies to think for...

Cine a fost Babel (Isaac)? De unde provenea el? A fost un accident. Cu totii suntem accidente similare. Nu venim sa completam istoria si cultura. Pur si simplu, aparem- si nu pentru c-ar fi alegerea noastra. Facem si noi ce putem din conditia pe care o avem, cu mijloacele care ne stau la dispozitie. Trebuie sa acceptam amestecul asa cum il gasim- s-acceptam impuritatea din el, tragedia din el, speranta din el.

“What is it, Lillo?” said Romola, pulling his hair back from his brow. Lillo was a handsome lad, but his features were turning out to be more massive and less regular than his father’s. The blood of the Tuscan peasant was in his veins.

“Mamma. Romola, what am I to be?” he said, well contented that there was a prospect of talking till it would be too late to con “Spirto gentil” any longer.

“Then she became distinctly conscious that she was lying in the boat which had been bearing her over the waters all through the night. Instead of bringing her to death, it had been the gently lulling cradle of a new life. And in spite of her evening despair she was glad that the morning had come to her again: glad to think that she was resting in the familiar sunlight rather than in the unknown regions of death.

Had she found anything like the dream of her girlhood? No. Memories hung upon her like the weight of broken wings that could never be lifted—memories of human sympathy which even in its pains leaves a thirst that the Great Mother has no milk to still. Romola felt orphaned in those wide spaces of sea and sky. She read no message of love for her in that far-off symbolic writing of the heavens,..

“No one who has ever known what it is thus to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought;

“Many eyes were bent on them even in that struggle of an agitated throng, as the aged man, forgetting that his hands were bound with irons, lifted them towards the golden head that was bent towards him, and then, checking that movement, leaned to kiss her. She seized the fettered hands that were hung down again, and kissed them as if they had been sacred things.

“Well! a little patience, and in another year, or perhaps in half a year, he might turn his back on these hard, eager Florentines, with their futile quarrels and sinking fortunes. His brilliant success at Florence had had some ugly flaws in it: he had fallen in love with the wrong woman, and Baldassarre had come back under incalculable circumstances.

She went up to her room,threw off her serge, destroyed the parting letters,replaced all her precious trifles,unbound her hair,& put on her usual black dress.Instead of taking a long exciting journey, she was to sit down in her usual place.The snow fell against the windows,&she was alone.
She felt the dreariness,yet her courage was high,like that of a seeker who has come on new signs of gold.

She started up with anger in her eyes,&faced the speaker.It was Fra Girolamo:she knew that well enough before.She was nearly as tall as he was,& their faces were almost on a level.She had started up with defiant words ready to burst from her lips,but they fell back again without utterance.She had met Fra Girolamo’s calm glance,&the impression from it was so new to her,her anger sank ashamed as something irrelevant

He paid a heavier price than ever to make himself safe.He did not like the price, yet it was inevitable that he should be glad of the purchase.He led the chorus.He was in a state of excitement in which oppressive sensations,& the wretched consciousness of something hateful but irrevocable,were mingled with a feeling of triumph which seemed to assert itself as the feeling that would subsist and be master of the morrow

The Frate is preparing us.He is telling the people that God will not have silver crucifixes & starving stomachs;& that the church is best adorned with the gems of holiness & the fine gold of brotherly love.A very useful doctrine of war-finance,as many a Condottiere has found,But politics come on after the confetti,when we can drink wine enough to wash them down;they are too solid to be taken with roast and boiled

“This was the tangled web that Romola had in her mind as she sat weary in the darkness. No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision—

“To herself she looked strangely like her brother Dino: the full oval of the cheek had only to be wasted; the eyes, already sad, had only to become a little sunken. Was she getting more like him in anything else? Only in this, that she understood now how men could be prompted to rush away for ever from earthly delights, how they could be prompted to dwell on images of sorrow rather than of beauty and joy.”

Baldassarre was still sitting on the straw when the shadow of Tito passed by.Before him lay the fragments of the broken dagger;beside him lay the open book, over which he had pored in vain.They looked like mocking symbols of his utter helplessness;& his body was still too trembling for him to rise & walk away.But the next morning, very early, the door of the hovel was open,& the strange old man was gone.