In a Time of Magic Quotes

“I decide to be proactive. “Hey, be careful with them apples,” I call out, imitating a harsh Mike voice. Mike always shows up in his ragged, half-rotten clothes and tells us how to do things, like he’s some kind of big expert. All faces turn toward me, including Dutch’s equine one. Dutch cants his head to one side to examine me with one great eye. They all get the joke and laugh. Mark tosses me an apple. It comes tumbling to me in a long golden arc like something out of mythology. The throw is so expert that I easily catch it. I take a bite, and get lost for a moment in its sweet juiciness, get lost in the whole idea of an apple tree, how it makes sweet food out of sunlight and earth. I think about how the tree spreads out above ground to catch air and light and below ground to catch water, minerals, and nourishment; about how at the end of the season it drops its leaves at its feet to reabsorb their nutrients. There is such Knowingness in this bite that I feel I have just eaten from the tree of knowledge. Stewart looks benevolently down at me from Dutch’s back. He is only twenty and has a ruddy face that glows with health and openness. He embodies the very bloom of youth. His young muscled body sits easily on the horse; his dark brown eyes are alive with merriment and friendliness. The whole scene is like a painting from another time. The Apple Pickers. I see it frozen for a moment, but then, in the silence of our greeting, a jet passes overhead, far away, in a series of deep distant rumbles that makes the canvas shimmer for a moment, reminding me that there is more to this moment than the simplicity that meets the eye.”
― Arnold W. Porter, In a Time of Magic

“To those who returned to the land and their children who sprang forth from it.”
― Arnold W. Porter, In a Time of Magic

“decide to be proactive. “Hey, be careful with them apples,” I call out, imitating a harsh Mike voice. Mike always shows up in his ragged, half-rotten clothes and tells us how to do things, like he’s some kind of big expert. All faces turn toward me, including Dutch’s equine one. Dutch cants his head to one side to examine me with one great eye. They all get the joke and laugh. Mark tosses me an apple. It comes tumbling to me in a long golden arc like something out of mythology. The throw is so expert that I easily catch it. I take a bite, and get lost for a moment in its sweet juiciness, get lost in the whole idea of an apple tree, how it makes sweet food out of sunlight and earth. I think about how the tree spreads out above ground to catch air and light and below ground to catch water, minerals, and nourishment; about how at the end of the season it drops its leaves at its feet to reabsorb their nutrients. There is such Knowingness in this bite that I feel I have just eaten from the tree of knowledge. Stewart looks benevolently down at me from Dutch’s back. He is only twenty and has a ruddy face that glows with health and openness. He embodies the very bloom of youth. His young muscled body sits easily on the horse; his dark brown eyes are alive with merriment and friendliness. The whole scene is like a painting from another time. The Apple Pickers. I see it frozen for a moment, but then, in the silence of our greeting, a jet passes overhead, far away, in a series of deep distant rumbles that makes the canvas shimmer for a moment, reminding me that there is more to this moment than the simplicity that meets the eye.”
― Arnold W. Porter, In a Time of Magic

“I decide to be proactive. “Hey, be careful with them apples,” I call out, imitating a harsh Mike voice. Mike always shows up in his ragged, half-rotten clothes and tells us how to do things, like he’s some kind of big expert. All faces turn toward me, including Dutch’s equine one. Dutch cants his head to one side to examine me with one great eye. They all get the joke and laugh. Mark tosses me an apple. It comes tumbling to me in a long golden arc like something out of mythology. The throw is so expert that I easily catch it. I take a bite, and get lost for a moment in its sweet juiciness, get lost in the whole idea of an apple tree, how it makes sweet food out of sunlight and earth. I think about how the tree spreads out above ground to catch air and light and below ground to catch water, minerals, and nourishment; about how at the end of the season it drops its leaves at its feet to reabsorb their nutrients. There is such Knowingness in this bite that I feel I have just eaten from the tree of knowledge. Stewart looks benevolently down at me from Dutch’s back. He is only twenty and has a ruddy face that glows with health and openness. He embodies the very bloom of youth. His young muscled body sits easily on the horse; his dark brown eyes are alive with merriment and friendliness. The whole scene is like a painting from another time. The Apple Pickers. I see it frozen for a moment, but then, in the silence of our greeting, a jet passes overhead, far away, in a series of deep distant rumbles that makes the canvas shimmer for a moment, reminding me that there is more to this moment than the simplicity that meets the eye. We stand quietly for awhile eating these first”
― Arnold W. Porter, In a Time of Magic

“When he went to bed, he was kept awake by Selene’s scent on the sheets and by his own erotic images. The moon passed overhead and the clearing was loud with crickets. Finally, he passed out in the midst of his arousal and slept. Vaguely, in moments of wakening, he was aware of an owl moving in a great circle through the forest around him. Each time he woke, he heard its rhythmic hoot, WHO, WHO, WHO, WHOHA, HAHOOO come from a different compass point. To his sleepy mind there was magic in this great circle that was slowly being woven around him in the night.”
― Arnold W. Porter, In a Time of Magic

“Ah yes, the skulls that once sang and danced, told stories, stored memories and did a thousand foolish and wonderful things before they became artifacts, empty seashells that fell to the bottom of the sea. So many of his friends who lived through this time are dead; so many of those who remain don’t have many years left. Each remembers fragments. Sometimes, on one of those islands of memory, he finds an old house. There is a picture of a person in it, left tacked on a wall or buried in a pile of leaves and old boards. Who were they? He remembers a few things. He rummages through his memory as though it were one of the jumbled boxes in the Vasquez Island Free Store. Sometimes he finds a shirt that he remembers someone having worn. He holds it up in the darkness of the store and says out loud,  “if you see yourself in this book, fear not, it is not really you, it’s just one of my characters dressed up in some of the old clothes you threw away.”
― Arnold W. Porter, In a Time of Magic