“
Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.
”
”
John Steinbeck (The Winter of Our Discontent)
“
I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward.
I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer.
We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?”
He, of course, replied, “No.”
“Well, we’re going to a better place.”
When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds.
Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.”
“Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked.
“My father’s a ghost,” he whispered.
I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would. He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined.
Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path.
“Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.
”
”
K. Ritz (Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master)
“
Then, bidding farewell to The Knick-Knack, I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
”
”
Colette Gauthier-Villars (Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances: Three Short Novels)
“
Okay, get out of here. Scram. Farewell," Piper said as more of the wall moved uneasily, the uppermost surface shifting dustily to the floor. "Go be short somewhere else.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
“
The stars are brilliant at this time of night
and I wander these streets like a ritual I don’t dare to break
for darling, the times are quite glorious.
I left him by the water’s edge,
still waving long after the ship was gone
and if someone would have screamed my name I wouldn’t have heard for I’ve said goodbye so many times in my short life that farewells are a muscular task and I’ve taught them well.
There’s a place by the side of the railway near the lake where I grew up and I used to go there to burry things and start anew.
I used to go there to say goodbye.
I was young and did not know many people but I had hidden things inside that I never dared to show and in silence I tried to kill them,
one way or the other,
leaving sin on my body
scrubbing tears off with salt
and I built my rituals in farewells.
Endings I still cling to.
So I go to the ocean to say goodbye.
He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my head
and though he said he’d come back one day I know a broken promise from a right one
for I have used them myself and there is no coming back.
Minds like ours are can’t be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay.
I turned away from the ocean
as not to fall for its plea
for it used to seduce and consume me
and there was this one night
a few years back and I was not yet accustomed to farewells
and just like now I stood waving long after the ship was gone.
But I was younger then and easily fooled
and the ocean was deep and dark and blue
and I took my shoes off to let the water freeze my bones.
I waded until I could no longer walk and it was too cold to swim but still I kept on walking at the bottom of the sea for I could not tell the difference between the ocean and the lack of someone I loved and I had not yet learned how the task of moving on is as necessary as survival.
Then days passed by and I spent them with my work
and now I’m writing letters I will never dare to send.
But there is this one day every year or so
when the burden gets too heavy
and I collect my belongings I no longer need
and make my way to the ocean to burn and drown and start anew
and it is quite wonderful, setting fire to my chains and flames on written words
and I stand there, starring deep into the heat until they’re all gone.
Nothing left to hold me back.
You kissed me that morning as if you’d never done it before and never would again and now I write another letter that I will never dare to send, collecting memories of loss
like chains wrapped around my veins,
and if you see a fire from the shore tonight
it’s my chains going up in flames.
The time of moon i quite glorious.
We could have been so glorious.
”
”
Charlotte Eriksson (You're Doing Just Fine)
“
In short the problem is this: far too few who believe in the risen Christ actually believe in his revolutionary ideas. There is a sense in which we create religion as a category to keep Jesus from meddling with our cherished ideas about nationalism, freedom, and war.
”
”
Brian Zahnd (A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace)
“
Once again I have told you so little, and have asked no questions, and once again I must close. But not a single answer and, even more certainly, not a single question shall be lost. There exists some kind of sorcery by which two people, without seeing each other, without talking to each other, can at least discover the greater part about each other’s past, literally in a flash, without having to tell each other all and everything; but this, after all, is almost an instrument of Black Magic (without seeming to be) which, although never without reward, one would certainly never resort to with impunity. Therefore I won’t say it, unless you guess it first. It is terribly short, like all magic formulas. Farewell, and let me reinforce this greeting by lingering over your hand.
Yours, Franz K.
”
”
Franz Kafka (Letters to Felice)
“
It’s intolerable that when someone is born into the world, he can’t automatically come to consciousness.
”
”
Peter Handke (Short Letter, Long Farewell)
“
Farewell, ungrateful traitor,
Farewell, my perjured swain;
Let never injured creature
Believe a man again.
The pleasure of possessing
Surpasses all expressing,
But 'tis too short a blessing,
And love too long a pain.
'Tis easy to deceive us
In pity of your pain;
But when we love you leave us
To rail at you in vain.
Before we have descried it
There is no bliss beside it,
But she that once has tried it
Will never love again.
The passion we pretended
Was only to obtain,
But when the charm is ended
The charmer you disdain.
Your love by ours we measure
Till we have lost our treasure,
But dying is a pleasure
When living is a pain.
”
”
John Dryden (The Spanish Fryar, Or, The Double Discovery: A Tragi-comedy)
“
One of my favorite apparent discrepancies—I read John for years without realizing how strange this one is—comes in Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse,” the last address that Jesus delivers to his disciples, at his last meal with them, which takes up all of chapters 13 to 17 in the Gospel according to John. In John 13:36, Peter says to Jesus, “Lord, where are you going?” A few verses later Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going” (John 14:5). And then, a few minutes later, at the same meal, Jesus upbraids his disciples, saying, “Now I am going to the one who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” (John 16:5). Either Jesus had a very short attention span or there is something strange going on with the sources for these chapters, creating an odd kind of disconnect.
”
”
Bart D. Ehrman (Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them))
“
Okay; get out of here. Scram. Farewell . . . Go be short somewhere else.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3) (Free Preview Edition))
“
But say I could repent and could obtaine
By Act of Grace my former state: how soon
would higth recal high thoughts; how soon unsay
what feign'd submission swore: ease would recant
vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow
where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep:
which would but lead me to a worse relapse
and heavier fall: so should I purchase cleave
short intermission bought with double smart:
This knows my punisher; therefore as far
from granting here, as I from begging peace:
All hope excluded thus, behold in stead
of us out-cast, exil'd, his new delight,
Mankind created, and for his this World.
So farewell Hope, and with Hope farwel Fear,
Farewel Remorse: all Good to me is lost.
”
”
John Milton
“
READER,
You have here an honest book; it does at the outset forewarn You that, in contriving the same, I have proposed to myself no other than a domestic and private end: I have had no consideration at all either to Your service or to my glory.
My powers are not capable of any such design.
I have dedicated it to the particular commodity of my kinsfolk and friends, so that, having lost me (which they must do shortly), they may therein recover some traits of my conditions and humours, and by that means preserve more whole, and more life-like, the knowledge they had of me.
Had my intention been to seek the world's favour, I should surely have adorned myself with borrowed beauties: I desire therein to be viewed as I appear in mine own genuine, simple, and ordinary manner, without study and artifice: for it is myself I paint.
My defects are therein to be read to the life, and any imperfections and my natural form, so far as public reverence hath permitted me. If I had lived among those nations, which (they say) yet dwell under the sweet liberty of nature's primitive laws, I assure thee I would most willingly have painted myself quite fully and quite naked.
Thus, reader, myself am the matter of my book: there's no reason You should employ Your leisure about so frivolous and vain a subject.
Therefore farewell.
”
”
Michel de Montaigne (The Complete Essays)
“
We piled aboard the small chopper and after a bit of map pointing to the pilot we lifted off.
"I love the RAF," said Jed.
"I love them too, sir," said I.
After a short flight the chopper landed. We all got out and waved our thanks and farewells to the crew and Major Jenner checked his map. After a quick examination he announced that we had been dropped in the wrong place.
"I fucking hate the RAF," said Jed.
"I fucking hate them too, sir," said I.
”
”
Ken Lukowiak (A Soldiers Song: True Stories From The Falklands)
“
The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon - as well as all of the short stories that writers studied for the inner trick of them. But there was no trickery: only the plain words put there as if they had always been there - like pebbles cooled in a river.
”
”
Naomi Wood (Mrs. Hemingway)
“
The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna"
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him,
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.
Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head,
And we far away on the billow!
Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone
And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him,
But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But left him alone with his glory.
”
”
Charles Wolfe (The Burial of Sir John Moore and Other Poems)
“
After the burial, the hares of the Long Patrol sang a short verse as a farewell to their comrade. “Now the sunny glades are silent, where our fallen warriors lay. As in memory we treasure all the brave who marched away. Through the dusty seasons rolling, o’er our passing out parade, how we laughed and sang together, Oh your face ’twill never fade.
”
”
Brian Jacques (Rakkety Tam (Redwall, #17))
“
When a population becomes distracted by trivia,” wrote the cultural critic Neil Postman, “when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people becomes an audience and their public business a vaudeville, then a nation finds itself at risk: cultural-death is a clear possibility.”72 Con artists and swindlers exploit the frustrations and anger of a betrayed people. They make fantastic promises they never keep. They prey on the vulnerable. They demand godlike worship. They conjure up a world of illusions and fantasy. And then it implodes. The workers and patrons at the Trump Taj Mahal were victimized first. Now it is our turn.
”
”
Chris Hedges (America: The Farewell Tour)
“
Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.
The stretch of Hudson Street where I live is each day the scene of an intricate sidewalk ballet. I make my own first entrance into it a little after eight when I put out my garbage gcan, surely a prosaic occupation, but I enjoy my part, my little clang, as the junior droves of junior high school students walk by the center of the stage dropping candy wrapper. (How do they eat so much candy so early in the morning?)
While I sweep up the wrappers I watch the other rituals of the morning: Mr Halpert unlocking the laundry's handcart from its mooring to a cellar door, Joe Cornacchia's son-in-law stacking out the empty crates from the delicatessen, the barber bringing out his sidewalk folding chair, Mr. Goldstein arranging the coils of wire which proclaim the hardware store is open, the wife of the tenement's super intendent depositing her chunky three-year-old with a toy mandolin on the stoop, the vantage point from which he is learning English his mother cannot speak. Now the primary childrren, heading for St. Luke's, dribble through the south; the children from St. Veronica\s cross, heading to the west, and the children from P.S 41, heading toward the east. Two new entrances are made from the wings: well-dressed and even elegant women and men with brief cases emerge from doorways and side streets. Most of these are heading for the bus and subways, but some hover on the curbs, stopping taxis which have miraculously appeared at the right moment, for the taxis are part of a wider morning ritual: having dropped passengers from midtown in the downtown financial district, they are now bringing downtowners up tow midtown. Simultaneously, numbers of women in housedresses have emerged and as they crisscross with one another they pause for quick conversations that sound with laughter or joint indignation, never, it seems, anything in between. It is time for me to hurry to work too, and I exchange my ritual farewell with Mr. Lofaro, the short, thick bodied, white-aproned fruit man who stands outside his doorway a little up the street, his arms folded, his feet planted, looking solid as the earth itself. We nod; we each glance quickly up and down the street, then look back at eachother and smile. We have done this many a morning for more than ten years, and we both know what it means: all is well.
The heart of the day ballet I seldom see, because part off the nature of it is that working people who live there, like me, are mostly gone, filling the roles of strangers on other sidewalks. But from days off, I know enough to know that it becomes more and more intricate. Longshoremen who are not working that day gather at the White Horse or the Ideal or the International for beer and conversation. The executives and business lunchers from the industries just to the west throng the Dorgene restaurant and the Lion's Head coffee house; meat market workers and communication scientists fill the bakery lunchroom.
”
”
Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities)
“
About the time that I reentered the Bruce family, an event occurred of disastrous import to the colored people. The slave Hamlin, the first fugitive that came under the new law, was given up by the blood-hounds of the north to the bloodhounds of the south. It was the beginning of a reign of terror to the colored population. The great city rushed on its whirl of excitement, taking no note of the "short and simple annals of the Poor." But while fashionables were listening to the thrilling voice of Jenny Lind in Metropolitan Hall, the thrilling voices of poor hunted colored people went up, in an agony of supplication, to the Lord, from Zion's church. Many families, who had lived in the city for twenty years, fled from it now. Many a poor washerwoman, who, by hard labor, had made herself a comfortable home, was obliged to sacrifice her furniture, bid a hurried farewell to friends, and seek her fortune among strangers in Canada. Many a wife discovered a secret she had never known before—that her husband was a fugitive, and must leave her to insure his own safety. Worse still, many a husband discovered that his wife had fled from slavery years ago, and as "the child follows the condition of its mother," the children of his love were liable to be seized and carried into slavery. Every where, in those humble homes, there was consternation and anguish. But what cared the legislators of the "dominant race" for the blood they were crushing out of trampled hearts?
”
”
Harriet Ann Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl)
“
The Russian armies drove forward in the same desperate fashion in which they had retreated in the previous year, numbed by daily horrors. Victory at Kursk meant little to a soldier such as Private Ivanov of the 70th Army, who wrote despairingly to his family in Irkutsk: “Death, and only death awaits me. Death is everywhere here. I shall never see you again because death, terrible, ruthless and merciless is going to cut short my young life. Where shall I find strength and courage to live through all this? We are all terribly dirty, with long hair and beards, in rags. Farewell for ever.” Private Samokhvalov was in equally wretched condition: “Papa and Mama, I will describe to you my situation, which is bad. I am concussed. Very many of my unit have been killed—the senior lieutenant, the regimental commander, most of my comrades; now it must be my turn. Mama, I have not known such fear in all my eighteen years. Mama, please pray to God that I live. Mama, I read your prayer … I must admit frankly that at home I did not believe in God, but now I think of him forty times a day. I don’t know where to hide my head as I write this. Papa and Mama, farewell, I will never see you again, farewell, farewell, farewell.
”
”
Max Hastings (Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945)
“
However, the fact that American forces continued to work with the warlords and pay them gave them new power in their communities. They intimidated local people by telling them they could call in airstrikes on their satellite phones. And to the horror of many of the Europeans, Rumsfeld and other US officials would visit them as if they were important leaders. ‘There is a certain illogic in trying to boost the authority of the central government on one hand and in conniving with local warlords on the other,’ complained Chris Patten, the European Union Commissioner, when he visited Kabul in May 2002. ‘There are things done in the short term which are unhelpful in the long term.
”
”
Christina Lamb (Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World)
“
A True Account Of Talking To The Sun On Fire Island"
The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally
so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."
"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."
"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."
I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.
"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.
And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.
And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"
"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.
And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.
Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
”
”
Frank O'Hara
“
I jumped then. It seemed I heard a child laugh. My imagination, of course. And then, when I should have known better, I headed for the closet and the high and narrow door at the very back end and the steep and narrow dark stairs. A million times I’d ascended these stairs. A million times in the dark, without a candle, or a flashlight. Up into the dark, eerie, gigantic attic, and only when I was there did I feel around for the place where Chris and I had hidden our candles and matches.
Still there. Time did stand still in this place. We’d had several candle holders, all of pewter with small handles to grasp. Holders we’d found in an old trunk along with boxes and boxes of short, stubby, clumsily made candles. We’d always presumed them to be homemade candles, for they had smelled so rank and old when they burned.
My breath caught! Oh! It was the same! The paper flowers still dangled down, mobiles to sway in the drafts, and the giant flowers were still on the walls. Only all the colors had faded to indistinct gray—ghost flowers. The sparkling gem centers we’d glued on had loosened, and now only a few daisies had sequins, or gleaming stones, for centers. Carrie’s purple worm was there only now he too was a nothing color. Cory’s epileptic snail didn’t appear a bright, lopsided beach ball now, it was more a tepid, half-rotten squashy orange. The BEWARE signs Chris and I had painted in red were still on the walls, and the swings still dangled down from the attic rafters. Over near the record player was the barre Chris had fashioned, then nailed to the wall so I could practice my ballet positions. Even my outgrown costumes hung limply from nails, dozens of them with matching leotards and worn out pointe shoes, all faded and dusty, rotten smelling.
As in an unhappy dream I was committed to, I drifted aimlessly toward the distant schoolroom, with the candelight flickering. Ghosts were unsettled, memories and specters followed me as things began to wake up, yawn and whisper. No, I told myself, it was only the floating panels of my long chiffon wings . . . that was all. The spotted rocking-horse loomed up, scary and threatening, and my hand rose to my throat as I held back a scream. The rusty red wagon seemed to move by unseen hands pushing it, so my eyes took flight to the blackboard where I’d printed my enigmatic farewell message to those who came in the future. How was I to know it would be me?
We lived in the attic,
Christopher, Cory, Carrie and me—
Now there are only three.
Behind the small desk that had been Cory’s I scrunched down, and tried to fit my legs under. I wanted to put myself into a deep reverie that would call up Cory’s spirit that would tell me where he lay.
”
”
V.C. Andrews (Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger, #2))
“
Farewell, ye gilded follies, pleasing troubles;
Farewell, ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles;
Fame's but a hollow echo, Gold, pure clay;
Honour the darling but of one short day;
Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damask'd skin;
State, but a golden prison, to live in
And torture free-born minds; embroider'd Trains,
Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins;
And Blood allied to greatness is alone
Inherited, not purchas'd, nor our own.
Fame, Honour, Beauty, State, Train, Blood and Birth,
Are but the fading blossoms of the earth.
I would be great, but that the sun doth still
Level his rays against the rising hill:
I would be high, but see the proudest oak
Most subject to the rending thunder-stroke:
I would be rich, but see men, too unkind
Dig in the bowels of the richest mind:
I would be wise, but that I often see
The fox suspected, whilst the ass goes free:
I would be fair, but see the fair and proud,
Like the bright sun, oft setting in a cloud:
I would be poor, but know the humble grass
Still trampled on by each unworthy ass:
Rich, hated wise, suspected, scorn'd if poor;
Great, fear'd, fair, tempted, high, still envy'd more.
I have wish'd all, but now I wish for neither.
Great, high, rich, wise, nor fair: poor I'll be rather.
Would the World now adopt me for her heir;
Would beauty's Queen entitle me the fair;
Fame speak me fortune's minion, could I " vie
Angels " with India with a speaking eye
Command bare heads, bow'd knees, strike justice dumb,
As well as blind and lame, or give a tongue
To stones by epitaphs, be call'd " great master "
In the loose rhymes of every poetaster ?
Could I be more than any man that lives,
Great, fair, rich wise, all in superlatives;
Yet I more freely would these gifts resign
Than ever fortune would have made them mine.
And hold one minute of this holy leisure
Beyond the riches of this empty pleasure.
Welcome, pure thoughts; welcome, ye silent groves;
These guests, these courts, my soul most dearly loves.
Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing
My cheerful anthems to the gladsome spring:
A pray'r-book, now, shall be my looking-glass,
In which I will adore sweet virtue's face.
Here dwell no hateful looks, no palace cares,
No broken vows dwell here, nor pale-fac'd fears;
Then here I'll sit, and sigh my hot love's folly,
And learn t' affect an holy melancholy:
And if contentment be a stranger then,
I'll ne'er look for it, but in heaven, again.
”
”
Izaak Walton (The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation)
“
Only then comes the fourth and last movement, the Adagio, the final farewell. It takes the form of a prayer, Mahler's last chorale, his closing hymn, so to speak; and it prays for the restoration of life, of tonality, of faith. This is tonality unashamed, presented in all aspects ranging from the diatonic simplicity of the hymn tune that opens it through every possible chromatic ambiguity. It's also a passionate prayer, moving from one climax to another, each more searing than the last. But there are no solutions. And between these surges of prayer there is intermittently a sudden coolness, a wide-spaced transparency, like an icy burning — a Zen-like immobility of pure meditation. This is a whole other world of prayer, of egoless acceptance. But again, there are no solutions. "Heftig ausbrechend!" he writes, as again the despairing chorale breaks out with greatly magnified intensity. This is the dual Mahler, flinging himself back into his burning Christian prayer, then again freezing into his Eastern one. This vacillation is his final duality. In the very last return of the hymn he is close to prostration; it is all he can give in prayer, a sobbing, sacrificial last try. But suddenly this climax fails, unachieved — the one that might have worked, that might have brought solutions. This last desperate reach falls short of its goal, subsides into a hint of resignation, then another hint, then into resignation itself.
And so we come to the final incredible page. And this page, I think, is the closest we have ever come, in any work of art, to experiencing the very act of dying, of giving it all up. The slowness of this page is terrifying: Adagissimo, he writes, the slowest possible musical direction; and then langsam (slow), ersterbend (dying away), zögernd (hesitat-ing); and as if all those were not enough to indicate the near stoppage of time, he adds äusserst langsam (extremely slow) in the very last bars. It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate. We hold on to them, hovering between hope and submission. And one by one, these spidery strands connecting us to life melt away, vanish from our fingers even as we hold them. We cling to them as they dematerialize; we are holding two-then one. One, and suddenly none. For a petrifying moment there is only silence. Then again, a strand, a broken strand, two strands, one ... none. We are half in love with easeful death ... now more than ever seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain ... And in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything.
”
”
Leonard Bernstein (The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard)
“
Two men were advancing towards the car along the cross track. One man carried a short wooden bench on his back, the other a big wooden object about the size of an upright piano. Richard hailed them, they greeted him with every sign of pleasure. Richard produced cigarettes and a cheerful party spirit seemed to be developing. Then Richard turned to her. “Fond of the cinema? Then you shall see a performance.” He spoke to the two men and they smiled with pleasure. They set up the bench and motioned to Victoria and Richard to sit on it. Then they set up the round contrivance on a stand of some kind. It had two eye-holes in it and as she looked at it, Victoria cried: “It’s like things on piers. What the butler saw.” “That’s it,” said Richard. “It’s a primitive form of same.” Victoria applied her eyes to the glass-fronted peephole, one man began slowly to turn a crank or handle, and the other began a monotonous kind of chant. “What is he saying?” Victoria asked. Richard translated as the singsong chant continued: “Draw near and prepare yourself for much wonder and delight. Prepare to behold the wonders of antiquity.” A crudely coloured picture of Negroes reaping wheat swam into Victoria’s gaze. “Fellahin in America,” announced Richard, translating. Then came: “The wife of the great Shah of the Western world,” and the Empress Eugénie simpered and fingered a long ringlet. A picture of the King’s Palace in Montenegro, another of the Great Exhibition. An odd and varied collection of pictures followed each other, all completely unrelated and sometimes announced in the strangest terms. The Prince Consort, Disraeli, Norwegian Fjords and Skaters in Switzerland completed this strange glimpse of olden far-off days. The showman ended his exposition with the following words: “And so we bring to you the wonders and marvels of antiquity in other lands and far-off places. Let your donation be generous to match the marvels you have seen, for all these things are true.” It was over. Victoria beamed with delight. “That really was marvellous!” she said. “I wouldn’t have believed it.” The proprietors of the travelling cinema were smiling proudly. Victoria got up from the bench and Richard who was sitting on the other end of it was thrown to the ground in a somewhat undignified posture. Victoria apologized but was not ill pleased. Richard rewarded the cinema men and with courteous farewells and expressions of concern for each other’s welfare, and invoking the blessing of God on each other, they parted company. Richard and Victoria got into the car again and the men trudged away into the desert. “Where are they going?” asked Victoria. “They travel all over the country. I met them first in Transjordan coming up the road from the Dead Sea to Amman. Actually they’re bound now for Kerbela, going of course by unfrequented routes so as to give shows in remote villages.” “Perhaps someone will give them a lift?
”
”
Agatha Christie (They Came to Baghdad)
“
States, in the name of austerity, have stopped providing prisoners with essential items including shoes, extra blankets, and even toilet paper, while starting to charge them for electricity and room and board. Most prisoners and the families that struggle to support them are chronically short of money. When they go broke—and being broke is a frequent occurrence in prison—prisoners must take out prison loans to pay for medications, legal and medical fees, and basic commissary items such as soap and deodorant. Debt peonage inside prison is as prevalent as it is outside prison. Prisoners are charged for visits to the infirmary and the dentist. Prisoners must pay the state for a fifteen-minute deathbed visit to an immediate family member, or for a fifteen-minute visit to a funeral home to view the deceased. New Jersey, like most other states, forces a prisoner to reimburse the system for overtime wages paid to the two guards who accompany him or her to the visit or viewing, plus mileage cost. The charge can be as high as $945.04 in New Jersey. It can take years to pay off a visit with a dying father or mother when you make less than $30 a month.
”
”
Chris Hedges (America: The Farewell Tour)
“
He reclines in the hospital bed like a martyred king taking leave of his beloved kingdom, but all I see is a petulant, destructive child hiding in a dead man’s body.
”
”
R.L. Martinez (Wild Horses Don't Stop at Whoa: Poems and Stories)
“
I was just beginning to wonder how long I would have to wait when finally a guard sauntered up and said, “Galloway, get your stuff, get your bed.” I ran to my cell to get my stuff and I grabbed the toothpaste. The toothpaste was in this clear tube and was clear like hair gel. It had a muted, watered-down mint flavor. Everything you got in jail was made specifically to be as safe as can be. One of the guys told me, “Don’t ever take anything from being locked up. It’s bad luck.” But I told myself, You ain’t coming back. You ain’t getting locked up again, so you’re taking a souvenir. I grabbed that little clear tube and I put it in my pocket and walked out of my cell. As I came out, all of the guys from my cellblock were lined up to say goodbye. The guard had this look on his face like, “What is going on?” I walked down the line shaking each man’s hands. They all told me they were glad they had met me. They told me that I made an impact on them. One guy said, “You came in here and you’ve been to war and back, you’re missing two limbs, but you still had a smile on your face the whole time. You’ve gone through so much and you are able to keep smiling. That motivates me.” I was really touched.
I kept going down the line, shaking hands and saying my farewells, and finally I got to Michael Bolton. He said, “Hey, man, I’ve asked people this before and they never follow through with it but I believe you will. Could you print out some TV guides? Because you know we just tell them the number. We don’t know what’s on at what time, what station.” I said, “Yeah, man, I’ll do that.” And I looked around to the other guys and asked, “Does anybody want any crossword puzzles or anything like that?” They all said that would be awesome.
“All right, Michael, I’ve got your address so I’m gonna send it to you. And listen, man, I’m gonna give you my email address. When you get out shoot me an email. I want to stay in touch and see how things are going.”
I turned to the guard who was still baffled by what was happening and said, “I’m ready.” He rolled his eyes and opened the door. We walked out and they handed me my clothes. I pulled off the orange jumpsuit and tossed it. I changed back into my clothes. I signed everything I had to sign, got some paperwork to take with me, and walked out a free man again.
Well, my epic freedom moment was short-lived, because I realized my cell phone was dead. I walked down the road to a gas station and asked if I could use the phone. I called Tracy and told her where I was and asked her to pick me up. When Tracy arrived I hopped in the car and the very first thing I said to her was “I gotta get home. I have to print out some TV guides and I need to write a letter to some of the guys in there.” She started laughing and when she could compose herself enough to talk said, “My sisters and I all said we guarantee Noah is going to come out of jail with new friends. He’s going to be friends with everybody.
”
”
Noah Galloway (Living with No Excuses: The Remarkable Rebirth of an American Soldier)
“
One curious postscript to the Mannix farewell to Maynooth has never been explained. Just two days before being consecrated as archbishop, near the end of his nine-day retreat of prayer and silence, he wrote a short note inviting an underqualified, obscure young teacher, whom he had never met, to apply for a part-time job lecturing in mathematics at Maynooth.45 Mannix could have left it to his successor to find a candidate for this minor post. Why did he want to help Eamon de Valera? In 1912, de Valera, a father of three, was struggling to get by with bits and pieces of teaching in secondary schools. The Maynooth connection would be an immense asset to a future political leader, but in 1912 de Valera hadn’t entered politics. All he had done was to get a disappointing pass degree in mathematics, learn Irish, and become secretary of a branch of the Gaelic League. Was Mannix trying to atone for the O’Hickey case? Whatever his reasons, he brought the future Sinn Féin leader, like a Trojan horse, into the clerical fortress of Maynooth.
”
”
Brenda Niall (Mannix)
“
Is it not manifest that the employing so many of our preachers in these agencies and professorships is one of the great causes why we have such a scarcity of preachers to fill the regular work? Moreover, these presidents, professors, agents, and editors get a greater amount of pay, and get it more certainly, too, than a traveling preacher, who has to breast every storm, and often falls very far short of his disciplinary allowance. Here is a great temptation to those who are qualified to fill those high offices to seek them, and give up the regular work of preaching and trying to save souls. And is it not manifest to every candid observer that very few of those young men who believe they were called of God to preach the Gospel, and are persuaded to go to a college or a Biblical institute, the better to qualify them for the great work of the ministry, ever go into the regular traveling ministry? The reason as plainly this: having quieted their consciences with the flattering unction of obtaining a sanctified education, while they have neglected the duty of regularly preaching Jesus to dying sinners, their moral sensibilities are blunted, and they see an opening prospect of getting better pay as teachers in high schools or other institutions of learning, and from the prospect of gain they are easily persuaded that they can meet their moral obligations in disseminating sanctified learning. Thus, as sure as a leaden ball tends to the earth in obedience to the laws of gravity, just so sure our present modus operandi tends to a congregational ministry, And if this course is pursued a little longer, the Methodist Church will bid a long, long farewell to her beloved itinerancy, to which we, under God, owe almost every thing that is intrinsically valuable in Methodism.
”
”
Peter Cartwright (The Autobiography of Peter Cartwright)
“
Preventing Separation Anxiety We wish our dogs could be with us all day, every day, but it’s not possible, and puppies do need to learn to spend time alone. A dog who can never be left home alone without destroying the house may be suffering from separation anxiety. Teach your Lab to feel safe and comfortable at home alone while she’s still a puppy, even if you’re home all day. Your life or job situation may change someday, and you’re heading off future trauma by teaching this lesson now, when she is young. Your puppy’s not yet mature enough to have the run of an entire house or yard, so confine her in her crate or pen when you’re gone. What you might think is separation anxiety might really be simple puppy mischief. When you’re not there to supervise, she’s free to indulge her curiosity and entertain herself in doggie ways. She knows she can’t dump the trash and eat the kitty litter in front of you, but when you’re gone, she makes her own rules. Teach your puppy not to rely on your constant attention every minute you’re at home. Set up her crate, pen, or wherever she can stay when you’re gone, and practice leaving her in it for short rests during the day. She’ll learn to feel safe there, chewing on her toy and listening to household noises. She’ll also realize that being in her pen doesn’t always mean she’s going to be left for long periods. Deafening quiet could unnerve your puppy, so when you leave, turn on the radio or television so the house still has signs of activities she’d hear when you’re home. Background noise also blocks out scary sounds from outdoors, so she won’t react to unknown terrors. HAPPY PUPPY Exercise your puppy before you leave her alone at home. Take her for a walk, practice obedience, or play a game. Then give her a chance to settle down and relax so she won’t still be excited when you put her in her pen. She’ll quickly learn that the rustle of keys followed by you picking up your briefcase or purse, getting your jacket out of the closet, or picking up your books all mean one awful thing: you’re going, and she’s staying. While you’re teaching her to spend time alone, occasionally go through your leaving routine without actually leaving. Pick everything up, fiddle with it so she can see you’re doing so, put it all back down, and go back to what you were doing. Don’t make a fuss over your puppy when you come and go. Put her in her pen and do something else for a few minutes before you leave. Then just leave. Big good-byes and lots of farewell petting just rev her up and upset her. When you come home, ignore her while you put down your things and get settled. Then greet her calmly and take her outside for a break.
”
”
Terry Albert (Your Labrador Retriever Puppy Month by Month: Everything You Need to Know at Each Stage to Ensure Your Cute and Playful Puppy Grows into a Happy, Healthy Companion)
“
The House of Fortune My wearied heart bade me farewell and left for the House of Fortune. As he reached that holy city which the soul had blessed and worshipped, he commenced wondering, for he could not find what he had always imagined would be there. The city was empty of power, money, and authority. And my heart spoke to the daughter of Love saying, “Oh Love, where can I find Contentment? I heard that she had come here to join you.” And the daughter of Love responded, “Contentment has already gone to preach her gospel in the city, where greed and corruption are paramount; we are not in need of her.” Fortune craves not Contentment, for it is an earthly hope, and its desires are embraced by union with objects, while Contentment is naught but heartfelt. The eternal soul is never contented; it ever seeks exaltation. Then my heart looked upon Life of Beauty and said: “Thou art all knowledge; enlighten me as to the mystery of Woman.” And he answered, “Oh human heart, woman is your own reflection, and whatever you are, she is; wherever you live, she lives; she is like religion if not interpreted by the ignorant, and like a moon, if not veiled with clouds, and like a breeze, if not poisoned with impurities.” And my heart walked toward Knowledge, the daughter of Love and Beauty, and said, “Bestow upon me wisdom, that I might share it with the people.” And she responded, “Say not wisdom, but rather fortune, for real fortune comes not from outside, but begins in the Holy of Holies of life. Share of thyself with the people.”
”
”
Kahlil Gibran (The Complete Works of Kahlil Gibran: All poems and short stories (Global Classics))
“
Once upon a time, there lived a man who had a terrible passion for baked beans. He loved them, but they always had an embarrassing and somewhat lively reaction on him. One day he met a girl and fell in love. When it was apparent that they would marry, he thought to himself 'She'll never go for me carrying on like that,' so he made the supreme sacrifice and gave up beans, and shortly after that they got married. A few months later, on the way home from work, his car broke down and since they lived in the country, he called his wife and told her he would be late because he had to walk. On his way home, he passed a small cafe and the wonderful aroma of baked beans overwhelmed him. Since he still had several miles to walk he figured he could walk off any ill affects before he got home. So he went in and ordered, and before leaving had three extra-large helpings of baked beans. All the way home he farted. He 'putted' down one hill and 'putt-putted' up the next. By the time he arrived home he felt reasonably safe. His wife met him at the door and seemed somewhat excited. She exclaimed, 'Darling, I have the most wonderful surprise for you for dinner tonight!' She put a blindfold on him, and led him to his chair at the head of the table and made him promise not to peek. At this point he was beginning to feel another one coming on. Just as she was about to remove the blindfold, the telephone rang. She again made him promise not to peek until she returned, and she went to answer the phone. While she was gone, he seized the opportunity. He shifted his weight to one leg and let go. It was not only loud, but *ripe* as a rotten egg. He had a hard time breathing, so he felt for his napkin and fanned the air about him. He had just started to feel better, when another urge came on. He raised his leg and 'rrriiiipppp!' It sounded like a diesel engine revving, and smelled worse. To keep from gagging, he tried fanning his arms a while, hoping the smell would dissipate. Things had just about returned to normal when he felt another urge coming. He shifted his weight to his other leg and let go. This was a real blue ribbon winner; the windows rattled, the dishes on the table shook and a minute later the flowers on the table were dead. While keeping an ear tuned in on the conversation in the hallway, and keeping his promise of staying blindfolded, he carried on like this for the next ten minutes, farting and fanning them each time with his napkin. When he heard the 'phone farewells' (indicating the end of his loneliness and freedom) he neatly laid his napkin on his lap and folded his hands on top of it. Smiling contentedly, he was the picture of innocence when his wife walked in. Apologizing for taking so long, she asked if he had peeked at the dinner. After assuring her he had not, she removed the blindfold and yelled, 'Surprise!' To his shock and horror, there were twelve dinner guests seated around the table for his surprise birthday party.
”
”
E. King (Best Adult Jokes Ever)
“
In short the problem is this: far too few who believe in the risen Christ actually believe in his revolutionary ideas.
”
”
Brian Zahnd (A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace)
“
The Empress Dowager, the man continued, was much distressed, and had given orders to stop the fighting; the Boxers were fools...
Then the soldier waved a farewell, and retreated cautiously, picking his way back through the ruins and débris. Several times he stopped no raised the head of some dead man that lay there, victim to our rifles, and peered at the face to see if it was recognisable. In five days we have accounted for very many killed and wounded, and numbers still lie in the exposed positions where they fell.
The disappearing figure of that man was the end to the last clue we came across regarding the meaning of this sudden quiet. The shadows gradually lengthened and night suddenly fell, and around us there was nothing but these strangely silent ruins. There was barricade for barricade, loophole for loophole, and sandbag for sandbag. What has been levelled to the ground by fire has been heaped up once more so that the ruins themselves may bring more ruin!
But although we exhausted ourselves with questions, and many of us hoped against hope, the hours sped slowly by and no message came. The Palace, enclosed in its pink walls, had sunk to sleep, or forgotten us - or, perhaps, had even found that there could be no truce. Then midnight came, and as we were preparing, half incredulously, to go to sleep, we truly knew. Crack, crack, went the first shots from some distant barricade, and bang went an answering rifle on our side. Awakened by these echoes, the firing grew naturally and mechanically to the storm of sound we have become so accustomed to, and the short truce was forgotten. It is no use; we must go through to the end.
”
”
B.L. Putnam Weale
“
Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future. John Steinbeck
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”
Kat Blackthorne (Wolf (The Halloween Boys, #3))
“
A loss of adequate income and social stagnation causes more than financial distress. It severs, as the sociologist Émile Durkheim pointed out in The Division of Labour in Society, the vital social bonds that give us meaning. A decline in status and power, an inability to advance, a lack of education and health care, and a loss of hope are crippling forms of humiliation. This humiliation fuels loneliness, frustration, anger, and feelings of worthlessness. In short, when you are marginalized and rejected by society, life often has little meaning. There arises a yearning among the disempowered to become as omnipotent as the gods. The impossibility of omnipotence leads, as the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote in The Denial of Death, to its dark alternative—destroying like the gods. In Hitler and the Germans the political philosopher Eric Voegelin dismissed the myth that Hitler—an uneducated mediocrity whose only strengths were oratory and an ability to exploit political opportunities—mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he wrote, voted for Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures”118 surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse, hopelessness, and violence. Voegelin defined stupidity as a “loss of reality.”119 This loss of reality meant a “stupid” person could not “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.”120 The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or a social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s zeitgeist.
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Chris Hedges (America: The Farewell Tour)
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The more familiar we are with the particular conditions that connect or disconnect us from presence, the easier it becomes to spot them in our lives. For example, I tend to lose presence when I’m rushing. This means that I’m more apt to make physical or relational blunders: I might drop something in the kitchen, forget my lunch, or even say something sharp. I learned a painful lesson about this a few years ago. I was at a farewell party for my girlfriend, Evan, who had just finished a year of service at a meditation retreat center. We had plans to drive north up the coast of California after the party, and I’d made an appointment to install a car radio for the trip. In that classic, romantic way, I wanted everything to be perfect. As our departure time approached, I grew more and more anxious about missing the appointment. With no sign of a formal send-off, I finally spoke up and said that we needed to leave soon. To avoid any awkwardness, Evan went along with my request, but she was in tears by the time we arrived at the auto shop. She was incensed at me for cutting short a meaningful experience and at herself for not speaking up. In my fixation to create “the perfect trip,” I’d missed the fact that she was already enjoying herself. I reflected a lot on that incident, how losing presence had unintended, painful consequences.
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Oren Jay Sofer (Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication)
“
Before I was twenty-one years old, I had studied in most of the schools of modern philosophy, and had thrown off my religion like an old rag. I was inflated with a sense of my own intellectual superiority over other men. It was philosophy which taught men to live, I declared, and philosophy which taught them to die. With that motto before me, I carefully set myself to annihilate every vestige of faith with which I had ever been endowed. I succeeded—too well. It is dead; and sometimes I fear that it will never reawaken. And what am I? As miserable a man as ever drew breath upon this earth. It seems to me as though I had crushed a part of my very life and the sore will rankle for ever. “There is a part of man’s nature, Philip—that is to say, of such men as I have been and you will be—the sympathetic, emotional, reverential part, which cries out for some belief in a higher, an infinite Power, for some sort of religion which it can cling to and entwine with every action of daily life. You must satisfy that craving if you desire to know happiness. For me there is no such knowledge. I have deliberately committed spiritual suicide; I have torn up faith by the roots and have made a void in my heart, which nothing else can ever fill. Frankly, I tell you, Philip, that there are times when religion of any sort seems to me no better than a fairy-tale. It need not seem so to you. Shape out for yourself any form of belief—that of the Christian is as good as any other—and resolutely cling to it. It is my advice to you—mine who believe in no God and no future state. Follow it and farewell!” He held out his hand and clasped mine for a moment.
”
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E. Phillips Oppenheim (E. Phillips Oppenheim Ultimate Collection: 72 Novels & 100+ Short Stories in One Volume)
“
when my daughter is living in my belly i will speak to her like she’s already changed the world she will walk out of me on a red carpet fully equipped with the knowledge that she’s capable of anything she sets her mind to (ode to raymond douillet’s a short tour and farewell)
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Rupi Kaur (The Sun and Her Flowers)
“
Everett knelt beside her, saying, brokenly: “I stayed because I wanted to be with you, that’s all. I have never cared about other women since I met you in New York when I was a lad. You are a part of my destiny, and I could not leave you if I would.” She put her hands on his shoulders and shook her head. “No, no; don’t tell me that. I have seen enough of tragedy, God knows. Don’t show me any more just as the curtain is going down. No, no, it was only a boy’s fancy, and your divine pity and my utter pitiableness have recalled it for a moment. One does not love the dying, dear friend. If some fancy of that sort had been left over from boyhood, this would rid you of it, and that were well. Now go, and you will come again tomorrow, as long as there are tomorrows, will you not?” She took his hand with a smile that lifted the mask from her soul, that was both courage and despair, and full of infinite loyalty and tenderness, as she said softly: Forever and forever, farewell, Cassius; If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; If not, why then, this parting was well made. The courage in her eyes was like the clear light of a star to him as he went out.
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Elsinore Books (Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces)
“
You’ll always get the kind of person who watches himself acting, who
sees himself as if in some continuous performance. Who believes there’ll be witnesses to report his generous or
contemptible death and that this is what matters most. Or who, if there
are no witnesses, invents them — the eye of God, the world stage,
or whatever. Who believes that the world only exists to the extent that it’s reported and events only to the extent that they’re
recounted, even though it’s highly unlikely that anyone will
bother to recount them, or to recount those particular facts, I
mean, the facts relating to each individual. The vast majority
of things simply happen and there neither is nor ever was any
record of them, those we hear about are an infinitesimal fraction
of what goes on. Most lives and, needless to say, most deaths, are
forgotten as soon as they’ve occurred and leave not the slightest
trace, or become unknown soon afterwards, after a few years, a
few decades, a century, which, as you know, is, in reality, a very
short time. Take battles, for example, think how important they
were for those who took part in them and, sometimes, for their
compatriots, think how many of those battles now mean nothing to us, not even their names, we don’t even know which war
they belonged to, more than that, we don’t care. What do the
names Ulundi and Beersheba, or Gravelotte and Rezonville, or
Namur, or Maiwand, Paardeberg and Mafeking, or Mohacs, or
Nájera, mean to anyone nowadays?’ — He mispronounced that
last name, Nájera. — ‘But there are many others who resist, incapable of accepting their own insignificance or invisibility, I
mean once they’re dead and converted into past matter, once
they’re no longer present to defend their existence and to declare: “Hey, I’m here. I can intervene, I have influence, I can do
good or cause harm, save or destroy, and even change the course
of the world, because I haven’t yet disappeared.” — ‘I’m still here,
therefore I must have been here before,
”
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Javier Marías (Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear / Dance and Dream / Poison, Shadow, and Farewell (Your face tomorrow, #1-3))
“
Religia îmi era de mult nesuferită, cu toate acestea, am simțit dintr-odată dorința de a mă raporta la ceva. Era insuportabil să fii singur și izolat. Trebuia să existe o relație cu altcineva, care să nu fie doar personală, întâmplătoare și unică, în care să nu fii constrâns să aparții celuilalt printr-o dragoste forțată și mincinoasă, ci printr-o legătură necesară, impersonală.
”
”
Peter Handke (Short Letter, Long Farewell)
“
Short of a sudden and widespread popular revolt, the death spiral appears unstoppable, meaning the United States as we know it will no longer exist within a decade or, at most, two.
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”
Chris Hedges (America: The Farewell Tour)
“
,,Toate angoasele, toate dorințele pe care de mult le credeam uitate îmi revin în minte. Ca în copilărie, am din nou impresia că lumea din jur ar putea să explodeze dintr-odată și să răsară altceva de sub masca ei, de pildă gura unui monstru.(...)Gândul că în altă parte există altceva și că nu poți fi în clipa aceea acolo mă înnebunește , ca în copilărie. Doar că atunci gândul mă amețea, pe când acum vorbesc despre el, fac comparații și încep să învăț din asta. Mi s-ar părea ridicol să vreau să deslușesc aceste enigme; nu fac decât să le articulez pentru a nu mă simți atât de însingurat ca în vremea aceea. Mă port dezinvolt, vorbesc mult, râd cu poftă, vreau să ajung atât de gras, încât să fiu în stare să deschid cu burta o ușă turnantă, mă bucur că nu mă mai surprind cu nimic ciudat.
”
”
Peter Handke (Short Letter, Long Farewell)
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AT 3:00 P.M. SHARP on August 23, 2012, Colonel Edgar escorted the two men into Mattis’s office on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. The sixty-one-year-old general was an intimidating figure in person: muscular and broad shouldered, with dark circles under his eyes that suggested a man who didn’t bother much with sleep. His office was decorated with the mementos of a long military career. Amid the flags, plaques, and coins, Shoemaker’s eyes rested briefly on a set of magnificent swords displayed in a glass cabinet. As they sat down in a wood-paneled conference room off to one side of the office, Mattis cut to the chase: “Guys, I’ve been trying to get this thing deployed for a year now. What’s going on?” Shoemaker had gone over everything again with Gutierrez and felt confident he was on solid ground. He spoke first, giving a brief overview of the issues raised by an in-theater test of the Theranos technology. Gutierrez took over from there and told the general his army colleague was correct in his interpretation of the law: the Theranos device was very much subject to regulation by the FDA. And since the agency hadn’t yet reviewed and approved it for commercial use, it could only be tested on human subjects under strict conditions set by an institutional review board. One of those conditions was that the test subjects give their informed consent—something that was notoriously hard to obtain in a war zone. Mattis was reluctant to give up. He wanted to know if they could suggest a way forward. As he’d put it to Elizabeth in an email a few months earlier, he was convinced her invention would be “a game-changer” for his men. Gutierrez and Shoemaker proposed a solution: a “limited objective experiment” using leftover de-identified blood samples from soldiers. It would obviate the need to obtain informed consent and it was the only type of study that could be put together as quickly as Mattis seemed to want to proceed. They agreed to pursue that course of action. Fifteen minutes after they’d walked in, Shoemaker and Gutierrez shook Mattis’s hand and walked out. Shoemaker was immensely relieved. All in all, Mattis had been gruff but reasonable and a workable compromise had been reached. The limited experiment agreed upon fell short of the more ambitious live field trial Mattis had had in mind. Theranos’s blood tests would not be used to inform the treatment of wounded soldiers. They would only be performed on leftover samples after the fact to see if their results matched the army’s regular testing methods. But it was something. Earlier in his career, Shoemaker had spent five years overseeing the development of diagnostic tests for biological threat agents and he would have given his left arm to get access to anonymized samples from service members in theater. The data generated from such testing could be very useful in supporting applications to the FDA. Yet, over the ensuing months, Theranos inexplicably failed to take advantage of the opportunity it was given. When General Mattis retired from the military in March 2013, the study using leftover de-identified samples hadn’t begun. When Colonel Edgar took on a new assignment as commander of the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases a few months later, it still hadn’t started. Theranos just couldn’t seem to get its act together. In July 2013, Lieutenant Colonel Shoemaker retired from the army. At his farewell ceremony, his Fort Detrick colleagues presented him with a “certificate of survival” for having the courage to stand up to Mattis in person and emerging from the encounter alive. They also gave him a T-shirt with the question, “What do you do after surviving a briefing with a 4 star?” written on the front. The answer could be found on the back: “Retire and sail off into the sunset.
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John Carreyrou (Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup)
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A march held in Sacramento, California, in June 2016 by the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party to protest attacks at Trump rallies ended with a number of people stabbed.114 Police accused counter-protesters of initiating the violence.115 It is a short series of steps from bats and ax handles to knives to guns. The conflict will not end until followers of the alt-right and the anticapitalist left are given a living wage and a voice in how we are governed. Take away a person’s dignity, agency, and self-esteem and this is what you get. As political power devolves into a more naked form of corporate totalitarianism, as unemployment and underemployment expand, so will extremist groups. They will attract more sympathy and support as the wider population realizes, correctly, that Americans have been stripped of all ability to influence the decisions that affect their lives—lives that are getting steadily worse.
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Chris Hedges (America: The Farewell Tour)
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That’s a rather extended version of aspirational rhetoric short of any evidence,’ said Tom Miller, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
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Aldous J. Pennyfarthing (Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump (101 Rude Letters to Donald Trump #4))
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now and had a merry smile on his face. ‘Well, goddammit, boys! If I ain’t just remembered! There’s a whorehouse open all night long just outside Pens’cola! You’re sure you won’t come with me?’ We were sure. He dropped us at the main gate of the station with cheery shouts of farewell and drove off about 1.30 in the morning to ‘round off his evening’. We were soon to learn that certain ‘Southern gentlemen’ dropped in to the local brothel with the easy nonchalance Englishmen pop into their local pub—but without their wives, of course! Generally speaking, it was rare for us to leave the station other than at weekends. Our working hours were long and our leisure hours short; so we had to find our entertainment within the station. However, almost every day we found time to swim in the lagoon which separates the mainland from Santa Rosa Island, where the big flying-boats taxied in and out, the deep rumble of their Pratt and Whitneys music to our ears. We became expert with surf-boards—rectangles of wood about the size of a large tea-tray with a pair of rope reins, towed behind a fast motor-boat. Was it the fore-runner of water-skis? The technique seems to have been virtually the same. But, whatever one’s leisure activities, life
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Norman Hanson (Carrier Pilot: A Gripping WWII Pilot's Memoir)
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him leap now, bargain and knives forgotten. Fip fluted a farewell, and Blade absently lifted a hand in response, his attention focused on the leashed energy all but vibrating through Ichys. She said nothing while they cleared the maze of stalls and merchants, and still nothing as they made their way through the twisting halls of Whispering Fear’s den. Once they’d reached Ichys’s alcove, she shoved him down on their shared nest of cushions and fabric, and closed them inside. He was fairly sure this meant neither attack, nor that he’d been found out, nor that she’d simply needed to mate, and so he waited, watching the surge of nerves and emotions ripple through her. “The simplest way to join a clan is by being taken as a mate,” she said, pacing in the small space, her eyes fixed on his. “I would hardly call it simple, if done properly,” he demurred, wondering if she was about to ask him something formal. Wondering what he would say if she did. “No jokes.” She waved at him impatiently, paced two more paths through the alcove, then came to a stop and took a breath. “I’m pregnant.” Shock struck, his every claw briefly extended, ears flattened in confusion. He stared back at her for several long moments, not a single thought moving through his usually busy mind. Then he realized the import, and moved, launching across the room, stopping just short of her, and winding his body around hers. “I did it all to secure a life with Whispering Fear,” he said in her ear, taking the buffet of her front leg against his head as his due for such a ridiculous comment. He wanted, more than anything, to tell his dama, and to see Susa’s face brighten in that Human way it had when they had unbearably good news. The inability to do so, to not even discuss Susa with Ichys, made him want to leave the room, find Dirrys, and bury his claws
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Kacey Ezell (Assassin (The Revelations Cycle #11))
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The idea is always a scene of pathos which I imagine and by which I am moved; in short, a theater. And it is the theatrical nature of the Idea from which I benefit; this theater of the stoic genre, magnifies me, grants me stature. By *imagining* an extreme solution (i.e. a definitive one, i.e., a definite one) I produce a fiction, I become an artist, I set a scene, I paint my exit, the Idea is *seen* like the pregnant moment (pregnant=endowed with a strong chosen,meaning) of bourgeois drama: sometimes this is a farewell scene, sometimes a formal letter, sometimes, for much later on, a dignified re-encounter. The art of the catastrophe calms me down.
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Roland Barthes (A Lover's Discourse: Fragments)
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Nepakeliama būti su kuo nors susipykus. Staiga tas kitas tampa bevardžiu, kažkokiu dariniu, jo veidas pasitraukia į šešėlį, pasidaro neryškus, iškreiptas, ir mes tegalime į jį skubotai žvilgtelėti, iš apačios, tarsi pelė. Įsigiję priešą, mes imame bjaurėtis patys savimi. Ir vis tiek visada turėjome priešų.
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Peter Handke (Short Letter, Long Farewell)
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Walking slowly, I found myself not saying but feeling good-by—not farewell. Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.
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John Steinbeck (The Winter of Our Discontent)