more early american literature

"I have said a good deal more here on what ought to be than on what is: but God forbid I should appear to say, "I know what ought to be, and this is it." But it did and does seem better to shout a few obvious facts (they can never be "obvious" enough) than to meech. The meechers will say, Yes, but do you realize all (or any) of the obstacles, presuming you are (in general) a little more right than merely raving? The answer is, I am sure I don't realize them all, but I realize more of them, probably, than you do. Our difference is that you accept and respect them....Oh. I am very well aware how adolescent this is and how easily laughable. I will nevertheless insist that any persons milder, more obedient to or compromising with "the obstacles as they are," more "realistic," contented with the effort for less, are dreamy and insufficiently skeptical. Those are the worst of the enemies, and always have been."

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, pg 308-309 James Agee

"This Happened"

I met this girl once, or anyway I knew of her or perhaps I thought I knew her or maybe I just hoped to know her, and you would ask her what she wanted to be when she grew up, or at least what she hoped to be when she grew enough to live by her own decisions ‎(though we wouldn't say all that) ‎and she would say, "Oh I am going to see the world," as if that was a profession. I saw her once many years later and she seemed like the same girl, or at least she did to me if the light was right. I asked her if she had seen the world and she said no she had not and I asked her why and she seemed lost at the train station trying to answer; for a reason to find an excuse for the choices made and not made, of living in no outside of a yes, or at least that's what it seemed like she would say about a life not yet entirely lived, had she answered.

 September, 2003

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angel food

I once read a passage about arch angels eating angels, who ate humans, who ate animals and so forth through the hierarchy.  It didn’t strike me with knife and fork mental cannibalism, but as a horizon for higher principles and a compass for a clean heart. Since then, on my best days when I remember to be my self, I will stop and think, I want to be food for angels.