Fahrenheit 451 #3- front porches

Across the street and down the way the other houses stood with their flat fronts. What was it Clarisse had said one afternoon?  “No front porches.  My uncle says there used to be front porches.  And people say there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn’t want to talk.  Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over.  My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn’t look well.  But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn’t want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life.  People talked too much.  And they had time to think.  So they ran off with the porches.  And the gardens, too.  Not many gardens any more to sit around in.  And look at the furniture.  No rocking chairs any more.  They’re too comfortable.  Get people up and running around.  My uncle says…”

______________________

Reflection by Montag about a conversation with Clarisse.

Fahrenheit 451 #2

“You weren’t there, you didn’t see,” he said.  “There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there.  You don’t stay for nothing.”

“She was simple-minded.”

“She was as rational as you and I, more so perhaps, and we burnt her.”

“That’s water under the bridge.”

“No, not water; fire.  You ever seen a burnt house?  It smolders for days.  Well, this fire’ll last me the rest of my life.  God!  I’ve been trying to put it out, in my mind, all night.  I’m crazy with trying.”

“You should’ve thought of that before becoming a fireman.”

“Thought!” he said.  “Was I given a choice?  My grandfather and father were firemen.  In my sleep, I ran after them.”

The parlor was playing a dance tune.

“This is the day you go on the early shift,” said Mildred.  “You should’ve gone two hours ago.  I just noticed.”

“It’s not just the woman that died,” said Montag.  “Last night I thought about all the kerosene I’ve used in the past ten years.  And I thought about books.  And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each of the books.  A man had to think them up.  A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper.  And I’d never even thought that thought before.”  He got out of bed.

“It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around the world and life, and then I come along in two minutes and boom!, it’s all over.”

“Let me alone,” said Mildred.  “I didn’t do anything.”

“Let you alone!  That’s all very well, but how can I leave myself alone?  We need not to be let alone.  We need to be really bothered once in a while.  How long is it since you were really bothered?  About something important, about something real?”

_____________________

Between Montag, a professional fire-starter who, just the other day, burnt a woman’s house down to destroy her books hidden in her attic and Mildred, his wife.

Fahrenheit 451 #1

He glanced back at the wall.  How like a mirror, too, her face.  Impossible; for how many people did you know who refracted your own light to you?  People were more often- he searched for a simile, found one in his work- torches, blazing away until they whiffed out.  How rarely did other people’s faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?

Montag (a fire-starter by profession) on meeting Clarisse, p. 11.

Spring is like a perhaps hand

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window, into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here) and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things, while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything

“Spring is like a perhaps hand”
e e cummings

And now comes the night

And now the dark come on, all full of chitter noise.

Birds huggermugger crowd the trees,
the air thick with their verper cries,
and bats, snub seven-pointed kites,
skitter across the lake, swing out,
squek, chirp, dip, and skim in skates
of air, and the fat frogs wake and prink
wide-lipped, noisy as ducks, drunk
on boozy black, gloating chink-chunk.

And now on the narrow beach we defend ourselves from dark.
The cooking done, we build our firework bright and hot and less for outlook than for magic, and lie in our blankets while nightnickers around us. Crickets chorus hallelujahs; paws, quiet
and quick as raindrops, play on the stones expertly soft, run past and are gone; fish pulse in the lake; the frogs hoarsen.

Now every voice of the hour – the known, the supposed, the strange,
the mindless, the witted, the never seen-
sing, thrum, impinge, and rearrange
endlessly; and debarred from sleep we wait
for the birds, importantly silent,
for the crease of first eye-licking light,
By the lake, locked black away and tight,
we lie, day creatures, overhearing night.

“And Now Comes the Night”
By Maxine Kumin

Dostoevsky

against the wall, the firing squad ready.
then he got a reprieve.
suppose they had shot Dostoevsky?
before he wrote all that?
I suppose it wouldn’t have
mattered
not directly.
there are billions of people who have
never read him and never
will.
but as a young man I know that he
got me through the factories,
past the whores,
lifted me high through the night
and put me down
in a better
place.
even while in the bar
drinking with the other
derelicts,
I was glad they gave Dostoevsky a
reprieve,
it gave me one,
allowed me to look directly at those
rancid faces
in my world,
death pointing its finger,
I held fast,
an immaculate drunk
sharing the stinking dark with
my
brothers.

“Dostoevsky”

By Charles Bukowski

Leaving peanuts on the front porch

Last night, my children left a bag of peanuts on top of their picnic table on the front porch. As I opened the front door this morning, coffee in my left hand, there I saw a skittish brown squirrel, sitting on her haunches, using stillness as a defense- her heart beating and mis-shaped tail flinching. The sound of the screen door opening launched her off of the table and into the bushes.

I spread a fistful if peanuts under the porch swing and sat down in my usual chair in silence (my only defense). Each time she arrives, she surveys the scene, selects a peanut, chews the circumference of the shell, places it into her cheek, leaps off of the porch onto a red bike (which was also left out all night) and scurries off to the neighbor’s yard.

She has returned enough times that I spread another fistful of peanuts under the swing.

Wild nights- Wild nights!

Wild nights – Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the winds –
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden –
Ah – the Sea!
Might I but moor – tonight –
In thee!

Emily Dickinson

This Paper Boat

Carefully placed upon the future,
it tips from the breeze and skims away,
frail thing of words, this valentine,
so far to sail. And if you find it
caught in the reeds, its message blurred,
the thought that you are holding it
a moment is enough for me.

“This Paper Boat”

by Ted Kooser

Cleaning up after the Dog

Pull plastic bag from pocket
and wave it like a flag

or diploma. Make sure many people
congratulate your care
for the community.

Check bag for holes.
Double check.

Inspect stool for odd hues.
Greens, blues, blood.

Evaluate consistency.

You don’t want to leave smears
on the sidewalk or grass—no prints.

Getaway must be clean.

Prepare to go in for all of it.
Hold breath.
Grab, clamp, reverse bag, twist, knot, cinch.

Smell hands.

Hold loaded bag high in the air,
assure onlookers that Everything is Okay.

If a cop should cruise by,
his crew cut bristling
in the sun,

hold that bag higher,
so he, too, can salute
your contribution.

The bomb diffused,
the world a little safer, a little cleaner,

will not offend the deep treads
of someone’s shoes.

 

“Cleaning up after the Dog”

by Jason Tandon