“The boys at first were very polite about my medals and asked me what I had done to get them. I showed them the papers, which were written in very beautiful language and full of fratellanza and abnegazione, but which really said, with the adjectives removed, that I had been given the medals because I was an American. After that their manner changed a little toward me, although I was their friend among outsiders. I was a friend, but I was never really one of them after they had read the citations, because it had been different with them and they had done very different things to get their medals. I had been wounded, it was true; but we all knew that being wounded, after all, was really an accident. I was never ashamed of the ribbons, though, and sometimes, after cocktail hour, I would imagine myself having done all the things they had done to get their medals; but walking home at night through the empty streets and with the cold wind and all the shops closed, trying to keep near the street lights, I knew that I would never have done such things, and that I was very much afraid to die, and often lay in bed at night by myself, afraid to die and wondering how I would be when I went back to the front again.”
In Another Country (1927), Ernest Hemingway
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This poem reminds me of Disney's Coco (2017). What is life when the people you love cannot not see the same things you do? I think this poem sums it up nicely.
"The Difference" by Tom Hardy (19??) I Sinking down by the gate I discern the thin moon, And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine, But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird's tune, For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine. II Did my Heartmate but haunt here at times such as now, The song would be joyous and cheerful the moon; But she will see never this gate, path, or bough, Nor I find a joy in the scene or the tune. Each fall, these monarch butterflies migrate some 3,000 miles from southern Canada to central Mexico. Once in Mexico, they habitat together in fir trees, creating the illusion of an orange moss. While their quest begins now, they will remain in sunny Mexico until March until Canada calls them home. What I find interesting is that not one of these original monarchs will complete the round trip, but it will take four generations. . . each of them with an innate desire to return home. Here is a "charade" from Jane Austen's Emma (1815). The answer lies in what I have written. My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease. Another view of man, my second brings, Behold him there, the monarch of the seas! |
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September 2020
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