I took the paper up and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, holding my breath, and then I says to myself, “All right then, I’ll go to hell” – and tore it up. 
It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said, and never thought more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again. And if I could think up anything worse, I would do that too, because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.
Tag Archives: Ice Friday
Ice Friday: Oscar Wilde’s “Dorian Gray”
I never approve or disapprove of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take toward life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid of ourselves. 
The basis for optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with the possession of those virtues we are likely to be of benefit to us. As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.
Ice Friday: Aesop’s “The Fox and the Lion”
A fox who had never seen a lion one day met one and was so terrified at the sight of him that he was ready to die of fear. After a time, he met him again and was still so frightened but not nearly so much as he had been when he met him first. 
But when he saw him for a third time, he was so far from being afraid that he went up to him and began to talk to him as if he had known him all his life.
Ice Friday: Italo Calvino’s “Enchanted Garden”
The pale boy was wandering about his shady room furtively, touching with his white fingers the edges of the scales studded with butterflies; then he stopped to listen. The pounding of Giovannino and Serenella’s hearts, which had died down, now got harder than ever. Perhaps it was the fear of a spell that hung over the villa and garden and over all these lovely, comfortable things, the residue of some injustice committed long ago. 
Very quietly, Giovannino and Serenella crept away. They went back along the same paths they had come, stepping fast but never at a run.
Ice Friday: David Mamet’s “Oleanna”
Ah. (Pause) When I was young somebody told me, are you ready? The rich copulate less often than the poor. But when they do, they take more of their clothes off. 
Years. Years, mind you, I would compare experiences of my own to this dictum, saying, aha, this fits the norm, or ah, this is a variation from it. What did it mean? Nothing.
Ice Friday: Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame”
I love order. It’s my dream. A world where all will be silent and each thing in its last place, under the last dust. 
Sometimes I wonder if I’m in my right mind. Then it passes over and I’m as lucid as before.
Ice Friday: Richard Adam’s “Watership Down”
Like the pain of a bad wound, the effect of a deep shock takes a while to be felt. 
When a child is told, for the first time in his life, that a person he has known is dead, although he does not disbelieve it, he may well fail to comprehend it and later ask–perhaps more than once–where the dead person is and when he is coming back.
Ice Friday: Robert Hunter’s “Loser”
All that I am asking for is ten gold dollars
And I could pay you back with one good hand
You can look around about the wide world over
And you’ll never find another honest man. 
Everybody prayin’ and drinkin’ that wine
I can tell the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shines
Come to daddy on the inside straight,
Well I got no chance of losin’ this time
Ice Good Friday: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
My da had more wrong with him than my ma. There was nothing wrong with my ma except sometimes she was too busy. My da sometimes lost his temper and he liked it. He had black things across the top of his back, like black insects clinging to him. . He was useless at lots of things. He never finished games. he read newspapers. He coughed. He sat too much. Usually he was fair, and he listened when we were in trouble. He listened to me more that to Sinbad. There must have been a reason why he hated Ma. There must have been something wrong with her, at least one thing. I couldn’t see it. I wanted to. I wanted to understand. I wanted to be on both sides. He was my da.
Ice Friday: Raymond Carver’s “At Least”
I want to get up early one more morning,
before sunrise. Before the birds, even.
I want to throw cold water on my face
and be at my work table
when the sky lightens and smoke
begins to rise from the chimneys
of the other houses.
I want to see the waves break
on this rocky beach, not just hear them
break as I did all night in my sleep.
I want to see again the ships
that pass through the Strait from every
seafaring country in the world—
old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,
and the swift new cargo vessels
painted every color under the sun
that cut the water as they pass.
I want to keep an eye out for them.
And for the little boat that plies
the water between the ships
and the pilot station near the lighthouse.
I want to see them take a man off the ship
and put another up on board.
I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy—I have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.