Finding What’s Important, Holding onto It Once Found

From whiskey river:

Nothing is ever lost. If you have moved over vast territories and dared to love silly things, you will have learned even from the most primitive items collected and put aside in your life. From an ever-roaming curiosity in all the arts, from bad radio to good theatre, from nursery rhyme to symphony, from jungle compound to Kafka’s Castle, there is basic excellence to be winnowed out, truths found, kept, savored, and used on some later day. To be a child of one’s time is to do all these things.

(Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Inside You)

Not from whiskey river:

Happiness

Why, Dot asks, stuck in the back
seat of her sister’s two-door, her freckled hand
feeling the roof for the right spot
to pull her wide self up onto her left,
the unarthritic, ankle — why
does her sister, coaching outside on her cane,
have to make her laugh so, she flops
back just as she was, though now
looking wistfully out through the restaurant
reflected in her back window, she seems bigger,
and couldn’t possibly mean we should go
ahead in without her, she’ll be all right, and so
when you finally place the pillow behind her back
and lift her right out into the sunshine,
all four of us are happy, none more
than she, who straightens the blossoms
on her blouse, says how nice it is to get out
once in a while, and then goes in to eat
with the greatest delicacy (oh
I could never finish all that) and aplomb
the complete roast beef dinner with apple crisp
and ice cream, just a small scoop.

(by Wesley McNair, from The Town of No and My Brother Running)

…and —  simply because Wesley McNair has landed in my mind, swooping in out of nowhere, and now I keep finding more of his stuff I love — this:

Mina Bell’s Cows

O where are Mina Bell’s cows who gave no milk
and grazed on her dead husband’s farm?
Each day she walked with them into the field,
loving their swayback dreaminess more
than the quickness of any dog or chicken.
Each night she brought them grain in the dim barn,
holding their breath in her hands.
O when the lightning struck Daisy and Bets,
her son dug such great holes in the yard
she could not bear to watch him.
And when the baby, April, growing old
and wayward, fell down the hay chute,
Mina just sat in the kitchen, crying, “Ape,
Ape,” as if she called all three cows,
her walleyed girls who never would come home.

(by Wesley McNair)

Finally, Tom Waits adds his own gravelly, inimitable two cents (lyrics below):

Lyrics:

Hold On
(music, lyrics, and performance by Tom Waits)

They hung a sign up in our town
“If you live it up, you won’t live it down”
So she left Monte Rio, son
Just like a bullet leaves a gun
With her charcoal eyes and Monroe hips
She went and took that California trip
Oh, the moon was gold, her hair like wind
Said, Don’t look back, just come on, Jim

Oh, you got to hold on, hold on
You gotta hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You gotta hold on

Well, he gave her a dimestore watch
And a ring made from a spoon
Everyone’s looking for someone to blame
When you share my bed, you share my name

Well, go ahead and call the cops
You don’t meet nice girls in coffee shops
She said, Baby, I still love you
Sometimes there’s nothin’ left to do

Oh, but you got to hold on, hold on
Babe, you gotta hold on
And take my hand, I’m standing right here
You gotta hold on

[Not in video:

Well, God bless your crooked little heart
St. Louis got the best of me
I miss your broken China voice
How I wish you were still here with me
Oh, you build it up, you wreck it down
Then you burn your mansion to the ground
Oh, there’s nothing left to keep you here
But when you’re falling behind in this big blue world

Oh, youve got to hold on, hold on
Babe, you gotta hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You gotta hold on]

Down by the Riverside motel
It’s 10 below and falling
By a 99 cent store
She closed her eyes and started swaying
But it’s so hard to dance that way
When it’s cold and there’s no music
Oh, your old hometown’s so far away
But inside your head there’s a record that’s playing

A song called Hold On, hold on
Babe, you gotta hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right there
You gotta hold on

You gotta hold on, hold on
Babe, you gotta hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right there
You gotta hold on

You gotta hold on, hold on
Babe, you gotta hold on
And take my hand, I’m standing right here
You gotta hold on

You gotta hold on, hold on
Babe, you gotta hold on
And take my hand, I’m standing right here
You gotta hold on

You gotta hold on
You gotta hold on
You gotta hold on
You gotta hold on
You gotta hold on, baby
You gotta hold on, girl
You gotta hold on
You gotta hold on