Lightning from a Quiet Corner

[Video: scene from Giant (1956). The scene (which did not appear in Edna Ferber’s novel) is the subject of Tino Villanueva’s poem below. Rock Hudson’s character, Bick Benedict, is a classic man of action — blunt, direct, easily thoughtless — but at heart, he is also no moral dummy. Here, at least, what he believes to be true fuses with what he does…. thanks to the watchful seconds that precede the action]

From whiskey river:

It’s clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it’s not easy.

(Terence McKenna [source: quoted here and elsewhere; apparently originally in the script for this film])

…and:

They talked about it but they did not realize it but now everybody knows it everybody that the one thing that everybody wants is to be free, to talk to eat to drink to walk to think, to please, to wish, and to do it now if now is what they want, and everybody knows it they know it anybody knows it, they want to be free, they do not want to feel imprisoned they want to feel free, even if they are not free they want to feel free, and they want to feel free now, let the future take care of itself all they want is to be free, not to be managed, threatened, directed, restrained, obliged, fearful, administered, they want none of these things they all want to feel free, the word discipline, and forbidden and investigated and imprisoned brings horror and fear into all hearts, they do not want to be afraid not more than is necessary in the ordinary business of living where one has to earn one’s living and has to fear want and disease and death. There are enough things to be afraid of, nobody wants to be afraid, just afraid, afraid of things people should not be afraid, they do not. This is true in October 1943, it is true. In 1914-1918, it was still the nineteenth century, and one might still think that something that would happen might lead one to higher and other things but now, the only thing that any one wants now is to be free, to be let alone, to live their life as they can, but not to be watched, controlled, and scared, no no, not.

(Gertrude Stein [source])

…and:

Transformation

I haven’t written a single poem
in months.
I’ve lived humbly, reading the paper,
pondering the riddle of power
and the reasons for obedience.
I’ve watched sunsets
(crimson, anxious),
I’ve heard the birds grow quiet
and night’s muteness.
I’ve seen sunflowers dangling
their heads at dusk, as if a careless hangman
had gone strolling through the gardens.
September’s sweet dust gathered
on the windowsill and lizards
hid in the bends of walls.
I’ve taken long walks,
craving one thing only:
lightning,
transformation,
you.

(Adam Zagajewski [source])

Not from whiskey river:

I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where I slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.

(Simone de Beauvoir [source])

…and:

Fight Scene Beginning

Bick Benedict, that is, Rock Hudson in the
Time-clock of the movie, stands up and moves,
Deliberate, toward encounter. He has come out
Of the anxious blur of the backdrop, like

Coming out of the unreal into the world of
What’s true, down to earth and distinct; has
Stepped up to Sarge, the younger of the two,

And would sure appreciate it if he: “Were a
Little more polite to these people.” Sarge,
Who has something to defend, balks; asks
(In a long-shot) if: “that there papoose down

There, his name Benedict too?,” by which he
Means one-year old Jordy in the background
Booth hidden in the bosom of mother love of

Juana, who listens, trying not to listen. Rock
Hudson, his hair already the color of slate,
Who could not foresee this challenge, arms
Akimbo (turning around), contemplates the stable

And straight line of years gone by, says: “Yeah,
Come to think of it, it is.” And so acknowledges,
In his heart, his grandson, half-Anglo, half-

Brown. Sarge repents from words, but no
Part of his real self succumbs: “All right—
Forget I asked you. Now you just go back
Over there and sit down and we ain’t gonna

Have no trouble. But this bunch here is
Gonna eat somewhere’s else.” Never shall I
Forget, never how quickly his hand threw my

Breathing off—how quickly he plopped the
Hat heavily askew once more on the old
Man’s head, seized two fistsful of shirt and
Coat and lifted his slight body like nothing,

A no-thing, who could have been any of us,
Weightless nobodies bronzed by real-time far
Off somewhere, not here, but in another

Country, yet here, where Rock Hudson’s face
Deepens; where in one motion, swift as a
Miracle, he catches Sarge off guard, grabs
His arm somehow, tumbles him back against

The counter and draws fire from Sarge to
Begin the fight up and down the wide screen
Of memory, ablaze in Warner-color light.

(Tino Villanueva [source])