(This post’s title translates literally as, “Between dog and wolf.” Per Erica Berry’s Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear, it “refers to that dawn-or-dusk hour when it becomes hard to tell the difference between a dog and a wolf. That time when you cannot tell if the shadow on the road before you is familiar or strange, if it poses a threat.”)

[Image: “Hour of the Wolf,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else’s. I’m happy to respect authority when it’s genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I’m eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce.

(Edward Abbey [source])

…and:

As I see it, our own nation is not free from the danger of dictatorship. And I refer to internal as well as external threats to our liberties. As social conflict tends to become more severe in this country—and it will unless we strive for social justice—there will inevitably be a tendency on the part of the authoritarian element—always present in our history—to suppress individual freedoms, to utilize the refined techniques of police surveillance (not excluding torture, of course) in order to preserve—not wilderness!—but the status quo, the privileged positions of those who now so largely control the economic and governmental institutions of the United States.

(Abbey [source])

Not from whiskey river:

When the past meets the present the present always wins, but the victories are fleeting, mere technical knock-outs. The present wins every battle, but the past always wins the war.

(Mick Herron [source])

…and:

If someone told you he didn’t need to listen to other people anymore because frankly he had life all figured out, he had all the answers, every single one of them, and was crystal clear on every last question in the universe, what could you do with that person but shake your head in despair? Chances are, anyone who claims not to need the input of any other person on the planet is probably crazy. So if you were sure you didn’t have all the answers and were spending long afternoons asking yourself What now? wouldn’t it be even crazier not to listen to people or to make up your mind against them based on the most superficial bit of information, say a saffron robe, perhaps? For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life.

(Ann Patchett [source])

…and:

They are hostile nations

i

In view of the fading animals
the proliferation of sewers and fears
the sea clogging, the air
nearing extinction

we should be kind, we should
take warning, we should forgive each other

Instead we are opposite, we
touch as though attacking,

the gifts we bring
even in good faith maybe
warp in our hands to
implements, to manoeuvres

ii

Put down the target of me
you guard inside your binoculars,
in turn I will surrender

this aerial photograph
(your vulnerable
sections marked in red)
I have found so useful

See, we are alone in
the dormant field, the snow
that cannot be eaten or captured

iii

Here there are no armies
here there is no money

It is cold and getting colder,

We need each others’
breathing, warmth, surviving
is the only war
we can afford, stay

walking with me, there is almost
time / if we can only
make it as far as

the (possibly) last summer

(Margaret Atwood [source])