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

From whiskey river:

Dinosauria, We
(excerpt)

We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes.

(Charles Bukowski [source])

…and:

I don’t believe in “original sin.” I don’t believe in “guilt.” I don’t believe in villains or heroes — only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.

This is so simple I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m sure it’s true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that’s why I don’t understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.

(Tennessee Williams [source: although widely quoted, this seems to have originated with a rather argumentative interview in The Observer (London), from April 1957; the text there was OCR’d from a complete page, so you may have to hunt for it])

Not from whiskey river:

…all those books and stories devoted to adult-less children—books like Peter Pan, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that short story by García Márquez, “Light Is Like Water,” and of course Lord of the Flies—are nothing but desperate attempts by adults to come to terms with childhood. That although they seem to be stories about children’s worlds—worlds without adults—they are in fact stories about an adult’s world when there are children in it, about the way that children’s imaginations destabilize our adult sense of reality and force us to question the very grounds of that reality. The more time one spends surrounded by children, disconnected from other adults, the more their imaginations leak through the cracks of our own fragile structures…

The main point, the point [Lord of the Flies] is trying to make, is simply that problems in society can be traced back to human nature. If A, then B. If humans are naturally selfish and violent, then they will always end up killing and abusing each other, unless they live under a social contract. And because the boys in Lord of the Flies are naturally selfish and violent, and are deprived of a social contract, they create a kind of nightmare that they can’t wake up from, and end up believing their own games and follies are true, and eventually start torturing and killing one another.

(Valeria Luiselli [source and source])

…and:

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

(Stevie Smith [source])

…and:

#16: What do our memories owe to the things remembered — to the places, to the life events, to the people? Must they — the memories — be “true,” assuming they can ever be?

We have a duty to respect those in our present, the fodder for future memories: to offer them at least the opportunity to be regarded as our equals in “worth” and citizenship. (They may reject the opportunity, of course; because respectability requires the hard work of tolerance and patience, they may choose the easier path — the modern world seems to encourage this course.)

But what of the people and things of the past? Certainly what we quote-unquote “remember” isn’t to be regarded as quote-unquote “historical truth.” (See: many of the rest of these Maxims.) But our responsibility to it all doesn’t stop with a turn of the calendar page. Naturally, a funny story about our childhood might become funnier with repeated tellings and more (or less) exaggerated embellishments; a tragic one might make a sharper, more instructive point with a lighter hand on the waterworks. I’m not talking about such situations. But everything ever remembered must at some time have contributed to the rememberer’s present. It all was a gift, one which did not ask let alone require anything in return. We owe it to the past, then, at least to treat the gift with respect: not knowingly to lie about it (to ourselves or to others). Good or bad, a memory to which we’ve clung is a pearl worth burnishing and repeated admiration — not a bug to be stuck through with pins or flattened underfoot.

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)