Robert
Active Member
In later years people often asked Hugh Hitchcock about the Canadian River cowboy strike of 1883.
The Day the Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton
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In later years people often asked Hugh Hitchcock about the Canadian River cowboy strike of 1883.
Soon there will be a killing. It might happen in the next few hours. We could synchronize our watches and count down the minutes. What a chance to record the ticking away of a life, to follow it through to that last, perfect moment, when existence becomes nothing, when the spirit parts with the physical. The end is always so close, isn’t it? Fate lurks beneath our feet like a rat in a sewer. It hangs in a corner of the room like a spider in its web, awaiting its moment. And the moment of our dying already exists inside us, deep inside. It’s a dark ghost on the edge of our dreams, a weight that drags at our feet, a whisper in the ear at the darkest hour of the night. We can’t touch it or see it. But we know it’s there, all the same.
But then again … perhaps I’ll wait, and enjoy the anticipation. They say that’s half the pleasure, don’t they? The waiting and planning, the unspoiled thrill of expectation. We can let the imagination scurry ahead, like a dog on a trail, its nostrils twitching, its tongue dribbling with joy. Our minds can sense the blood and savour it. We can close our eyes and breathe in the aroma.
I can smell it right now, can’t you? It’s so powerful, so sweet. So irresistible. It’s the scent of death. Wasn’t it Sigmund Freud who said that every human being has a death instinct? Inside every person, the evil Thanatos fights an endless battle with Eros, the life instinct. And, according to Freud, evil is always dominant. In life, there has to be death. Killing is our natural impulse. The question isn’t whether we kill, but how we do it. The application of intelligence should refine the primeval urge, enrich it with reason and purpose.
Without a purpose, the act of death has no significance. It becomes a waste of time, a killing of no importance, half-hearted and incomplete. Too often, we fail at the final stage. We turn away and close our eyes as the gates swing open on a whole new world – the scented, carnal gardens of decomposition. We refuse to admire those flowing juices, the flowering bacteria, the dark, bloated blooms of putrefaction. This is the true nature of death. We should open our eyes and learn.
But in this case, everything will be perfect. Because this will be a real killing.
And it could be tonight, or maybe next week. But it will be soon. I promise.
Soon before daybreak on my sixth birthday, my mother's breathing wheezed more raggedly than ever, then quieted. And then stopped.
The Picture of Dorian GrayThe studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
In 1972 I was sixteen--young, my father said, to be traveling with him on his diplomatic missions.
In that hour after dawn the horizon did not seem far away.
Ramage reached across the breakfast table for the silver bell, shook it and waited.
It was autumn of 1981 and i'd been asked by my paper the Leinster News to do an article on folklore and changing ways in Ireland, a chance I jumped at, availing myself of the opportunity to return home to Slievenageeha, which i hadn't been to visit in years.
The fretwork hands stood at five past four.
You'll never be able to make a living writing poems.
-- Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de BernieresDr Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse.
You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827.
It was at Mestre he stopped thinking; the dissolute friar, Balbi, had very nearly let the police get wind of him because he had looked for hiim in vain as the mail coach set off, and only found him after a diligent search, in a coffeehouse, where he was blithely sipping a cup of chocolate and flirting with the waitresses.