'unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours'

Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating, Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,
With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts,
With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?

Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?
Who justify these restless explorations?
Who speak the secret of impassive earth?
Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural?
What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours,
Cold earth, the place of graves.)

—Walt Whitman, "Passage to India" (1868/1871)

The Way She Held the Cigarette

A week later she came to my door, and kept coming back and now she had been to my flat many times on her way home from school in the centre of Oslo and had drunk tea in my red kitchen, where I told her of things I knew something about, my books, Afghanistan; the crossroads of cultures, about Mao at his desk, about Edvard Munch and the Party, and she told me about her family, and why she hated going home from school. Once she came up from the city and did her homework at my kitchen table, and I sat down to help her and later we talked and smoked till late in the evening, and I think it was the way she held the cigarette between her fingers which touched me the most, how her palm unfolded in front of her chest with a slight bend of the wrist and the glowing tip pointing to the floor, and that night was the first night she did not go home.

--Per Petterson, I Curse the River of Time (2010)

'an unfinished newness'

Here I felt the throb of the great ocean that lay before me. I knew now that I had put a world behind me, and that I was opening out another world ahead. I had passed the haunts of savages. Great piles of granite mountains of bleak and lifeless aspect were now astern; on some of them not even a speck of moss had ever grown. There was an unfinished newness all about the land. On the hill back of Port Tamar a small beacon had been thrown up, showing that some man had been there. But how could one tell but that he had died of loneliness and grief? In a bleak land is not the place to enjoy solitude.

—Captain Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World (1900)

'it is a prosy life'

The time was when ships passing each other at sea backed their topsails and had a "gam," and on parting fired guns; but those good old days have gone. People have hardly time nowadays to speak even on the broad ocean, where news is news, and as for a salute of guns, they cannot afford the powder. There are no poetry-enshrined freighters on the sea now; it is a prosy life when we have no time to bid one another good morning.

—Captain Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World (1900)

Nothing Hung Together Any More

And then I entered the hall and walked into the kitchen, the living room, where everything was as it had been for almost ten years, the same posters on the walls, the same rugs on the floor, the same goddamn red armchairs, and yet not like that at all, not like it was in the beginning, when there were just the two of us against the world, just she and I, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, there is just you and me, we said to each other, just you and me, we said. But something had happened, nothing hung together any more, all things had spaces, had distances between them, like satellites, attracted to and pushed away at the same instant, and it would take immense willpower to cross those spaces, those distances, much more than I had available, much more than I had the courage to use.

-- Per Petterson, I Curse the River of Time (2010)

'snatching necklace after necklace from the sea'

The wind freshened, and the Spray rounded Deer Island light at the rate of seven knots.

Passing it, she squared away direct for Gloucester to procure there some fishermen's stores. Waves dancing joyously across Massachusetts Bay met her coming out of the harbor to dash them into myriads of sparkling gems that hung about her at every surge. The day was perfect, the sunlight clear and strong. Every particle of water thrown into the air became a gem, and the Spray, bounding ahead, snatched necklace after necklace from the sea, and as often threw them away. We have all seen miniature rainbows about a ship's prow, but the Spray flung out a bow of her own that day, such as I had never seen before. Her good angel had embarked on the voyage; I so read it in the sea.

—Captain Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World (1900)

They's too much freedom, addiction, fear, and violence blinding us from the truth

Purcell said, "World's changed. Time is come when education, self-improvement don't matter. It's come back to a man's got to know what he's good at. Your history will either help or hinder."

Jarhead waved the smoke from his face and said, "History?"

Purcell said, "Your kin. What they done did hoping to make this world a better place. Things your father and grandfather learned you. How to use your hands. Plant a garden. Hunt. Fish. Fight. What some seem to forget is history is now doomed to repeat itself, seeing as ain't nobody learned from their mistakes. Now no one can stop what has started."

Lost, Jarhead asked, "What's started?"

Purcell told him, "We're at the beginning of a violent era. Jobs are gone. Self worth and moral values have been sold. Some, like Alonzo, even prey on children. Film it, take pictures of it, and sell it. They's too much freedom, addiction, fear, and violence blinding us from the truth."

Jarhead crossed his arms across his chest, convinced that Purcell was fifty-two cards shy of a full deck, and asked "What truth?"

Purcell could read Jarhead's expression, his thoughts. "That things have fallen apart. Everything our kin suffered to build is being disassembled. Criminals run everything now, government, everything. Gangsters the only one seeing any profit. We got no jobs, no money, no power, no nothin', nothin' to live for 'cept vice and indulgence. That's how they control us. But it's falling apart. What we got is our land and our machines, our families, and our ability to protect it all, to keep them alive. We got our hands. Ones who'll survive will be the ones can live from the land. Can wield a gun. Those folks'll fight for what little they've got. They'll surprise the criminals with their own savagery. Man, woman, and child will be tested. Others'll be too weak and scared. Uneducated in common sense. Won't know what's happened. But believe me, war is coming."

 -- Frank Bill, Donnybrook (2013)

'War was serious ... but not that serious.'

People fought in Afghanistan, and people died, but not always in the obvious way. They had been fighting for so long, twenty-three years then, that by the time the Americans arrived the Afghans had developed an elaborate set of rules designed to spare as many fighters as they could. So the war could go on forever. Men fought, men switched sides, men lined up and fought again. War in Afghanistan often seemed like a game of pickup basketball, a contest among friends, a tournament where you never knew which team you'd be on when the next game got under way. Shirts today, skins tomorrow. On Tuesday, you might be part of a fearsome Taliban regiment, running into a minefield. And on Wednesday you might be manning a checkpoint for some gang of the Northern Alliance. By Thursday you could be back with the Talibs again, holding up your Kalashnikov and promising to wage jihad forever. War was serious in Afghanistan, but not that serious. It was part of everyday life. it was a job. Only the civilians seemed to lose.

—Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (2008)

He covered his life with a veil

Young Adam was always an obedient child. Sometimes in him shrank from violence, from contention, from the silent shrieking tensions that can rip at a house. He contributed to the quiet he wished for by offering no violence, no contention, and to do this he had to retire into secretness, since there is some violence in everyone. He covered his life with a veil of vagueness, while behind his quiet eyes a rich full life went on. This did not protect him from assault but it allowed him an immunity.

—John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952)

Responsibility rests upon recognition

I can hear you say, "What a horrible, irresponsible bastard!" And you're right. I leap to agree with you. I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement. Take the man whom I almost killed: Who was responsible for that near murder-I? I don't think so, and I refuse it. I won't buy it. You can't give it to me. He bumped me, he insulted me. Shouldn't he, for his own personal safety, have recognized my hysteria, my "danger potential"? He, let us say, was lost in a dream world. But didn't he control that dream world-which, alas, is only too real! - and didn't he rule me out of it? And if he had yelled for a policeman, wouldn't I have been taken for the offending one? Yes, yes, yes! Let me agree with you, I was the irresponsible one; for I should have used my knife to protect the higher interests of society. Some day that kind of foolishness will cause us tragic trouble. All dreamers and sleepwalkers must pay the price, and even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all. But I shirked that responsibility; I became too snarled in the incompatible notions that buzzed within my brain. I was a coward...

-- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1953)