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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners--two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest--a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground--a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators--a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieu tenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good--a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move, What a sluggish stream!
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift--all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by--it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance."
As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.
II
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.
One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only toe, happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.
"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."
"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.
"About thirty miles."
"Is there no force on this side the creek?"
"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."
"Suppose a man--a civilian and student of hanging--should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"
The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow."
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.
III
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened--ages later, it seemed to him--by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness--of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!--the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface--knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought? "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!--what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!
He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf--saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat--all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.
He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a grey eye and remembered having read that grey eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.
A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieu. tenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly--with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquillity in the men--with what accurately measured inter vals fell those cruel words:
"Attention, company! . . Shoulder arms! . . . Ready! . . . Aim! . . . Fire!"
Farquhar dived--dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.
As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.
The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.
The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"
An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps!
A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.
"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me--the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round--spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men--all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color--that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream--the southern bank--and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of Æolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape--was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.
All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.
By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great garden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which--once, twice, and again--he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.
His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue--he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene--perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon--then all is darkness and silence!
Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground--a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators--a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieu tenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good--a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move, What a sluggish stream!
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift--all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by--it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance."
As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.
II
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.
One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only toe, happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.
"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."
"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.
"About thirty miles."
"Is there no force on this side the creek?"
"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."
"Suppose a man--a civilian and student of hanging--should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"
The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow."
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.
III
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened--ages later, it seemed to him--by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness--of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!--the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface--knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought? "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!--what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!
He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf--saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat--all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.
He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a grey eye and remembered having read that grey eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.
A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieu. tenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly--with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquillity in the men--with what accurately measured inter vals fell those cruel words:
"Attention, company! . . Shoulder arms! . . . Ready! . . . Aim! . . . Fire!"
Farquhar dived--dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.
As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.
The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.
The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"
An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps!
A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.
"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me--the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round--spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men--all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color--that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream--the southern bank--and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of Æolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape--was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.
All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.
By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great garden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which--once, twice, and again--he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.
His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue--he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene--perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon--then all is darkness and silence!
Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Vlaada Chvatil
Hi Vlaada, is really nice to have the possibility to interview you for Opinionated Gamers. Like Emiliano Sciarra wrote in the book “L’Arte del Gioco” (The Art of Game), designing a game is a form of art not less than writing books or casting movies. The ambitious aim of this series of interviews is to point out the “style” of each designer, going through his production, trying to find a sort of personal “sign”.
You designed about 20 games starting from 1997 Arena: morituri te salutant. Of course most of gamers will know you for the last releases and for the fantastic Through the Ages, in the BGG top 10 despite the complexity but is there any game you are particularly proud of ?
Well, it is not the way how I think about my games. My satisfaction does not come from “how good my games are”, it is rather “how do the players like and enjoy them”. So, I am happy every time I see or read some player or group really loves any of my games, regardless how good the game really is by some “objective” criteria. Of course, to some of my games this happens more often than to others… but the more pleases me when someone tells me some of my older half-forgotten games is his or her favorite :)
You designed about 20 games starting from 1997 Arena: morituri te salutant. Of course most of gamers will know you for the last releases and for the fantastic Through the Ages, in the BGG top 10 despite the complexity but is there any game you are particularly proud of ?
Well, it is not the way how I think about my games. My satisfaction does not come from “how good my games are”, it is rather “how do the players like and enjoy them”. So, I am happy every time I see or read some player or group really loves any of my games, regardless how good the game really is by some “objective” criteria. Of course, to some of my games this happens more often than to others… but the more pleases me when someone tells me some of my older half-forgotten games is his or her favorite :)
http://opinionatedgamers.com/2011/12/06/the-art-of-design-interviews-to-game-designers-15-vlaada-chvatil/
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - Ursula Le Guin
With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the
city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with
flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old
moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings,
processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and
grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as
they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and
tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children
dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the
music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city,
where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the
bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive
horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their
manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils
and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the
only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west
the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so
clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across
the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to
make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the
silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city
streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air
that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great
joyous clanging of the bells.
Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?
They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the
words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description
such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this
one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by
his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there
was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do
not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few.
As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock
exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these
were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were
not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by
pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only
pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to
admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em.
If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is
to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a
happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can I tell you about the people of
Omelas? They were not naive and happy children--though their children were, in fact,
happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched.
O miracle! but I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas
sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time.
Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise
to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I
think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows
from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just
discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what
is destructive. In the middle category, however--that of the unnecessary but
undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they could perfectly well have
central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices
not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold.
Or they could have none of that; it doesn't matter. As you like it. I incline to think that
people from towns up and down the coast have been coming in to Omelas during the
last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams, and that
the train station of Omelas is actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer
than the magnificent Farmers' Market. But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far
strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please
add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples
from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and
ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger, who desires union with the
deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would be better
not to have any temples in Omelas--at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy
no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine
soufflés to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the
processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire
be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these
delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in
Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at first there were not drugs,
but that is puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may
perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to
the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions
at last of the very arcana and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the
pleasure of sex beyond belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think
there ought to be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of
victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do without
soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do;
it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous
triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest
in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's summer: this is what
swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life. I
really don't think many of them need to take drooz.
Most of the procession have reached the Green Fields by now. A marvelous smell of
cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small
children are amiably sticky; in the benign grey beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich
pastry are entangled. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are
beginning to group around the starting line of the course. An old women, small, fat, and
laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young men where her flowers in
their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a
wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him, for
he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes wholly rapt in the sweet,
thin magic of the tune.
He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.
As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the
pavilion near the starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their
slender legs, and some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke
the horses' necks and soothe them, whispering, "Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my
hope...." They begin to form in rank along the starting line. The crowds along the
racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind. The Festival of Summer has
begun.
Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe
one more thing.
In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the
cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and
no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from
a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a
couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. The
floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three
paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child
is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is
feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile
through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles
vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket
and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it
knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come.
The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes--the child
has no understanding of time or interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens,
and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child
to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened,
disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the
eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not
always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice,
sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They
never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now
it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is
so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn
meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered
sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it,
others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some
of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness,
the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children,
the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their
harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable
misery.
This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever
they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are
young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No
matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are
always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought
themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the
explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they
can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned
and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done,
in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither
and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of
every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of
thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the
walls indeed.
The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the
child.
Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen
the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But
as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would
not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt,
but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid
too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane
treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to
protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the
bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to
accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance
of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives.
Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not
free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its
existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their
music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle
with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark,
the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in
their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.
Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to
tell, and this is quite incredible.
At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with
flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old
moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings,
processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and
grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as
they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and
tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children
dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the
music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city,
where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the
bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive
horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their
manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils
and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the
only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west
the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so
clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across
the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to
make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the
silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city
streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air
that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great
joyous clanging of the bells.
Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?
They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the
words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description
such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this
one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by
his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there
was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do
not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few.
As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock
exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these
were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were
not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by
pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only
pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to
admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em.
If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is
to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a
happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can I tell you about the people of
Omelas? They were not naive and happy children--though their children were, in fact,
happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched.
O miracle! but I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas
sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time.
Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise
to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I
think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows
from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just
discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what
is destructive. In the middle category, however--that of the unnecessary but
undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they could perfectly well have
central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices
not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold.
Or they could have none of that; it doesn't matter. As you like it. I incline to think that
people from towns up and down the coast have been coming in to Omelas during the
last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams, and that
the train station of Omelas is actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer
than the magnificent Farmers' Market. But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far
strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please
add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples
from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and
ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger, who desires union with the
deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would be better
not to have any temples in Omelas--at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy
no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine
soufflés to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the
processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire
be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these
delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in
Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at first there were not drugs,
but that is puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may
perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to
the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions
at last of the very arcana and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the
pleasure of sex beyond belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think
there ought to be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of
victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do without
soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do;
it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous
triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest
in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's summer: this is what
swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life. I
really don't think many of them need to take drooz.
Most of the procession have reached the Green Fields by now. A marvelous smell of
cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small
children are amiably sticky; in the benign grey beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich
pastry are entangled. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are
beginning to group around the starting line of the course. An old women, small, fat, and
laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young men where her flowers in
their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a
wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him, for
he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes wholly rapt in the sweet,
thin magic of the tune.
He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.
As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the
pavilion near the starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their
slender legs, and some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke
the horses' necks and soothe them, whispering, "Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my
hope...." They begin to form in rank along the starting line. The crowds along the
racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind. The Festival of Summer has
begun.
Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe
one more thing.
In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the
cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and
no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from
a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a
couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. The
floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three
paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child
is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is
feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile
through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles
vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket
and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it
knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come.
The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes--the child
has no understanding of time or interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens,
and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child
to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened,
disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the
eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not
always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice,
sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They
never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now
it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is
so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn
meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered
sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it,
others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some
of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness,
the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children,
the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their
harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable
misery.
This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever
they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are
young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No
matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are
always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought
themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the
explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they
can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned
and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done,
in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither
and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of
every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of
thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the
walls indeed.
The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the
child.
Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen
the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But
as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would
not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt,
but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid
too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane
treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to
protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the
bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to
accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance
of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives.
Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not
free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its
existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their
music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle
with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark,
the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in
their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.
Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to
tell, and this is quite incredible.
At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Ikkyū (1394-1481)
Ikkyū is one of the most significant (and eccentric) figures in Zen history. To Japanese children, he is a folk hero, mischievous and always out-smarting his teachers and the shogun. He was renowned his teaching and for his frankly erotic poems and revolutionary shakuhachi music. Headmaster at Japan's huge Buddhist training centre, Daitokuji, in Kyoto, he resigned after nine days, denouncing the monks for hypocrisy and inviting them to argue their differences "in the whorehouses and sake parlours" where he could be found. At seventy, he scandalized the Buddhist community by moving his lover into his quarters in the temple. His sphere of influence included the tea ceremony, Noh drama, ink painting, calligraphy, and poetry, and he founded what became known as the "Red Thread" (or erotic) school of Zen.
If there’s nowhere to rest at the end
How can I get lost on the way?
–
Nobody told the flowers to come up nobody
Will ask them to leave when spring’s gone
–
I won’t die I won’t go away I’ll always be here
No good asking me I won’t speak
–
I’m in it everywhere.
What a miracle trees lakes clouds even dust
–
My mind can’t answer when you call
If it did I’d be stealing your life from you
–
Pleasure pain are equal in a clear heart
No mountain hides the moon
–
I try to be a good man but all that comes
Of trying is I feel more guilty
–
Don’t worry please please how many times do I have to say it
There’s no way not to be who you are and where.
–
It’s logical: if you’re not going anywhere
Any road is the right one
–
Suddenly nothing but grief
So I put on my father’s old ripped raincoat
–
I’m up here in the hills starving myself
But I’ll come down for you
–
It takes horseshit to grow bamboo
And it too longs forever weeps begs to the wind
–
Something in us always wants to cry out
Someone we love knows she hears
–
Watching my four-year-old daughter dance
I can’t break free of her
–
I think of your death I think of our touching
My head quiet in your lap
–
This hungry monk chanting by lamplight is Buddha
And he still thinks of you
–
Nobody understands why we do what we do
This cup of sake does
–
Age eighty weak
I shit and offer it to Buddha
–
This donkey stumbles blind over stones into walls, ditches
No words for grief or joy no words for his ruined heart
–
No words sitting alone night in my hut eyes closed hands open
Wisps of an unknown face
–
Rain drips from the roof lip
Loneliness sounds like that
–
No masters only you the master is you.
Wonderful, no?
–
Only one koan matters
You
If there’s nowhere to rest at the end
How can I get lost on the way?
–
Nobody told the flowers to come up nobody
Will ask them to leave when spring’s gone
–
I won’t die I won’t go away I’ll always be here
No good asking me I won’t speak
–
I’m in it everywhere.
What a miracle trees lakes clouds even dust
–
My mind can’t answer when you call
If it did I’d be stealing your life from you
–
Pleasure pain are equal in a clear heart
No mountain hides the moon
–
I try to be a good man but all that comes
Of trying is I feel more guilty
–
Don’t worry please please how many times do I have to say it
There’s no way not to be who you are and where.
–
It’s logical: if you’re not going anywhere
Any road is the right one
–
Suddenly nothing but grief
So I put on my father’s old ripped raincoat
–
I’m up here in the hills starving myself
But I’ll come down for you
–
It takes horseshit to grow bamboo
And it too longs forever weeps begs to the wind
–
Something in us always wants to cry out
Someone we love knows she hears
–
Watching my four-year-old daughter dance
I can’t break free of her
–
I think of your death I think of our touching
My head quiet in your lap
–
This hungry monk chanting by lamplight is Buddha
And he still thinks of you
–
Nobody understands why we do what we do
This cup of sake does
–
Age eighty weak
I shit and offer it to Buddha
–
This donkey stumbles blind over stones into walls, ditches
No words for grief or joy no words for his ruined heart
–
No words sitting alone night in my hut eyes closed hands open
Wisps of an unknown face
–
Rain drips from the roof lip
Loneliness sounds like that
–
No masters only you the master is you.
Wonderful, no?
–
Only one koan matters
You
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Friday, February 14, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Monday, February 10, 2014
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
World War Two Aerial Photos and Maps
http://www.wwii-photos-maps.com/index.html
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| El Alamien minefield |
Friday, February 7, 2014
Watch of the Week - Omega Marine Chronometer
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| Eric Tabarly w/Marine Chronometer & Sextant determining a ships position |
The most accurate wristwatch in the world. Still today, the Megaquartz 2400 is, indisputably, the most accurate, the most technologically advanced wristwatch in the world.
Developed by OMEGA in collaboration with the Battele Institute of Geneva, the first prototypes (cal. 1500) were presented at the Basel Fair in 1970.
It was first introduced on the market in 1974 (calibre 1510). Its unmatched precision of one second a month is around 10 times superior to that of an ordinary quartz watch.
This precision results from a specially designed tiny disc-shaped resonator, sealed in a capsule, which vibrates at the incredible rate of 2,359,296 times a second ! The high frequency earned one version, calibre 1511, the title of Marine Chronometer from the astronomic and chronometric observatory of Neuchatel - a unique award.
After 63 days of rigorous testing, the mean variation rate was no more than 2 thousandths of a second per day ! In addition, the Megaquartz 2400 was the first watch equipped with a time-zone-and-second-adjustment device for changing the hour without affecting the minutes or the seconds, for fine second adjustment and for synchronizing the seconds with an official time signal. Thus, for the first time in watchmaking history, the seconds were given their full importance.
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| Cousteau |
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Lorenzaccio
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| You’re like a lighthouse shining beside the sea of humanity, motionless: all you can see is your own reflection in the water. You’re alone, so you think it’s a vast, magnificent panorama. You haven’t sounded the depths. You simply believe in the beauty of God’s creation. But I have spent all this time in the water, diving deep into the howling ocean of life, deeper than anyone. While you were admiring the surface, I saw the shipwrecks, the drowned bodies, the monsters of the deep. |
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Peter Freuchen
Peter Freuchen was Great Uncle to Arctic Thule expedition organizer, Dr. Peter Skafte. Freuchen made a distinct impression upon his nephew, telling arctic tales to young Skafte while putting out cigarettes on his wooden leg (having lost a leg to frostbite in 1926).
Freuchen married three times. First, in 1911, to Navarana Mequpaluk (d. 1921), an Inuit woman who died in the Spanish Flu epidemic after bearing two children (a boy named Mequsaq Avataq Igimaqssusuktoranguapaluk (1916-c.1962) and a girl named Pipaluk Jette Tukuminguaq Kasaluk Palika Hager (1918-1999). His second marriage, in 1924, to Magdalene Vang Lauridsen (1881-1960) was dissolved in 1944. Lastly, in 1945, he married Dagmar Cohn (b.1907).
His Danish island estate was named Enehoje, but Freuchen spent many years in Thule, Greenland, exploring and living with the Polar Inuit people, and working with Knud Rasmussen, who crossed the Greenland icecap with him.
At age 20, Peter Freuchen went on the 1906-08 “Danmark Expedition” (named after the expedition ship “Danmark”) to Northeast Greenland. The expedition ship sailed as far north as possible, established a base, and then traveled by dogsled further north along the coast, mapping the region. The purpose of the expedition was to explore and map the northernmost East Greenland. Extensive studies were made using dog sleds, traveling a total of more than 6,500 km (4,039 mi), which up to that time was a record distance for Arctic expeditions.
In 1910, Freuchen & Rasmussen established the Thule Trading Station at Cape York (Uummannaq), Greenland. The name Thule was chosen because it was the most northerly trading post in the world, literally the “Ultima Thule” at that point in time.
Thule Trading Station became the home base for a series of seven expeditions, known as the Thule Expeditions, between 1912 and 1933. Freuchen served as store manager in “Cape York Station Thule ” for 10 years.
The First Thule Expedition (1912, Rasmussen and Freuchen) aimed to test Robert Peary’s claim that a channel divided Peary Land from Greenland. They proved this was not the case in a remarkable 1,000-km journey across the inland ice that almost killed them. Clements Markham, president of the Royal Geographic Society, called the journey the “finest ever performed by dogs.”
Freuchen wrote over 30 books including personal accounts of this journeys in Vagrant Viking (1953) and I Sailed with Rasmussen (1958), and Freuchen and Rasmussen held a series of lectures in Denmark about their expeditions and the Inuit culture. Other published titles from Freuchen included Adventures in the Arctic, Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North, Book of the Eskimos, Ice Floes and Flaming Water, Ivalu the Eskimo Wife, and Book of the Seven Seas.
The First Thule Expedition (1912, Rasmussen and Freuchen) aimed to test Robert Peary’s claim that a channel divided Peary Land from Greenland. They proved this was not the case in a remarkable 1,000-km journey across the inland ice that almost killed them. Clements Markham, president of the Royal Geographic Society, called the journey the “finest ever performed by dogs.”
Freuchen wrote over 30 books including personal accounts of this journeys in Vagrant Viking (1953) and I Sailed with Rasmussen (1958), and Freuchen and Rasmussen held a series of lectures in Denmark about their expeditions and the Inuit culture. Other published titles from Freuchen included Adventures in the Arctic, Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North, Book of the Eskimos, Ice Floes and Flaming Water, Ivalu the Eskimo Wife, and Book of the Seven Seas.
Freuchen’s first wife, Mekupaluk, who took the name Navarana, followed him on several expeditions. When she died he wanted her buried in the old church graveyard in Upernavik. The church refused to perform the burial, because Navarana was not baptized, so Freuchen buried Navarana himself . Freuchen strongly criticized the Christian church which missioned among the inuits without understanding their culture and traditions.
When Freuchen returned to Denmark in the 1920′s he joined the Social democrats and contributed with articles in the newspaper Politiken.
Freuchen later became the leader of a movie company, returning to Greenland in 1932 on an expedition financed by the American Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studios. For over 20 years he was employed by the movie industry as a consultant and scriptwriter, specializing in Arctic-related scripts, most notably MGM’s 1933 Oscar winning Eskimo/Mala The Magnificent starring Ray Mala.
In 1933, Knud Rasmussen used the character name Navarana (Freuchen’s deceased wife’s name) for the lead role in the movie Palos Brudefærd, which was filmed in East Greenland.
Freuchen as the Captain in MGM publicity photo for the 1933 Oscar winning film "Eskimo"
In 1935, Freuchen visited South Africa, and by the end of the decade, he had also traveled to Siberia. In 1938 he founded The Adventurer’s Club (Eventyrernes Klub), which still exists.
During World War II, Freuchen was actively involved with the Danish resistance movement against the Germans, even without one leg which he lost to frostbite in 1926. He was imprisoned by the Germans during the war, and sentenced to death, but he managed to escape and flee to Sweden.
Freuchen later moved to the USA where he and his wife Dagmar, a fashion illustrator, lived in New York City, and maintained a second home in Noank, Connecticut. In 1956, Freuchen won $64,000 on The $64,000 Question, an American TV quiz-show on the subject “The Seven Seas”.
The preface of Freuchen’s last work, Book of the Seven Seas, is dated August 30, 1957, in Noank. He died of a heart attack three days later in Elmendorf, Alaska. After his death, Freuchen’s ashes were scattered on the famous table-shaped Thule Mountain in Greenland.
Freuchen’s memory was later honoured by the planting of an oak tree and creating an Eskimo cairn near the place, where he’d left Denmark for Greenland back in 1906. It is located East of Langeliniebroen in Central Copenhagen and not far from the statue of The Little Mermaid.
When Freuchen returned to Denmark in the 1920′s he joined the Social democrats and contributed with articles in the newspaper Politiken.
Freuchen later became the leader of a movie company, returning to Greenland in 1932 on an expedition financed by the American Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studios. For over 20 years he was employed by the movie industry as a consultant and scriptwriter, specializing in Arctic-related scripts, most notably MGM’s 1933 Oscar winning Eskimo/Mala The Magnificent starring Ray Mala.
In 1933, Knud Rasmussen used the character name Navarana (Freuchen’s deceased wife’s name) for the lead role in the movie Palos Brudefærd, which was filmed in East Greenland.
Freuchen as the Captain in MGM publicity photo for the 1933 Oscar winning film "Eskimo"
In 1935, Freuchen visited South Africa, and by the end of the decade, he had also traveled to Siberia. In 1938 he founded The Adventurer’s Club (Eventyrernes Klub), which still exists.
During World War II, Freuchen was actively involved with the Danish resistance movement against the Germans, even without one leg which he lost to frostbite in 1926. He was imprisoned by the Germans during the war, and sentenced to death, but he managed to escape and flee to Sweden.
Freuchen later moved to the USA where he and his wife Dagmar, a fashion illustrator, lived in New York City, and maintained a second home in Noank, Connecticut. In 1956, Freuchen won $64,000 on The $64,000 Question, an American TV quiz-show on the subject “The Seven Seas”.
The preface of Freuchen’s last work, Book of the Seven Seas, is dated August 30, 1957, in Noank. He died of a heart attack three days later in Elmendorf, Alaska. After his death, Freuchen’s ashes were scattered on the famous table-shaped Thule Mountain in Greenland.
Freuchen’s memory was later honoured by the planting of an oak tree and creating an Eskimo cairn near the place, where he’d left Denmark for Greenland back in 1906. It is located East of Langeliniebroen in Central Copenhagen and not far from the statue of The Little Mermaid.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Monday, February 3, 2014
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Map of the Internet
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/030/1/a/map_of_the_internet_1_0__by_the9988-d72b5tb.jpg
