There was a crack, a kind of canyon /  by Nathan Jones

Call looked out the window at the grasslands, as the plains opened around them. Teresa whispered to him, trying to get him to talk; but he could not bring himself to speak, at least not often. There must have been a lot of rain that winter, for the cover was abundant. It would be a good year for the cattle herds.

The Captain could not imagine what he was going to do, in the years ahead. He would have to live, but without himself. He felt he had left himself far away, back down the weeks, in the spot west of Fort Stockton where he had been wounded. He had saddled up, as he would have on any morning. He had ridden off to check two horses, as he would have on any morning, as he had ridden on thousands of mornings throughout his life. He had been himself; a little stiff maybe, his finger joints swollen; but himself. He scarcely heard the gunshots, or felt the first bullet. That bullet and the others hadn't killed him, but they had removed him. Now there was a crack, a kind of canyon, between the Woodrow Call sitting with Teresa on the train and the Woodrow Call who had made the campfire that morning and saddled his horse. The crack was permanent, the canyon deep. He could not get across it, back to himself. His last moments as himself had been spent casually—making a campfire, drinking coffee, saddling a horse.

Then the wounds split him off from that self, that Call—he could remember the person he had been, but he could not become that person again. He could never be that Call again. Even if he had kept his arm and his leg, he knew it would be much the same.

Of course, having the arm and the leg would have been a great convenience, for he could earn a living if he had them. He could be far less of a burden. But even if he had kept the arm and leg, he could not have returned to being the Call who had made the campfire and saddled the horse. The first bullet had removed him from that person. That person—that Call—was back down the weeks, on the other side of the canyon of time. There was no rejoining him, and there never would be.

— Larry McMurtry in Streets of Laredo (1993)

Till the wreck of body /  by Nathan Jones

“Now shall I make my soul,
Compelling it to study
In a learned school
Till the wreck of body,
Slow decay of blood,
Testy delirium
Or dull decrepitude,
Or what worse evil come—
The death of friends, or death
Of every brilliant eye
That made a catch in the breath—
Seem but the clouds of the sky
When the horizon fades;
Or a bird’s sleepy cry
Among the deepening shades.”
— W. B. Yeats in The Tower (1926)

51 Years /  by Nathan Jones

And 245 days, counting up (which is so much harder than counting down.)

This series of photographs was captured with the Minolta XE-1, a camera that is exactly the same age as I am. It has idiosyncracies, just like I do.

À la recherche du temps perdu//Sein und Zeit /  by Nathan Jones

“But though I have fasted, wept, and prayed,
Though I have a seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here is no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid. ”
— T. S. Eliot in The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917)
“The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the teacup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.”
— W. H. Auden in As I walked out one evening (1937)
“O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.”
— W. B. Yeats in Sailing to Byzantium (1928)