I live my life in widening ci...

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. I circle around God, around the primordial tower. I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? —Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours

If you were to put a blade through any sphere and divide it into two perfect halves, the circumference of the cut side of each half would be a great circle: that is, the largest circle that can be drawn on a sphere.

Iwas born to be a wanderer. I was shaped to the earth like a seabird to a wave. Some birds fly until they die. I have made a promise to myself: My last descent won’t be the tumbling helpless kind but a sharp gannet plunge—a dive with intent, aimed at something deep in the sea.

With Ma gone, if the mud’s to...

With Ma gone, if the mud’s to be busted, the job falls to me. It isn’t the work I hate, the knuckle-breaking work of beating mud out of every blessed thing, but every day my fingers and hands ache so bad. I think I should just let them rest, let the dust rest, let the world rest. But I can’t leave it rest, on account of Ma,
haunting. January 1935 - P113

My father’s voice starts and stops, like a car short of gas, like an engine choked with dust, but then he clears his throat and the song starts up again. - P115

I can’t make myself over the way Ma did. And yet, if I could look in the mirror and see her in my face. If I could somehow know that Ma and baby Franklin lived on in me … But it can’t be. I’m my father’s daughter. January 1935 - P117

Tonight, for a little while in the bright hall folks were almost free, almost free of dust, almost free of debt, almost free of fields of withered wheat. Most of the night I think I smiled. And twice my father laughed. Imagine. January 1935 - P118

The little ones drank themselves into white mustaches, they ate and ate, until pushing back from their desks, their stomachs round, they swore they’d never eat again. - P120

When I do come, I study how fine that baby girl is. How perfect, and that she is wearing a feed-sack nightgown that was my brother’s. February 1935 - P126

I ran half a mile in their dust to catch them. I didn’t want to let that baby go. "Wait for me," I cried, choking on the cloud that rose behind them. But they didn’t hear me. They were heading west. And no one was looking back. February 1935 - P127

Ashby and Rush were cooking up moonshine in their giant metal still on the bank when Sheriff Robertson caught them. He found jugs of finished whiskey, and barrels and barrels of mash, he found two sacks of rye, and he found sugar, one thousand pounds of sugar. - P128

Apple pandowdy! These kids, Sheriff Robertson said, ought to have something sweet to wash down their dusty milk. And so we did. February 1935 - P128

Miss Freeland said our grade ...

Miss Freeland said our grade topped the entire state of Oklahoma on the state tests again, twenty-four points higher than the state average. Wish I could run home and tell Ma and see her nod
and hear her say, "I knew you could." It would be enough. January 1935 - P104

Being there without Ma,
without the baby,
wouldn’t have been so bad,
if I’d just remembered the cranberry sauce.
My father loved Ma’s special cranberry sauce.
But she never showed me how to make it.

January 1935 - P105

I hear the first drops. Like the tapping of a stranger at the door of a dream, the rain changes everything. It strokes the roof, streaking the dusty tin, ponging, a concert of rain notes, spilling from gutters, gushing through gullies, soaking into the thirsty earth outside. - P109

Real Snow The dust stopped,...

Real Snow

The dust stopped,
and it
snowed.
Real snow.
Dreamy Christmas snow,
gentle,
nothing blowing,
such calm,
like after a fever,
wet,
clinging to the earth,
melting into the dirt,
snow.

Oh, the grass, and the wheat
and the cattle,
and the rabbits,
and my father will be happy.

November 1934 - P97

<Dance Revue>
He doesn’t look at me like I’m a poor motherless thing. He doesn’t stare at my deformed hands. He looks at me like I am someone he knows, someone named Billie Jo Kelby. I’m grateful for that, especially considering how bad I’m playing.
December 1934 - P98

[오늘의 한문장] The Grapes of Wrath

TO THE RED COUNTRY and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.